Michael Shields is a retired Lt. General from the U.S. Army on 1 September 2018 after 34 years of active duty service. Shields was most recently the Director of the Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Organization (JIDO), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) from July 2015 to July 2018.  During his time at JIDO Shields was instrumental in gaining a rapid understanding of emergent improvised threats and partnering with traditional and non-traditional mission partners to mitigate risk, prevent tactical surprise, and protect our deployed Warfighters as well as coalition partners and host nation forces in places like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and SOCOM globally.