Biography

Jackie Kerr is a Senior Research Fellow for Defense and Technology Futures at the Center for Strategic Research (CSR) at National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS).  She is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Brookings Institution and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.  Her work focuses on digital and emerging technologies and their current and future impacts on international politics, national security, and democracy.  She has conducted research and taught on the digital politics of authoritarian regimes, the role of information technologies in civil society and protest mobilization, cyber domain strategy, global Internet governance, the role of artificial intelligence in national security and foreign policy, and on the role of digital technologies in the politics of Russia, China, and Eurasia.  In 2019-2020 Dr. Kerr served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary (STAS), where she advised on digital technology policy, particularly as it pertains to human rights, democracy, and national security.  From 2016 to 2019, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she led work on cybersecurity, cyber domain strategy, and information conflict.  Dr. Kerr was previously a Science, Technology, and Public Policy Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, a Cybersecurity Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and has held research fellowships in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Qatar.  She also has prior professional experience as a software engineer with Comcast and Symantec.  Dr. Kerr holds a PhD and MA in Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University. 

publications

Journal Articles
May 2023

Political and Economic Tradeoffs: Understanding the Dictator’s ‘Digital Dilemma.’

Author(s)
cover link Political and Economic Tradeoffs: Understanding the Dictator’s ‘Digital Dilemma.’
Book Chapters
January 2023

Concept Misalignment and Cyberspace Instability: Lessons from Cyber-Enabled Disinformation

Author(s)
cover link Concept Misalignment and Cyberspace Instability: Lessons from Cyber-Enabled Disinformation
Journal Articles
September 2022

Runet’s Critical Juncture: The Ukraine War and the Battle for the Soul of the Web

Author(s)
cover link Runet’s Critical Juncture: The Ukraine War and the Battle for the Soul of the Web