Speaker and Topic: Jason Schuette on "Cybercriminal Exploitation in the COVID-19 Environment"

Mr. Jason Schuette
Founder, Spectrum Advocates, LLC

“Cybercriminals are developing and boosting their attacks at an alarming pace, exploiting the fear and uncertainty caused by the unstable social and economic situation created by COVID-19.”
Description: Jürgen Stock, INTERPOL Secretary General. A consequence of the Cyber Age, both the positive and negative, is the unfettered and unfiltered access to information. However, this is complicated by our growing sterilized virtual interpersonal existence. Consequently, each and every person, aka Cyber Persona, is often left without the normal support structure to better wade through the volume and veracity of this uncertainty. How can leaders in the 21st Century take the initiative and help others by creating an environment that reduces fear and thus vulnerability during times of worldwide or even localized uncertainty.

Jason Schuette, LtCol USMC (ret), enlisted in the Navy in 1986 where he was an undesignated Seaman and after bootcamp worked in the Boatswain’s Division onboard the USS Peoria until Jul 1987. With a previous nomination, during that assignment he received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport Rhode Island and eventually went on to attend and graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1992 with a B.S. in Computer Science. He also holds a Master of Science Degree in Organizational Behavior from Benedictine University.

Accepting his commission as a 2ndLt in the U.S. Marine Corps, Jason attended The Basic School (TBS) in Quantico during the remainder of 1992. He then entered flight training and eventually completed training in 1995 and qualified in the EA-6B in 1997. With over 2,000 hours in the EA-6B, Jason was designated a Weapons Training Instructor and flew in both Operations Allied Force and Iraqi Freedom as well as deployments and exercises in the Pacific theater. His one non-flying operational billet, from 2005 – 2006, was with the 22^nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) augmenting the Air Officer and serving as their Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO). 

When not in operational billets flying the EA-6B, Jason’s career focused more on research and development (R&D) as well as acquisitions of new EW, aka electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO), technologies. From 2002 – 2005 he was assigned to VX-9 and served as the Operational Test Director for the Improved Capabilities (ICAP) III, receiver upgrade for the EA-6B, and participated in the early development efforts for the EA-18G. Leveraging his systems R&D and testing experience, his final assignments from 2009 to 2014 were centered in the National Capitol Region first as a Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) EW requirements officer assigned to the Operations Navy (OPNAV) staff in the N88 Strike Aviation Division Directorate, and finally as the as the EW Branch Head within the Combat Development & Integration Command, Cyber & Electronic Warfare Integration Division. During those five years he participated and/or led numerous requirements documents efforts as well as diverse and innovative Service and Joint level integrated product teams (IPT). Those IPT conducted a wide range of budget, technical and operational analysis focused on efforts to implement organizational wide transformation of EMS, Cyberspace, and Information Operations related capabilities. The end state was the achievement of a vision to create distributed and networked technology solutions responsive to emerging MAGTF and Joint Service needs.

Upon retirement in 2014, Jason formed Spectrum Advocates, LLC.  Leveraging past experience, he supports R&D efforts and organizations focused on creating innovative EMSO, Cyberspace, and Information Operations technologies. Currently he is fulfilling the role of Science Engineering Technical Assistant (SETA) for various program managers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where amongst other tasks he works directly with DoD operators on how to best integrate and transition technologies for operational use. Past research support includes the Advanced Radio Frequency Mapping program known as RadioMap. Current research projects include technologies to improve security and networking features on handheld devices, universal network control that autonomously considers intent, tactical EMSO, and adoption/modification of 5G networking technologies for military use.