Hi forecasters!

My name is Mary Brooks and I’m a community shaper for the White Hat Cyber Forecasting Tournament. This means that I am working with the Metaculus team to develop and launch new questions and respond to comments.

I’m currently a fellow for the Cybersecurity and Emerging Threats team at the R Street Institute, a Washington D.C.-based public policy research organization that focuses on free markets and limited, effective government. Together with my co-lead Paul Rosenzweig, I joined the world of crowd-forecasting because of my interest in making sure that cybersecurity decision-makers—particularly policymakers—are making informed, data-driven choices that build on proven successes when passing laws, allocating resources and shaping the overall security landscape.

By asking you to forecast both routine and high-impact cybersecurity events in the White Hat tournament, we are working to apply novel tools to existing cybersecurity problems. And by asking a variety of questions across different cybersecurity-related subject areas, we hope to better understand ongoing and future security trends, gain a sense of which types of cybersecurity questions are best-suited to a forecasting platform, and learn what questions are most action-oriented—that is, which forecasts generate actionable insights for decision-makers. 

We are eager to see what forecasts the community provides!
I’m here to answer any questions you may have about this tournament or specific forecasts. I would also love to discuss any additional potential topic areas or individual questions that you think should be offered up to the community for forecasting! You can email me at mbrooks@rstreet.org.

Happy forecasting!

Mary