A former U.S. Marine Corps officer whose service in Iraq and Afghanistan was dramatized in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill has been chosen to be the State Department’s first special envoy with responsibility for cyberspace and digital security matters.
President Joseph R. Biden nominated Nathan C. Fick to the post on Friday.
If confirmed, Fick would lead the State Department’s new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. According to a Politico report in April, the new bureau will be formed from three existing teams within the nation’s diplomatic service agency.
The State Department announced on April 4 that “the CDP bureau will address the national security challenges, economic opportunities, and implications for U.S. values associated with cyberspace, digital technologies, and digital policy.”
An executive at the Internet search engine company Elastic, Fick previously was chief executive officer of Endgame, a cyber security firm. He has also been the leader of the Center for New American Security and a venture capitalist.
In 2005 Fick published a bestselling memoir of his military service. The book, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, detailed Fick’s experience as a platoon leader in a Marine Corp’s reconnaissance battalion.
HBO produced a miniseries based on the memoir in 2008.
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