Dr. Stephen Bryen has 50 years of experience in academia, government, and industry.
He has served as an Assistant Professor of Government at Lehigh University, as Senior Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration, as the President of Delta Tech Inc., as the President of Finmeccanica North America (now Leonardo), and as a Commissioner of the U.S. China Security Review Commission.
Dr. Bryen was the founder of the Defense Technology Security Administration and served as a Deputy under Secretary of Defense and Director of DTSA during both Reagan administrations. He led the Defense Department’s efforts to halt the hemorrhage of western technology to the Soviet Union and China. He was the Pentagon’s spokesperson on technology security and led the Department’s efforts in Paris at COCOM and in other fora. He played a major role in halting the transfer of sensitive technology to Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya and was the principal player in establishing cooperative agreements with allied and friendly countries on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
Dr. Bryen is the author of five major books on national security and book segments and introductions, as well as countless articles in professional and popular journals. Among his recent books are Technology Security and National Power: Winners and Losers (Transaction Press) and Security for Holy Places: How to Build a Security Plan for Your Church, Synagogue, Mosque or Temple (Morgan James Publishing). He also recently released his third volume of his Essays in Technology, Security and Strategy (with Shoshana Bryen), available exclusively at Amazon.
Bryen writes for Asia Times, Epoch times, Newsweek, American Thinker, Defense News, and other publications. His articles can also be found on the Center for Security Policy website and on Bryensblog.
Dr. Bryen currently is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the American Center for Democracy. He is a Senior Fellow and Board Member of Il Nodo di Gordio (The Gordian Knot), a major Italian think tank focused on geopolitics, and of the Taiwan Institute for Economic, Social and Political Studies.
Dr. Bryen’s extensive experience and high effectiveness has earned him the highest civilian awards of the U.S. Defense Department, the Distinguished Service Medal, on two occasions and established him as a proven government, civic and business leader in Washington D.C. and internationally.
At Lehigh University as Assistant Professor of Government Bryen developed the first university statistics program for the social sciences called LEAPS which initially ran on a Cyber 6400 computer system and served the entire university. According to rumor, LEAPS is still available to students in the University computer library. LEAPS was written in Fortran IV and served students in Government courses, and Dr. Bryen’s seminar on methodology (“Scope and Methods in Political Science”).
Morley Safer of the CBS Program 60 Minutes said: “Dr. Bryen was the Pentagon’s top cop, the man whose job it was to ensure that sensitive technology would be kept from enemies, potential enemies and questionable allies.”
Eileen Shannon of Time Magazine said “Steve Bryen is the Yoda of the arms trade. Formerly the Defense Department’s export czar, he knows every sinkhole in the regulatory swamp. Ignore him at your peril…”
The late US Senator John Heinz said, “I agree with Steve Bryen about the need to keep asking our allies to do more.”
“Bryen came to private industry after a career in government, but even there he was an innovator and entrepreneur. … A key part of Bryen’s portfolio was managing and shepherding US-allied technological cooperation in pursuit of the common defense.” -David Silverberg in Homeland Security Magazine (now HSToday).
Talking about Stuxnet Steve Bryen said: “[Wired’s] article makes it clear that Stuxnet was designed to kill Iran’s centrifuges. I frankly don’t understand how it can be described by Wired as the ‘most menacing malware in history…’ It seems to me maybe it was the best malware in history.”
Herb Krosney in his Chapter ‘Men of the Pentagon’ in his book Deadly Business (Four Walls Eight Windows) wrote: “Surprisingly to some, the Reagan Administration attracted a select few of the ‘best and brightest’ to its ranks to help control sensitive exports. Among them, Stephen Bryen…”
In Common Defense Quarterly Dr. Bryen wrote: “The first technology transfer recorded where iron making was passed from the Philistines to King David had consequences just as the transfer of super computing technology to China has consequences today.”
Bryen’s earliest book, The Application of Cybernetic Analysis to the Study of International Politics (Martinus Nijhof, The Hague) was the first book to apply cybernetics to political theory, following on the work of John von Neumann. Dr. Bryen is widely regarded also for his essays on geopolitics and political realism following his early work on Hans Morgenthau, Leopold von Ranke, Friedrich Meinecke and Alfred Thayer Mahan, among others.
As Dr. Bryen wrote at Infocus Magazine, “As NATO has become wider, it has become shallower and less able to meet its own standards for the defense of its members. And a weak NATO may in fact be worse than no NATO at all.”
Dr. Bryen’s recent paper on European security and NATO was published (in Italian) in Il Nodo di Gordio under the title ‘la NATO combatterà? E per cosa?’ (‘Will NATO Fight? And For What?’)
Stephen Bryen was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.
Dr. Bryen’s wife, Shoshana is Policy Director for the Jewish Policy Center in Washington DC. His eldest daughter, Gabrielle retired as a Lt. Colonel from the U.S. Army and earned a bronze star for her efforts treating soldiers facing family and personal issues –she specializes in PTSD. Dr. Bryen’s son, Ari Zev Bryen specializes in ancient history; he has published a major book, Violence in Roman Egypt (2013) and is Assistant Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies and Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. His daughter Sarah is a professional graphics art designer and business owner, and his daughter Mollie is a school counsellor at Anne Arundel high school in Maryland. All except Sarah received their undergraduate degrees at the University of Maryland and Shoshana took her undergraduate and graduate degrees there. Sarah graduated from Pennsylvania State University.