Join us in congratulating Congressional Innovation Fellow Ethan Moscot on his recent placement with the office of Representative Andrew Garbarino (R-NY-02). Ethan will work to support efforts in securing critical infrastructure, streamlining cyber regulation, and expanding the national cyber workforce.
Hear more about Ethan’s experiences in cybersecurity and his path to Capitol Hill in his blog below:
I applied to graduate school two years ago with the goal of someday launching a career in tech policy, despite having no clear vision as to how it would come to fruition. Reflecting upon my path to TechCongress since then, I realize Steve Jobs articulated in 2005 something I only learned recently: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” My experiences have demonstrated that, while we can build technical proposals to solve technical problems, even the best solutions will have little impact if they are hindered by misguided policy. Through these perspectives, I’ve come to see TechCongress’s fellowship as the ideal entryway to meaningfully and effectively tackling our nation’s most urgent issues in cyberspace today.
Tufts University’s interdisciplinary master’s program in Cybersecurity and Public Policy (CSPP) has equipped me with both the necessary technical know-how for working in cybersecurity and the ability to explain technical concepts to nontechnical audiences. I am grateful for my brilliant CSPP peers and mentors who opened my eyes to the fact that nontechnical audiences within the government need us CSPP students the most. More specifically, in order to tackle issues like end-to-end encryption, critical infrastructure and national security, and artificial intelligence, we must use informed insight to bridge the gap between the tech-savvy and those who are not.
As I began my graduate studies, I participated in several Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge competitions. In these competitions, student-led teams were tasked with briefing judges posing as the NSC Principals Committee and proposing a slate of options in response to evolving, multidimensional cyberattack scenarios. Briefing in this environment was a one-of-a-kind experience that brought interacting with a nontechnical audience to life, as it emphasized the need to expertly summarize technical aspects of a large-scale cyberattack while taking policy-related and geopolitical context into consideration.
This briefing experience proved valuable in my most recent internship at DHS OCIO, which culminated in the opportunity to brief GAO data scientists on my technical prototype to assess department-wide compliance for AI systems in use. With this, I saw firsthand my ability to make an impact in the public sector, and I knew I didn’t want to jumpstart my career in a technical role. More importantly, I recognized that I could fill a critical void by putting my technical translation skills to use in a tech policy-oriented role.
TechCongress offers its fellows a front-row seat––maybe even a seat behind a member of Congress during a hearing––to cybersecurity policy, and I am eager to serve on Capitol Hill and work to influence oversight, innovation, and policymaking. It’s a gratifying, humbling, and surreal experience to be afforded this opportunity and reach my goal of working in tech policy. The point at which the dots on my educational journey connect is now––time to get to work!