Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity
Nicole Perlroth a cybersecurity investigator, bestselling author, and digital whistle-blower revealing the hidden cyber-weapons market and reshaping how we defend the digital frontier.
- Highlights:
- Lead cybersecurity reporter at The New York Times for over a decade
- Author of the NYT bestseller This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
- Winner of the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
- Inducted into the Cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame
- Served on U.S. government cyber advisory panels, including for CISA / DHS
- Formats:
Keynote (45–60 min); fireside chats; panel moderator; deep dive workshop
- Audiences:
CIOs / CISOs, government security officials, technology executives, cybersecurity professionals, investors
- Outcomes:
- Reveal how the hidden market in zero-days and surveillance tools governs global power dynamics.
- Translate complex cyber threats into strategic imperatives for leadership.
- Provide a roadmap for investment, policy, and defense in an AI-amplified cyber era.
- Travels from: San Francisco, CA
- **Fee range: $20,001 - $35,000
Keynote Topics
Talent Short Bio
Nicole Perlroth spent more than a decade as the lead cybersecurity reporter at The New York Times, uncovering state-sponsored espionage, zero-day exploits, and the shadowy global arms trade in code. Her investigations contributed to U.S. hacking indictments, the exposure and blacklisting of spyware firms, and deep public understanding of digital vulnerability. Her New York Times bestseller This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race won the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year and was inducted into the Cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame.
In 2021, Nicole left journalism to help shape the policy and investment side of cybersecurity. She serves on advisory committees for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security / CISA, is a venture partner at Ballistic Ventures, and runs Silver Buckshot Ventures, a “cyber moonshot” fund targeting the next generation of cyber defense technologies. She also hosts the podcast To Catch a Thief, which examines China’s rise to cyber dominance and has achieved top rankings on major platforms.
Nicole holds a B.A. from Princeton University and an M.A. from Stanford University and frequently lectures at Stanford GSB and leading universities.
Read Full Bio
Nicole Perlroth spent a decade as the lead cybersecurity, digital espionage and sabotage reporter for The New York Times. Her investigations rooted out Russian hacks of nuclear plants, airports, elections, and petrochemical plants; North Korea’s cyberattack against movie studios, banks and hospitals; Iranian attacks on oil companies, banks, critical infrastructure, and presidential campaigns; and thousands of Chinese cyberattacks against America’s critical infrastructure and businesses, including a months-long hack of The Times.
Nicole Perlroth investigation and ensuing outing of hacking divisions within China’s People’s Liberation Army helped compel the first United States hacking charges against members of the Chinese military, and earned her the prestigious “Best in Business Award” from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Her investigation, with Azam Ahmed, of the use of commercial spyware in Mexico was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends,” about the global cyber arms race, which won the 2021 McKinsey and Financial Times’ Business Book of the Year Award and has been translated into nine languages. The book and several of her Times articles have been optioned for television.
Nicole Perlroth has been widely cited and published, beyond The Times, in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Economist, Wired Magazine, Forbes Magazine, CNN, PBS, NPR, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Christian Science Monitor, C-SPAN, NBC’s “Meet The Press,” MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “Dan Rather’s America,” Axios, CBS, CNBC, USA Today, Recorded Futures, and Lawfare, The Times’ “The Daily” and “Sway” podcasts, as well as VOX’s “Pivot” podcast, among others.
Nicole Perlroth has delivered keynotes and speeches for TED, the United States State Department, the World Bank, the Munich Security Conference, RSA, Council on Foreign Relations, the World Affairs Council, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Club, the Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, How To Academy, In-Q-Tel, Track ii Diplomacy, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation Defense Policy Advisors, Hack the Capitol, the Center for European Policy Analysis and the CIOSExchange, an invite-only gathering of Fortune 50 Chief Information Officers.
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Talent Videos
Panel with Top China & Cyber Experts at NYSE - To Catch a Thief: China's Rise to Cyber Supremacy
At the New York Stock Exchange, Nicole Perlroth joins leading China and cybersecurity experts to discuss the global implications of China’s rapid ascent to cyber dominance.
Read Summary & Key Moments
Summary
For this special live recording of To Catch a Thief at The New York Stock Exchange, host and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth sits down with those who have been directly targeted by, traced, or directly engaged China’s state-sponsored hackers, diplomatically, or in the cyber domain: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Barboza, the National Security Agency’s former Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, Jim Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha.
They discuss how the Chinese hacking threat has morphed from corporate espionage to insidious attacks on infrastructure, the strategic leverage China hopes to gain with these hacks, how Xi Jinping views Trump 2.0, and what levers the United States can still pull to salvage what’s left of its cyber defense.
Key Moments
- 00:21–00:40 — Nicole Perlroth on China’s rise as a cyber superpower
- 00:41–00:55 — Expert commentary on state-level hacking and economic espionage
- 00:56–01:08 — Closing remarks on collaboration and defense innovation
The Future of the Cyberweapons Arms Race — with Nicole Perlroth (2h38)
Nicole Perlroth joins cybersecurity, intelligence, and policy leaders for an in-depth discussion on the next phase of the cyberweapons arms race and its global consequences.
Read Summary & Key Moments
Summary
In this extensive session, Nicole Perlroth leads a comprehensive exploration of the global cyberweapons arms race tracing its origins, escalation, and potential endpoints. She opens with a historical overview of how software vulnerabilities, once minor coding flaws, became weaponized by nation-states. Drawing from her New York Times investigations and her bestselling book, she illustrates how markets for zero-day exploits and commercial spyware have evolved into a multi-billion-dollar, unregulated ecosystem.
Perlroth discusses the strategic calculus of cyber offense versus defense, explaining how digital espionage now underpins geopolitical power. The panel delves into case studies from the Stuxnet attack to modern-day ransomware campaigns and Chinese and Russian state-sponsored intrusions. She also emphasizes the ethical dilemma: as governments and private actors stockpile vulnerabilities, the world becomes more exposed to collateral damage.
Later, the discussion turns to emerging technologies AI-driven cyber offense, quantum computing, and supply-chain infiltration and how they redefine both national and corporate security. Nicole advocates for transparency, global cyber norms, and increased collaboration between governments and private industry.
Closing the conversation, she warns that the next cyber war may not begin with soldiers or bombs but with lines of code that silently disable economies and infrastructures and argues that awareness, investment, and collective governance are the only paths to deterrence.
Key Moments
- 05:21–18:45 — The rise of zero-day markets and early state hacking operations
- 18:46–36:00 — Case studies: Stuxnet, WannaCry, SolarWinds, and Pegasus
- 36:01–54:30 — Inside the cyberweapons economy: brokers, mercenaries, and regulation gaps
- 54:31–1:17:00 — The policy dilemma: offense vs. defense in cyberspace
- 1:17:01–1:35:45 — Emerging threats: AI-driven attacks, data poisoning, and supply chain hacks
- 1:35:46–1:56:30 — Cybersecurity innovation and the role of private sector defense
- 1:56:31–2:20:00 — International cooperation, governance, and the ethics of stockpiling exploits
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