Michael Varga

Michael Varga is a pioneering figure in cognitive security and the architect of CATDAMS®, a first-in-class cognitive threat detection platform. With three decades of experience across behavioral science, threat management, counterintelligence, and law enforcement, his career has centered on understanding human frailty and the exploitation of human cognition. Mr. Varga began his work in behavioral threat assessment at Gavin de Becker and Associates, the internationally recognized firm specializing in the prediction and prevention of violence, where he conducted risk assessments for high-profile clients. He later served as a Counterintelligence Special Agent in the United States Army, deploying to the Balkans in operations targeting suspected war criminals and extremist organizations. He went on to spend more than two decades in law enforcement in San Diego County, where he investigated violent crime, supervised intelligence and counterterrorism functions, served as a SWAT Team Leader, and operated as an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Officer. He later served as the Eastern Region Insider Threat Chief for the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, leading insider risk and violence prevention efforts across the DoD enterprise and the defense industrial base, and currently serves as a Law Enforcement Specialist in the Counterterrorism Division at DHS’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. Mr. Varga conducted graduate research at the National Intelligence University in Information and Influence Intelligence, with a focus on the intersection of cognitive exploitation, emerging technology, and human vulnerability. This academic foundation, combined with decades of operational experience, informs the theoretical frameworks underpinning his approach to cognitive security. As artificial intelligence advanced, he recognized that the psychological tactics he had spent his career countering were no longer limited to human actors. AI systems were beginning to automate and scale influence, elicitation, and social engineering in ways traditional security frameworks were never designed to detect. His research revealed a critical gap: no security architecture protected people from grooming, psychological exploitation, or cognitive manipulation conducted by artificial intelligence. This realization led him to establish Risk Analytics International and develop CATDAMS®, a cognitive security platform engineered to detect and counter harmful AI behavior at the point of human-AI interaction by integrating behavioral science, adversarial AI analysis, and real-time threat detection. Mr. Varga has authored multiple white papers, including the ‘Influence-to-Impact Pathway’ behavioral escalation framework, the research paper “Weaponizing AI Companions: The Emerging Threat to National Security,” a unified manipulation primitives taxonomy, and one of the first taxonomies addressing safety risks in physically embodied AI systems.