Woodward Talks About Biometrics in Defense to Harvard University’s STS Circle
On April 13, 2026, Professor John D. Woodward Jr. delivered a keynote presentation: Biometrics in the U.S. Department of Defense: From an Abstract Idea to Identity Intelligence to the members of Harvard University’s Science, Technology, & Society (STS) Circle. The event was hosted by Professor Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Woodward drew from his experiences as the director of the Department of Defense (DoD) Biometrics from 2003 to 2005. He explained how the terrorist attacks of September 11 and subsequent armed conflicts greatly incentivized the DoD to leverage biometrics, or the automated use of physical characteristics and physiological traits for purposes of human recognition, to help identify national security threats.
During the presentation, Woodward detailed the history of DoD biometrics that was conceived as an abstract idea in the late 1990s. It then went on to gain robust wartime implementation in 2003 with the development of DoD’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) and the collection of hundreds of thousands of fingerprints. From this global deployment, DoD intelligence policymakers formally recognized biometrics as a formal intelligence collection modality by 2013, with Identity Intelligence (IDINT) enshrined in official doctrine.
John D. Woodward, Jr. is the Professor of the Practice of International Relations at Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. A former CIA officer, he has served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology. Woodward, Jr. is a published author and has contributed to prominent news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe.