After serving in Congress for 26 years, Mac Thornberry continues to work at the intersection of technology and national security.  He serves various companies and non-profit organizations as a board member and advisor.   

A former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he was also a member of the House Intelligence Committee for more than a decade. The Almanac of American Politics 2020 called Mac “one of Congress’ brainiest and most thoughtful members on national and domestic security issues.”   Widely respected across the political spectrum as an innovator and a strategic thinker, Mac has led on strategic nuclear issues, homeland security, cyber and space issues, as well as enhancing innovation and improving acquisition to benefit the men and women who serve and the nation.

In December 2021, Mac received the Peace Through Strength Award from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.  He is also the recipient of Distinguished Service Medals from the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, as well as awards and recognitions from a number of other organizations.  On a bipartisan basis, Congress named the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act for him.

Prior to his election to Congress, Mac served in the State Department during the Reagan Administration, as staff on Capitol Hill, and practiced law. Raised on the family ranch in Donley County, Texas, Mac graduated from Texas Tech University and received a law degree from the University of Texas. He and his wife, Sally, have two children.

Rita Barbosa Lobo is a program assistant for the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF, where she works with the head of European operations.

In her studies, Barbosa Lobo focused on European Union law and common law, graduating from the University of Kent with a bachelor of laws and from the University of Amsterdam with a master of laws. Prior to joining ASD, she was a Schuman trainee at the European Parliamentary Research Service, External Policies Unit. Before that she was a program assistant at the European Policy Centre, Europe in the World program, and a research fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies. Her interests lie in European foreign policy.

Sharinee L. Jagtiani is a senior officer for artificial intelligence (AI) and democracy at GMF Technology. Her work centers on emerging technologies and their impact on democratic processes, with a particular focus on AI and digital infrastructure. Jagtiani plays a key role in GMF Technology’s work on piloting content authenticity technologies for the 2024 election cycle and examining China’s technology influence in Europe.

Previously, Jagtiani worked at the Hasso Platner Institute for Digital Engineering at the University of Potsdam, where she served as a postdoctoral fellow producing scholarship and policy recommendations on global technology governance, cloud computing, and digital public infrastructure. She has a PhD in international relations from the University of Oxford, where her thesis examined rising powers and their claims to great power status, with a focus on India.

Through her ten years of experience working in academia and think tanks, including with the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and Berlin, Jagtiani has published extensively on Asia-Pacific security, European security, and the US-China strategic rivalry.