Given the current global security environment, there has been increased interest within the security and defense communities in novel techniques for solving challenging problems. The genesis of this interest lies in the fact that repeated attempts of using traditional techniques have left many important problems unsolved, and in some cases, not addressed. New problems have emerged within the broad areas of security and defense that are difficult to tackle with conventional methods, thus requiring new techniques for detecting and adapting to emerging threats. The purpose of the symposium is to present current and ongoing efforts in computational intelligence (e.g., neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, swarm intelligence, and other emerging learning or optimization techniques) as applied to security and defense problems.