Senior Congressional Innovation Fellow Alex Moix will be joining forces with Senator Mark Robert Warner (D-VA) for the duration of his TechCongress fellowship. As a seasoned security engineer and technical intelligence analyst, Alex will focus on the areas of cybersecurity, technology, and telecommunications during his time in Warner’s office.
Read more about Alex’s past, present, and future in cybersecurity in his blog below:
As I embark on this fellowship, I reflect on the diverse roles, experiences, and challenges that have shaped my career and provided a foundation for navigating the complexities of the technology issues being discussed in Congress. Most of all, I reflect on what actually brought me here.
The evolving nature of our digital society and the impact online interactions have on individuals, communities, and societies as a whole has long been apparent to me. However, my role in shaping our digital future did not become clear to me until the isolation of the pandemic gave me time to think. The significant hardships the world had faced over such a short period of time, which I could only observe from afar while in quarantine, made me wonder if there was something more that I could be doing.
Throughout my career, I’ve been on the frontlines of solving the cybersecurity challenges that both public and private sector organizations encounter. I have worked on a range of technology issues, including forensic analysis for the U.S. Secret Service, critical infrastructure security analysis for the U.S. DHS and a university-affiliated research center, technical intelligence with the National Security Agency, technical advising at the National Counterterrorism Center, education and outreach at the CyberSecurity NonProfit, and security engineering at Slack. Though it was not until I took courses on Cyber Ethics, Information Security Law and Compliance, and Governance Frameworks at Georgetown University during the pandemic that I decided I needed to make a significant shift in what I was doing with my career. I had learned that there were three tools for driving ethical use of technologies. The one I was most familiar with was code - though my impact had been constrained to systems which I built or protected. The one that I did not yet have the influence to change was societal norms. But it was the third one that I had not yet explored and had the potential to truly make a widespread, long-lasting impact: policy. That was what I needed to be doing!
Choosing to apply for a TechCongress Fellowship was not just a career move for me, but a practical step toward truly making a positive impact that could potentially shape the future of our digital society. I wanted to play a role in creating policies that directly addressed the ongoing challenges faced by technologists like myself. My hope is that this fellowship will enable me to help create a future where ethical considerations shape the tech advancements of tomorrow!