- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Samantha Vinograd
Samantha Vinograd
CNN National Security Analyst
Samantha Vinograd is a CNN National Security Analyst, a Senior Advisor at the Biden Institute and a co-founder of Global Opportunity Advisors. She began her career under President Bush as the Deputy U.S. Treasury Attaché to Iraq and subsequently served on President Obama’s National Security Council as Director for Iraq, Director for International Economics, and Senior Advisor to the National Security Advisor. She joined Goldman Sachs in 2013 where her work focused on building public-private sector partnerships across a broad range of policy and business issues, and she later led Global Public Policy at Stripe.
She is deeply engaged in social impact work and serves as an advisor to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and to the Concordia Summit. She was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Public Policy Institute, a David E. Rockefeller Fellow at the Trilateral Commission and a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Ms. Vinograd writes a weekly column on CNN.com (the Presidential Weekly Briefing) and has been published in several outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Daily Beast, USA Today, Harper’s Bazaar, Politico, and Marie Claire.
She is fluent in French and studied advanced Arabic and Hebrew. She received her B.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University.
Seminars
“The National Security Recovery from COVID-19”
There was no pandemic pause button for global threats facing the United States during covid-19. North Korea and Iran didn’t stop nuclearizing, Russia didn’t stop interfering in our elections, and Assad didn’t cease his brutal behavior. At the same time, rival powers like Russia and China tried to take advantage of the pandemic period to advance their own agendas against us and COVID-19 exacerbated existing threats like global food insecurity and poverty.
Despite this heightened threat environment, the national security apparatus had fewer resources available to just do routine national security work. Urgent and necessary measures were taken to safeguard the health of US personnel, but because of travel restrictions, remote working, and shift work, U.S. government personnel were unable to fully perform their day jobs during the pandemic.
We also had to redirect significant resources to meet the COVID-19 threat - in terms of physical, financial resources, and human resources. This puts a strain on other work during this period and down the road.
Whenever we do mitigate the COVID-19 crisis, the national security recovery will depend on a thoughtfully executed recovery plan. New geopolitical realities, perceptions of the United States, and gaps in our national security will need an unbiased, sustained focus.
This seminar will explore all aspects of the national security recovery from COVID-19.
Assessing the national security impact of COVID-19 first requires understanding the various ways that COVID-19 has impacted our national security - metrics really matter. We will use our first seminar to agree on metrics for our impact analysis, including direct health impact, economic impact, opportunity costs, geopolitical impacts and more.
We will do an audit of the national security apparatus and key functions and missions that were disrupted during the COVID-19 crisis. This may include guidelines that prohibited DOD travel, State Department personnel’s inability to engage with counterparts, scaling back CT missions and military exercises, and more. To the extent possible, we will also audit how access to intelligence was impacted during this crisis as a lot of work-from-home arrangements meant that personnel did not have regular access to classified servers.
Special Guest: Robert Cardillo, Distinguished Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence & former Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
COVID-19 may have led to shifting perceptions of the United States based on our level of preparedness, responsiveness, and divisiveness during the pandemic period. Our freezing funding to the WHO and overall posture during COVID-19 may have led global leaders to recalibrate their views on us; our capacity to respond, or lack thereof, is a statement to the world about our resiliency. Understanding this shift in global perceptions will be key to successful engagement going forward.
Special Guest: Juliette Kayyem, CNN National Security Analyst, Senior Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government & former Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security for President Obama
COVID-19 led to new geopolitical realities. The pandemic was primetime for Putin when it came to available content online that is ideal for manipulation in pursuit of Russia’s missions against the United States.
China used this period to push disinformation that serves its needs while concurrently moving forward with eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy. Many autocratic leaders also used the pandemic as an excuse to crack down internally while key developments may have gotten less attention than warranted because of strained resources.
Special Guest: Steve Hall, Retired Operations Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, former Member of the Senior Intelligence Service & former Russia Station Chief
COVID-19 exacerbated underlying threats like global food insecurity, global inequality, gender-based violence, global poverty and more. These issues affect U.S. national security and are key issues that the U.S. national security team has historically worked to address. The exacerbation of these threat streams will create deeper, more complex threats to U.S. national security over the long term.
Special Guest: Elizabeth McCostlin, Managing Director of UNICEF's Chicago Office
During COVID-19, we have learned some valuable lessons about preparedness and response mechanisms, including the CDC, federal vs. state authorities, Congress, WHO, UN, and others. Any real recovery will have to involve an honest assessment of what worked, and what didn’t, so that we can take steps to address weakness in our preparedness and response mechanisms.
Once we understand the impacts of COVID-19 on our national security, we can propose recommendations on how to restore it. This may include recommendations on better pandemic preparedness, messaging to foreign counterparts, and a reprioritization of assets to mitigate specific threats. Students will be asked to come prepared with recommendations for our recovery.