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Expert Bio
David P. Fidler is senior fellow for global health and cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an expert in international law, cybersecurity, national security, terrorism, counterinsurgency, international trade, biosecurity, and global health.
Fidler has served as an international legal consultant to the World Bank (on foreign investment in Palestine); the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (on global health issues); the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Science Board (on bioterrorism); the Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; U.S. Joint Forces Command (on rule of law issues in stability operations); the Interagency Afghanistan Integrated Civilian-Military Pre-Deployment Training Course organized by the Departments of Defense, State and Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development; and various initiatives undertaken by non-governmental organizations in the areas of global health and arms control. He served as chair for an International Law Association study group on terrorism, cybersecurity, and international law.
Fidler’s publications include The Snowden Reader (editor and contributor, Indiana University Press, 2015); India and Counterinsurgency: Lessons Learned (co-editor and contributor, Routledge, 2009); Responding to National Security Letters: A Practical Guide for Legal Counsel (co-author, American Bar Association, 2009); Biosecurity in the Global Age: Biological Weapons, Public Health, and the Rule of Law (co-author, Stanford University Press, 2008); and SARS, Governance, and the Globalization of Disease (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Fidler has been a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a Fulbright New Century Scholar, and a Truman Scholar from Kansas. He holds a BCL from the University of Oxford, JD from Harvard Law School, MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, and BA from the University of Kansas.
Affiliations
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Project on Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict, member of advisory board
- Committee on Planetary Protection of the Space Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, member
- Lancet-Chatham House Commission for Improving Population Health Post COVID-19, commissioner
Current Projects
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A new report provides a window into high-level policy thinking about cyberspace, digital technologies, and the future of global health.
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The Biden administration's cyber strategy reflects the ideological, geopolitical, technological, and diplomatic pillars of President Biden's overarching vision for U.S. foreign policy and national security.
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January 6, 2021 serves as the darkest moment of the democratic experience with the internet and digital technologies.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing problems in cyberspace but has not ushered in a new era of cyber policies to appear in 2021.
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President Trump’s legacy on cyberspace policy has been consequential but not transformative, an unsurprising outcome for a one-term president.
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The U.S. State Department's Clean Network program, created in response to China's expanding capabilities in cyberspace, recalls the the warning George Kennan gave about the Soviet Union in his famous "long telegram" in 1946.
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The Trump administration's newly issued directive on cybersecurity policy for outer space is another small step towards taking cyber threats to U.S. space systems seriously.
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Vaccine nationalism has given rise to a new wave of cyber espionage targeting COVID-19 vaccine research.
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The next administration will have to confront the future of the internet.
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The demand for radical change in law enforcement raises questions about what a transformation of police authority, power, and accountability would mean for the use of digital technologies in policing.
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Although the Cyberspace Solarium Commission's new white paper outlined many of the cybersecurity challenges generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it neglected to address other major issues, such as widespread interest in using digital technologies to implement public health measures. Whether the pandemic will serve as a "call to action" for U.S. policymakers, as the commission hopes, is unclear.
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On May 19, the World Health Assembly adopted a new resolution calling upon all member states to confront cyber threats to global health. Such a resolution is unprecedented in the history of the World Health Organization, and developing effective policies against cyber threats will be a daunting challenge for the global health community.
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The United States is pursuing bilateral agreements to shape international space law.
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The COVID-19 pandemic overlaps the fields of public health and cybersecurity in ways never observed before, generating sobering reminders of underlying problems and unheeded warnings that have continued to characterize both fields in the United States for decades.
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Recent allegations of criminal wrongdoing by an astronaut on a computer network from space suggests that how U.S. law applies to citizens engaged in government, commercial, or non-governmental space activities might require clarification.
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The proliferation of disinformation online amidst the DRC’s outbreak of the Ebola virus is a serious threat to global health. Efforts to curb bad information and conspiracy theories on social media about the disease and other health issues have been no more successful in health than in other contexts.
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The integration of the internet and cyberspace into democratic politics has contributed to a crisis in Anglo-American democracy, with an intensely polarized population, constantly distracted political debate, a deliberately misinformed body politic, and dysfunctional political institutions. The United States and UK have few options to prevent cyber-facilitated disruption.
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The El Paso tragedy underscores the need to take stock, again, of strategies for addressing how terrorist and extremist groups exploit the internet to spread hate and incite violence.
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A comparison of cyber and biological weapons and the treatment of biological weapons in international law suggests that both the direct and indirect effects of cyber weapons should be considered when determining if cyber capabilities constitute a means or method of warfare.
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The president's push to "build the wall" fails to grasp the role of modern technology in policing U.S. borders.
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A look back at election security in 2018.
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A UN working group is drafting a new treaty that could make social media companies liable for content hosted on their platforms that infringe international human rights law.
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The advent of drones has led to calls for new law to regulate the skies. One such proposal from the Uniform Law Commission is causing a stir in the United States.
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With Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement, two recent cases shed light on how Chief Justice John Roberts might decide technology cases if he becomes the court's new swing vote.