General Paul M. Nakasone
Director, National Security Agency, Commander Cyber Command
Paul Miki Nakasone was born in November 1963 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended St. John’s University where he received his commission after graduation through an ROTC program. He has also attended the University of Southern California, the National Defense Intelligence College, and the U.S. Army War College, holding master’s degrees from each. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Nakasone has held commands at the company, battalion, and brigade levels. He held foreign postings in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Korea, and has served as a senior intelligence officer on many levels. He served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff as Deputy Director for Trans-Regional Policy.
He is currently the Director of the National Security Agency and is chief of the Central Security Service. He commands the United States Army Cyber Command.
Nakasone is married and has four children.
In the News…
Following years of planning and apprehension, polls closed on Election Day 2020 without any evidence of cyber manipulation by foreign governments or criminals.
General Paul Nakasone, who heads both the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command, suggested that secret operations thwarted the efforts of foreign governments to interfere.
“I’m confident that the actions we’ve taken against adversaries over the past several weeks and months have ensured they’re not going to interfere in our elections,” he said, referring to cyber strikes carried out under his command against the computer infrastructure associated with Russian and Iranian government hackers.
He said the NSA had been watching for a while and was not caught off guard. “We had a very, very good bead on what a number of actors were trying to do,” he said. “We provided early warning and followed [them very closely]. We weren’t’ surprised by their actions.”
