The Foreign Service Journal, June 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2018 31 Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley retired recently following 30-plus years in the Foreign Service. Her areas of expertise include the Middle East, counterterrorism and cybersecurity. She was the first woman to lead a diplomatic mission in Saudi Ara- bia as consul general in Jeddah. She also served in the White House, the Department of Defense and on Capitol Hill. Her work has been published in The New York Times and The New York Review of Science Fiction . The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Cyber Command or any agency of the U.S. government. An FSO and former ambassador discusses her work as a political adviser to U.S. Cyber Command. BY G I NA ABERCROMB I E-WI NSTANL EY A s a U.S. diplomat for 32 years, I’ve worked in countries that regularly feature on the front pages of the international press—Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, to men- tion a few. After experiencing the terrible costs of a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia firsthand, my focus shifted from our bilateral relationships with Middle Eastern countries to coordinating our counterterrorism efforts throughout the world. A Diplomat in a Cyber World I spent four years as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism (CT), leading one of the hardest-working teams in the Depart- ment of State. CT oversees our international efforts to stop money flows to terrorist organizations, to improve the ability of other nations’ legal systems to carry out clean prosecutions of terrorists, to strengthen technological tools for effective border security and to counter terrorists’ use of the internet. I often represented State at senior interagency cyber policy meet- ings and worked with representatives from the U.S. military’s command for military cyberspace operations against state and nonstate actors, U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM). WORKING WITH CYBERCOM ON CYBER DIPLOMACY FOCUS ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/PIXTUM