The Ring's goals are not known, but they're clearly in conflict with the legitimate American intelligence community due their attempts to manipulate politics in several countries to accomplish its ends.
Bryce Larkin was familiar with their existence, and Daniel Shaw has been tracking them for at least five years by the time he takes over command of Team Bartowski.
[2] In "Chuck Versus Operation Awesome" he reveals that the Ring is primarily cell-based and consists of a large number of small and decentralized groups.
Ring cells operate with a high degree of autonomy, and an agent who misidentified Devon as a spy would not have reported to her superiors until it was confirmed they had him "turned."
The Director was first mentioned by his subordinates in "Chuck Versus the American Hero," when he sent them to apprehend Shaw and bring him in, but this plan was inadvertently thwarted by Morgan, Casey and Devon.
Believing he had an opportunity to take out the Director and a substantial part of the Ring's senior leadership, Shaw contacted him and agreed to come in as a Trojan Horse, intending to use himself as a walking targeting beacon for an air strike.
The Director confronted Shaw in an underground facility, where he played him a surveillance video recovered from the corpse of CIA turncoat and Ring informant Hunter Perry to "educate him" about his slain wife, Evelyn.
[5] Few other details of the character, or the nature of his position within the Ring, have been revealed however in his IF Magazine interview, Sheppard identifies the Director with Blofeld and notes that he will figure heavily into Casey's story arc.
In "Chuck Versus the Other Guy," he conspires to gain access to the technical data on the Intersect to complete the Ring's system by taking advantage of Shaw's single-minded desire to avenge his wife's death, and orchestrates a complex series of operations to achieve these objectives.
In "Chuck Versus the Mask" it is revealed that this panel is actually senior leadership of the Ring, when Vassily reports Daniel Shaw's involvement in the interception of a chemical weapon.
They hired arms dealer Karl Stromberg to obtain and move an intelligence safe for them, and also attempted to assassinate Premier Allejandro Goya to prevent him from opening his country to democratic elections.
They stole burned-out components of Intersect 2.0 from a government holding facility after Chuck destroyed it, and hired a computer expert to attempt reconstruction of the device.
"Chuck Versus the Other Guy" revealed that the Ring had succeeded in producing their own prototype of the Cipher, the central component of the Intersect, although Shaw noted significant flaws in the device.
Shaw later provided the Ring detailed technical information so they could refine their prototype, however this was intercepted by Casey, and it is unknown how much data they managed to recover.
In "Chuck Versus the Role Models" the organization resurfaced again when one of their operatives poisoned Devon in such a way as to mimic the symptoms of malaria in order to remove him and Ellie from Africa.
Although the exact and final goals of the Ring were never clearly defined, in "Chuck Versus the Subway" and "Chuck Versus the Ring: Part II" they attempted to seize control of the CIA and NSA during a coup, first by discrediting Team Bartowski and General Beckman, then by using Shaw to arrange the replacement of multiple senior members of both organizations with the Elders.
Chuck's flash on Artman indicates that he was born in Connecticut, his specialty is chemical engineering, and he was involved in the highly publicized poisoning of ex-KGB colonel and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London.
Ty Bennett (Carl Lumbly), born April 11, 1963, at Camp Foster Marine Base, is a karate and Kung Fu expert who was previously a combat trainer with the NSA, serving as the sensei for John Casey.
[10][11] "Chuck Versus the Tic Tac" later reveals that Bennett was not working independently after all, but had in fact been turned to the Ring by Col. James Keller.
Julius Burrow (Bob McCracken) was the Ring operative in charge of handling Manoosh Depak while the engineer was working on rebuilding the Intersect.
When Manoosh attempted to cheat the Ring, he tracked him to Weap-Con in Dubai and demanded he turn over the prototype after capturing him and Team Bartowski.
Del (Diedrich Bader) and Neil (Cedric Yarbrough) were two Ring operatives who infiltrated the Buy More in an effort to locate and destroy Castle, acting on the Council's intelligence that identified the store as a CIA substation.
Col. James Keller (Robert Patrick) was a former US military black ops officer who recruited John Casey—then known as Alex Coburn—into the NSA in 1989 while operating in Honduras.
He contacted Casey following a failed attempt by the Ring to seize Castle and blackmailed him into stealing a top-secret government emotion-suppressing and performance-enhancing drug called Laudanol.
He escapes after fabricating a weapon from a newspaper innocently given to him by one of the guards and reveals that he was contracted by Volkoff to kill Heather Chandler, who was being transferred with him, in retaliation for her failed attempt to acquire her husband's plans for the modified F-22 Raptor.
He was able to successfully hack into Castle's computer systems both to prevent Casey from gaining access to the facility, and to override the door security in the holding cells in an attempt to kill Heather.
First seen in: Chuck Versus First Class Sydney Prince (Angie Harmon) was a Ring operative who headed a cell in Los Angeles.
He learned in "Chuck Versus the American Hero" his wife was actually killed by Sarah during her red test, and the Director reveals in "Chuck Versus the Other Guy" her death was ordered by Langston Graham after the CIA uncovered information suggesting Evelyn had been turned by the Ring, although the Director never himself states that Eve had turned.
Justin uses Ellie in an attempt to capture Stephen and steal the Governor, which regulates the electrical impulses of an Intersect flash and helps protect the host from harmful side-effects and brain damage.
Nicos Vassilis (Henri Lubatti) was an agent of the Ring charged with smuggling a chemical weapon in via a golden mask of Alexander the Great.