Interview with Evanna Hu, CEO of Omelas and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council

July 13, 2021

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Today I am joined by Evanna Hu is the CEO of Omelas and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Omelas, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning company working on mapping the online information environment.

Evanna is a subject matter expert in messaging and propaganda of countering violent extremism (CVE) and counterterrorism (CT) in both Salafi-jihadism and neo-Nazism and has worked at the intersection of governance, security, and technology in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, including extensive time in Kenya, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Tunisia, and Afghanistan. Prior to Omelas, she successfully founded two technology ventures, one based in Nairobi, Kenya and another in Amman, Jordan. To date, she has briefed six national heads of intelligence and has advised twelve cabinet or ministerial members on technology and security. At the Atlantic Council, she specializes in emerging technologies for NATO and member countries with a focus on AI and 5G. She was previously an international security fellow at New America, where she wrote extensively on CVE and CT issues, and a technology fellow at Quilliam, the oldest think tank founded by reformed former Hizb-ut-Harir members.

A graduate of the University of Chicago, Hu sits on the following boards of nonprofits: Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, which promotes a culture of innovation in the national security community; Re:Coded, an Erbil-based nonprofit that gives livelihoods to refugees by teaching them how to code through a comprehensive training program in Iraq and Turkey; Promote Leadership, founded by active officers and veterans to foster inclusive leadership within the US Special Operations Forces community; and Zaka Khan Foundation, which does reconstruction work in post-Islamic State towns in the Nineveh Plains, Iraq. She has won numerous high-level accolades and recognition for her work.