About Jonathan Looi
I am on a mission to solve the most impactful problems at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI, and national security.
Professional Notes
Currently, I am a Technology Architect at In-Q-Tel, the venture capital firm for the U.S. national security community. “Technology Architect” is a nebulous job title (formerly known as Member of the Technical Staff), but I like to describe it as 50% investor, 50% design partner. I am part of the deal team that identifies, evaluates, and invests in startups. Much of my time is spent vetting the technology of our potential investments by conducting technical deep dives, asking questions about technical approaches and getting my hands dirty using the products myself. Post deal, I work with founders to ensure their technology can be applied to the most critical missions to protect our nation and our allies.
Prior to In-Q-Tel, I briefly ran a (failed) startup in the agent identification and bot detection space as co-founder and CEO. I was a Founder-in-Residence with Entrepreneurs First in London in Spring 2025. I shut the company down prior to raising. I could write tens of thousands of words about lessons learned, but I’ll leave that for another time.
Before that, I was a Security Engineer at Google, working in cyber threat intelligence within Google Cloud Product Security Engineering. My work focused on building scalable solutions to detect, track, stop, and deter threat actors. I got to speak at a few conferences and publish some cool research.
Prior to Google, I was the Principal Investigator of an applied computer security research project at The MITRE Corporation. I had the privilege of taking the project from an idea to a TRL 7-8 product used in government. At MITRE, I was also a software engineer, building security tooling and data engineering solutions. My first job in cybersecurity was in the Federal Reserve’s security operations center on the digital forensics and incident response team. In all of my past roles, I’ve been extremely privileged to have had amazing colleagues and mentors who were generous, patient, and intentional in showing me the ropes.
Personal Notes
Interested in boats and most nautical things.
Homeschooled.
Spent an extremely formative 2 years in my teens in South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Ran a business reviewing luggage.
I’ve have an on-and-off relationship with running. I ran a 50k with friends a few years ago, ran the NYC Marathon, and several halves I can’t keep track of. Currently ramping back up.
Clean up trash at UCC.
Enjoy dinner parties and hot takes. I want to hear you defend your craziest, most contrarian opinions.
Reading - history and biographies primarily.
Based in Washington, D.C.
About this blog
This blog is a space for me to explore ideas and publish personal research. I am particularly interested in exploring the application of AI to cybersecurity problems and the creation of reliable cyber evals.
The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of my employers, past or present.
Connecting
I am always excited to connect with people who are passionate about their craft – regardless of what it is. I love meeting people who have a vision for how they want to change the world and the drive to see it to fruition. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I don’t have any other social media.
