Denise M Ziobro, Head of Intelligence

I’m excited to join Smack Technologies as Head of Intelligence.  

For nearly 20 years, I’ve worked as a national security professional on some of the hardest challenges facing the United States. I’ve had the privilege of serving my country as an Intelligence Analyst at the FBI, a Chief of Targeting and Deputy Chief of Operations within the Intelligence Community, and a Director on the National Security Council staff under two administrations. My work has concentrated on keeping Americans and our allies safe: leading interagency efforts, strengthening cooperation between countries, shaping policy that disrupts terrorist and hybrid threat networks and deters adversaries, and helping bring hostages home.

Throughout my journey, I also worked closely with scientific experts to develop and improve technology for national security missions and helped introduce and integrate AI and advanced analytics into intelligence and policy work. 

I’ve partnered with military, intelligence, and law enforcement counterparts on six continents to counter threats from terrorists, adversaries, and emerging technologies. Each organization sees problems from its own vantage point, and uniting those perspectives into a single approach is often the toughest part of the mission. That experience taught me that solutions to the most difficult intelligence problems rarely fit inside one organization or discipline. Ultimately, intelligence and national security operations come down to judgment: making calls with incomplete information, identifying and accepting risk, and clearly stating what you know, what you don’t, and how confident you are in each. 

I bring the same focus on judgment to my classroom as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where I’m training the next generation of security professionals to think about their thinking: to question their assumptions and biases and sharpen their judgments. 

My current research examines how AI can strengthen domain awareness and maritime operations in the Arctic and Antarctic, and when AI assistance improves human judgment and when it makes it worse. That distinction matters because AI raises the stakes. Too many systems churn out summaries without context, or answers that sound authoritative but can’t tell a commander what they don’t know or how confident they are. In intelligence, an assessment without a confidence level is incomplete and potentially dangerous, and AI-enabled decision support should be held to the same standard. 

And time matters. Our adversaries will not wait for us to figure out the opportunities and risks presented by AI. The defining national security challenge of this generation is moving fast enough to stay ahead and ensuring AI is developed and used responsibly. That means harnessing this technology to create a decisive operational advantage for the United States and its allies, while maintaining the guardrails and accountability the mission demands. 

That combination of rigor and urgency is exactly what stood out to me about Smack. The company is building AI to deliver Decision Dominance, and it grounds those systems in first order principles, evidence, doctrine, and most importantly, the judgment of people who have made high-stakes decisions under pressure. Smack pairs former military and special operations commanders with researchers and engineers from leading companies and institutions, people who have done the work and understand where the technology will be used. 

As Head of Intelligence, I’m building a true all-source intelligence capability, one that brings analytic rigor to the threats we track and the environments our customers operate in. That knowledge will directly shape what we build. 

At Smack, intelligence will not be treated as a single lane. I’m working cross-functionally with growth, product, tech, security, and mission operations to bring an intelligence lens to every problem we’re solving. AI will fundamentally change how the United States makes national security decisions, and I’m proud to help make sure that change becomes America’s advantage.