Who Is Chris Cooley?
Chris Cooley has worked in intelligence and cybersecurity for nineteen years — across Army deployments, federal agencies, and Fortune 500 security programs.
Chris tends to work at the leading edge of emerging technology, building the tools and capabilities he needs before the field adopts them as standard practice. He stood up his own threat intelligence platform before buying one was an option, and was automating security operations before anyone called it orchestration. His current focus is AI: how the intelligence community can use it responsibly, and how adversaries are already trying to turn it into a weapon.
Military Intelligence
Chris began his career in 2007 as an All-Source Intelligence Analyst in the U.S. Army National Guard during the Global War on Terrorism where he worked alongside and supported agencies like the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and NATO partners.
In 2018 he deployed to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan as a civilian intelligence professional embedded with the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force–Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A) and NATO Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan (NSOCC-A). He provided direct intelligence advisory support to Major General Albert M. Elton II, the commanding general with authority over all U.S. and NATO Special Operations Forces in country. CJSOTF-A coordinated thousands of personnel from more than 25 nations running intelligence-driven operations against Taliban and Al-Qaeda networks.
He still serves as a Sergeant First Class and Master Intelligence Analyst in the New York Army National Guard, alongside his civilian career where he works in cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity
Chris has built and led cyber threat intelligence programs at every scale, from private companies, local governments, to Fortune 500 companies operating in more than 110 countries.
He started his cybersecurity career at the Center for Internet Security / MS-ISAC, where he provided cyber intelligence to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments nationwide. There, his threat actor analysis contributed to an FBI-led investigation that ended in a criminal arrest — one of the few documented cases of private-sector intelligence work directly supporting a federal prosecution. Later, at Credit Suisse, he ran a multi-million-dollar CTI program, then led a global team at one of the world's most recognized Fortune 500 companies delivering threat intelligence, vulnerability management, and training to global clients.
Today, Chris supports DHS/USCIS, where he leads an intelligence operations program spanning Cyber Threat Intelligence, Applied Intelligence, and Insider Threat Operations, tracking nation-state actors, cybercriminal networks, adversarial AI threats, and insider threats against federal assets.
AI and Intelligence
Chris has spent the last few years on how adversaries weaponize AI systems — studying adversarial behavior and model vulnerabilities while building standards for using AI tools in intelligence analysis.
He is developing the Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Intelligence (AICI) framework, an open-source standard for putting AI into intelligence operations responsibly. The gap it addresses is the one the AI safety field already knows well: tradecraft outpaced by the technology meant to govern it.
He also builds AI-assisted tools, including a full-cycle threat intelligence platform with LLM-augmented analysis.
Peer-reviewed
Pandemic Intelligence
During COVID-19, Chris led the development of intelligence and data science frameworks for real-time public health decisions — work the U.S. Army had not done before. He built an automated infection-mapping platform in Python and R, fusing data from more than 100 medical, law enforcement, and social media sources, and co-authored a peer-reviewed paper in JAMA Health Forum documenting the methodology.
Outside Work
Chris is an independent music producer and engineer releasing through Clear Mountain Records, a landscape and nature photographer, a rock climber, and a snowboarder. He holds professional film credits, builds websites for small businesses, and offers other digital support services. He's based in Gainesville, Virginia.
Support the work
Much of what I build — the AICI framework, open tools, and writing — stays free. If it's been valuable to you, a coffee helps me keep making it.
