PROFESSOR AMY C. GAUDION TO PRESENT AT WILLIAM & MARY’S 2024 NATIONAL SECURITY CONFERENCE
March 2024 — Professor Amy C. Gaudion will be presenting her current project on violent extremism in the U.S. military at the 2024 National Security Conference to be held on March 22, 2024 at William & Mary. This year’s conference, organized by William & Mary’s Whole of Government Center of Excellence and campus partners, will bring together scholars, government practitioners, and military leaders to address “Data & Democracy, AI, Cyber Defense & National Security.”
While violent extremism in the U.S. military is not an entirely new threat, the events of January 6, 2021 brought the threat into much sharper focus. Recent reporting indicates that of the individuals charged with crimes connected to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, at least 14 percent were current or former military personnel. Jack Texeira presents another manifestation of this threat. The 21-year old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard stands accused of leaking classified documents on the Discord server, a group-chat platform where he also espoused racist and white-nationalist ideologies. Professor Gaudion’s current project examines the rise of domestic violent extremism (DVE) within the U.S. military, paying particular attention to an increase in efforts by DVE groups to recruit veterans and active duty military servicemembers. It illuminates the online platforms where such recruitment occurs, and explores why these online communities tend to provide such fertile recruiting environments for DVE groups. It reviews the flurry of initiatives, studies and policy directives that followed in the wake the January 6, 2021 as the U.S. Department of Defense sought to counter DVE recruitment efforts, to clarify its standards of acceptable conduct, and to identify and punish servicemembers for certain activities relating to DVE. Her work considers the legal obstacles that make countering the military DVE threat so difficult, and then proposes a new set of actors, tools and mechanisms well-suited to the task.
Gaudion’s work will be presented as part of a panel on “Understanding the New Landscape for Security.” In an information society and digital economy, it is increasingly imperative to consider how best to balance technological innovation aims with democratic and constitutional governance objectives. Vision 2026, W&M’s strategic plan, invites a conversation on data and democracy. This interdisciplinary panel led by the Global Research Institute (GRI) explores how national security goals are inclusive of broader conceptualizations of security, including cognitive security, climate and water/environmental preservation, health and food security, and data protection and cybersecurity. This panel discusses how the new landscape for security has the potential to reinforce democracy. The panel also will feature Kira Allmann, Director for Partnerships & Communications of the Global Research Institute at William & Mary, Elizabeth Losh, Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of English & American Studies at William & Mary, Julia Mossbridge, Research Director of the Mossbridge Institute and founder of TILT: The Institute for Love and Time, and Roger Yee, Managing Partner of Outcome/One.
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Amy C. Gaudion is an associate professor of law at Penn State Dickinson Law as well as the founder of Dickinson Law’s annual cyberspace simulation with the U.S. Army War College. Her scholarship focuses on national security law, cyberspace, and civilian-military relations, and she leads Dickinson Law’s national security and cyberspace programs.