Matt Tait
 Matt Tait  (spooky academic) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1987 |
| Alma mater | Imperial College London |
| Interests | • cybersecurity • “disinformation” |
Matt Tait is a cybersecurity fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He used to work for the British intelligence agency GCHQ.[1]
Background
Matt Tait grew up in the English city of Chester. After graduating in 2008 from Imperial College London, where he studied computer science and maths, Tait joined the UK’s top digital intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He worked in the Computer Network Exploitation division, which was tasked with hacking operations.
Consultant
Matt Tait spent four years at GCHQ before moving to the private sector, where he worked at Google Project Zero and as a consultant for companies such as Amazon and Microsoft. In 2013, Tait started a Twitter account (@pwnallthethings) to counter false information during the fierce online privacy debate sparked by the leak of top secret documents stolen from the National Security Agency by former contractor Edward Snowden. When Tait first opened the account, he shared quirky Freedom of Information Act requests, such as Central Intelligence Agency cafeteria complaints, and he combed through the many emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal server, offering his followers glimpses into how she ran the US State Department.
In the spring of 2016, Tait started contributing to Lawfare, an online national security publication founded by Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution and law professors Jack Goldsmith of Harvard and Robert Chesney of the University of Texas at Austin. As a contributing editor, Tait often writes about the intersection of technology and law enforcement, the DNC hack, and election interference.
In June 2017, he published a bombshell account, “The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians,” detailing his interactions with Republican activist Peter Smith, who wanted Tait to verify allegedly deleted emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal server that he had learned about on “the Dark Web.” Tait believed that Smith, who touted his relationship with former national security advisor Michael Flynn, was coordinating with the Trump campaign. “In my conversations with Smith and his colleague, I tried to stress this point: If this dark web contact is a front for the Russian government, you really don’t want to play this game,” wrote Tait. “But they were not discouraged.”
Tait’s story sparked intense media attention. “My inbox basically blew up,” he says, and he was invited to appear on nearly every cable news show (requests that he declined). “People tried to meet with my accountant. People tried to contact my family,” Tait tells me. Several reporters even showed up at his house in London.
Tait’s account also caught the attention of Robert Mueller. According to Business Insider, Mueller’s team interviewed Tait during the fall of 2017 about his dealings with Smith, and records show he answered questions from the House Intelligence Committee in October.
Professor Tait
Today, Matt Tait is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Strauss Center for International Security and Law, where he teaches a graduate course, “Cybersecurity Foundations: Introduction to the Relevant Technology for Law and Policy.” Robert Chesney, Director of the Strauss Center, discovered Tait the same way everyone else did: online. “He was becoming somebody you would see as a commentator. It was clear he has a good grasp not just on the technology but on the relevant legal and policy aspects.” He thought Tait would be a natural teacher, and invited him to join the faculty in 2016.
Asked whether Tait’s students were aware of their professor’s Twitter fame and involvement in the Russia investigation, Chesney laughs: “A few knew, and some others figured it out along the way, but not everyone really did,” he says. “A few were keenly aware what a unique opportunity it is. But especially since he’s not Professor Pwn All the Things, he’s just plain ol’ Professor Tait, it’s easy to miss.”[2]
