The audience from the Pacific Council’s 2017 Member’s Weekend, now called PolicyWest. (courtesy of The Pacific Council for International Policy)

Dear Soft Network Advocates,

As summer comes to a close and fall (and cooler weather!) sets in, the Soft Networks team continues to be hard at work. We have several exciting events coming up on both the East coast and the West coast as well as a new publication in the Pacific Council on International Policy’s newsroom.

On October 12, SPSN will be participating in the Pacific Council’s PolicyWest annual conference. Megan Karsh, the Pacific Council’s Vice President for Initiatives, will moderate a discussion between SPSN’s Steve Miska, Fadi Matti, and the Washington Post’s Sarah Feinberg. Ms. Feinberg is a Marine veteran and sponsored numerous local-national partners who immigrated to the U.S. after fleeing violence in their home countries. Mr. Matti is a former Iraqi interpreter who immigrated to the United States and married a navy service-member–his story is detailed in two books authored by his wife (see ‘suggested readings’ at the bottom of the email for links to purchase both books).

The moderated discussion will occur before PolicyWest’s diverse audience of experts and industry professionals, and audience members will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session during the panel. You can register for PolicyWest through the link: http://policywest.pacificcouncil.org/

To learn more about the west coast event, read Pacific Council junior fellow, Sam Romano’s, piece in the Pacific Council’s Newsroom on our upcoming participation in PolicyWest and updates on his research on non-traditional methods of soft network protection. You can find his article through the link: https://www.pacificcouncil.org/newsroom/strategically-protecting-soft-networks

Sarah Feinberg (courtesy Wharton Magazine)

Fadi Matti

We are also excited to announce SPSN’s participation in the International Stability Operations Association’s (ISOA) annual summit on November 13th. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will provide a keynote discussion from 2pm – 3pm with Steve Miska leading the discussion in interview format. Keep a look out for updates on this exciting event and register through the link before October 14 to take advantage of early-bird registration tickets: http://isoasummit.net/registration/

Thank you for supporting our work in strategically protecting soft networks. We look forward to sharing more updates with you as the research and policy development efforts progress.

The SPSN Team