Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge in Austin, Texas

This past weekend, 3 Duke Cyber Policy teams flew to Austin, Texas to compete in the Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge, hosted by UT Austin Strauss Center.

In December, we recieved an intelligence packet containing evidence of two seemingly separate cyber incidents, impacting US critical infrastructures. Over the next month or so, my team, Devil’s Data Decryptors, dove into the case and prepared both a 2-page and 1-page brief outlining the situation and our crisis response recommendations for the US government.

On Saturday, we presented our 1-pager to a panel of judges (the “National Security Council”– although one of our judges was actually on the NSC), and defended our choices through rigorous Q&A from cyber and policy experts.

That afternoon, we found out that we had made it to the semi-final round! The next intelligence packet dropped at 8PM that night, however, something more important was at 5:30CST: the Duke-UNC game. All three Duke teams came over to my team’s hotel room and we watched the game over brisket and tacos.

Shortly after 8PM, we tackled the second intelligence packet, reshaping our 1-page brief. At around 4:30AM, we hit the hay for a nap. We woke up 3.5 hours later, and prepared for our semi-final presentation.

The top three teams advance to finals. We were really proud of ourselves for making it to semi-finals, and spent lunchtime chatting with other teams and professionals, catching up on schoolwork, and preparing for our flight back to RDU. Other teams, such as Stanford, spent their spare time prepping for finals and taking notes on other teams’ semifinal presentations. To our surprise, my team advanced to finals with Stanford and the Air Command Staff College, a graduate institution for mid-career military officers.

For finals, each team had 15 minutes to read a third intelligence packet and prepare a presentation. It was probably the fastest 15 minutes I’ve experienced– I was improvising a presentation without a script in front of judges and numerous teams in what felt like just moments after flipping through the new evidence articles.

During this round, nothing was more important than trust in your teammates. When we prepared for round 1 and semi-finals, we had the opportunity to make decisions together. In finals, there is barely enough time to make decisions on your own.

We won first– taking home a monetary prize and Black Hat USA 2025 Briefing Passes. This might be the pinnacle of my sophomore year.

I texted my parents: “We just won oh my god”. My mom texted back: “Really?”

Las Vegas, see you in August! Thank you, Atlantic Council and the Strauss Center, for this incredible opportunity.