Christopher Jones

What inspired you to build a career in national security?
Early in my engineering career, I started working for Lockheed Martin, which got me into the national security community. In that role, I worked at a number of government agencies. I decided early on that I love the hands-on engineering and technology work, but I really wanted to apply it more directly to the security and intelligence missions. I was a behind-the-scenes supporter and wanted to understand and see the mission impact of our efforts. I also wanted the opportunity to travel, so I converted from contracts to CIA staff and lived in Asia, Europe, and around the U.S.

I had been thinking about transitioning out of government service when my spouse’s military commitment concluded, but things changed after 9/11. I was responsible for some significant requirements at that time, and it became really hard to walk away from the mission. I was born in New York City in the Bronx, and I grew up in New Jersey. Two of my neighbors growing up died in the World Trade Center. I felt I was in a unique position, inside the U.S. government, to actually be a very small part of the response and work on counterterrorism. 9/11 was a galvanizing moment when I decided to stay, and I’m glad I did because I was working with some of the most selfless, patriotic Americans out there. I was learning and growing every single day, and the national security work was just so meaningful.

What’s one piece of advice you would offer somebody new to the field?
There are two pieces of advice I give to new hires and early-career professionals.

First, always understand that every personal interaction you have is an opportunity to either grow or negatively impact your professional network. It doesn't matter how senior the person is or what their role is; every interaction is an opportunity to either gain a partner and an ally or, candidly, to create an adversarial relationship and leave somebody with a bad taste in their mouth. There are so many people from my early career who, years later, I never expected to see casually or work with on a project. It’s a small community, so my advice is to just be a good human and understand that those personal contacts will come back to, hopefully, help you be more effective.

Second, you need to have some humility. In the national security space, there are always adversaries and competitors trying to out-innovate you for their own purposes, just like nation-states need to out-compete each other to maintain their positions in the global order. I think a healthy dose of humility, even when you believe you're on top, is valuable. Be open to questioning everything. Are we as good as we think we are? Do we not have any vulnerabilities? What’s our ability to execute our mission? It goes a long way to making sure that you can stay successful for the long term.

Who has inspired you?
Early on in my career, I got to meet some of the pioneers of technology adaptation, driving how the country collects and processes intelligence. I worked with very talented technical people who understood systems engineering and process. Their example motivated me to be more diligent than perhaps I had been in my youth, in terms of being detail-oriented, process-oriented, understanding checks and balances, and how to consistently execute programs well

Also, without naming them, I can say I worked with a lot of key operations officers overseas who inspired people. They were leading very small teams in austere environments, doing hard things. These were people at risk, managing people at risk, and they still did it in a compassionate, empathetic, and inspirational way. They taught me, on a leadership level, how to be focused on a mission goal and rally people around that goal.

I was blessed on both sides to see great examples of leadership, both on the people side as well as the programmatic side.

What is one thing you want to change within the Intelligence Community?
Frankly, our community must move faster in embracing change if we want to stay competitive going forward. Any time you see high-functioning organizations with years of success, you are also bound to see cultural and process entrenchment. As technical advancements (e.g. AI, cyber) continue to accelerate at a blistering pace, we need to keep our eye on the ball with respect to core principles surrounding mission: prevent strategic surprise, protect the homeland, and maintain and grow technical advantage over our adversaries. To do this, we need to accelerate our willingness to adapt processes, change thinking, and take calculated risks.

I see a future where full-spectrum cyber—offensive insights, defensive operations, and EW effects coordinated by AI-driven capabilities all operate in sync, in real time—breaks through the silos and blossoms into strategic complements. We in the national security space have been playing defense for years. But if we want to maintain a global digital order, we have to think about sustainability, resilience, and, sometimes, deterrence. We're entering a period when the innovation cycle provides some advantage to the attackers, because defenders have a challenge, not just of innovating a solution, but then they have to employ it well and scale it.

Top of mind for me is national security policy and strategy around cybersecurity and cyber hardening, in both terrestrial and space-based systems, and whether or not we believe that defensive measures are adequate enough to maintain a perimeter around our economy and national security. If you have an international, global order that's built upon digital economies, how do you maintain those digital economies in ways that are sustainable and can stay ahead of advanced attacks? I believe it’s leveraging multi-layered, AI-infused cybersecurity tools, and having policy in place that enables proactively going after “bad actors” in the cyber domain via enhanced threat-hunt techniques.

What are your future career goals in the IC?
I’d like to see greater risk-taking and innovation out of private industry, and accelerated adoption and transition to mission across the IC. We’re seeing a positive trend of cybersecurity and technology in general, being integrated into national security needs up-front rather than bolted on later. The challenge now, however, is that the sheer volume of ideas, nascent solutions, and entities engaged can be overwhelming for the community to effectively evaluate and triage.

In my past few jobs, I helped set some government organizations on a path to reevaluate their priorities and processes with an eye towards better long-term mission outcomes. I would love, in my current CTO role at Nightwing, to continue looking down the road strategically, past the next curve, to put our engineering prowess, cyber acumen, and mission focus on this specific task to evaluate and transition technology solutions to mission as fast as our national security customers require. As a trusted mission technology partner, I think we’re incredibly well-postured to do just that.