Gary D. Brown is an associate professor of practice and faculty lead for the cyber policy concentration at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. He joined the Bush School in the spring of 2023 at the Washington, DC teaching site and moved to College Station in the fall of 2023. Before joining the Bush School Gary taught at the National Defense University in Washington, DC for five years. Prior to that, he was a cyber policy and strategy analyst for the Department of Defense Joint Staff Strategy, Plans, and Policy Division (J5) and Professor of Cyber Security at Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia. Before starting government service as a civilian, he spent two and a half years working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the Washington Delegation. Colonel Brown joined the ICRC after serving 24 years as a judge advocate with the U.S. Air Force, including a deployed assignment as the senior legal advisor for combat air operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his final military assignment, he was the first senior legal counsel for US Cyber Command, Fort Meade, Maryland.
Professor Brown has authored articles and book chapters on cyber warfare, artificial intelligence, influence operations, and related topics including “International Law and Cyber Conflict,” in Routledge Handbook of International Cybersecurity (2020); “Commentary on the law of cyber operations,” in The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual Commentary and Critique (2018); “State Cyberspace Operations: Proposing a Cyber Response Framework,” RUSI Occasional Paper (2020); and “Artificial Intelligence and National Security,” in William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (2022). He was the official U.S. observer to the drafting of the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare (2013), and is a member of the International Group of Experts that authored Tallinn Manual 2.0 (2017).
Professor Brown also appeared as the legal expert in the documentary film Zero Days (2016). He has a law degree from the University of Nebraska and an LL.M. in international law from Cambridge University.
