Clay Hardwick is program manager of the Center for Cyber Innovation (CCI) Open-Source Intelligence Lab (OSIL) at Mississippi State University (MSU), where he researches the application of open-source intelligence to our country’s most pressing national security challenges. Clay is a retired Army officer who spent his career working in intelligence and as a foreign area officer (FAO), primarily in the Middle East.
Clay holds a Masters in Middle East Studies from University of Texas at Austin and a Masters in International Security Studies from the University of Arizona. After retiring from the Army but before working in the OSIL, Clay worked as the Senior Research Security Analyst in MSU’s Office of Research Compliance and Security (ORC&S), where he worked on implementation of National Security Presidential Memorandum-33, the federal government’s directive to strengthen protections of U.S. Government-sponsored research against foreign government interference and exploitation.