Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world

Past Event
Seminar

This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: A Discussion with the Author, Nicole Perlroth

RSVP Required Open to the Public

Join the Cyber Project in conversation with Nicole Perlroth, author of This is How They Tell Me the World Ends, which is the culmination of years of research and interviews covering the cyber arms race.  On this stop on her virtual book tour, we'll discuss where around the globe her research took  her, the conclusions she developed, and her thoughts for U.S. national cybersecurity policy. 

Disclaimer: While this virtual event is on the record, the event organizers prohibit any attendees, including journalists, from audio/visual recording or distributing parts or all of the event program without prior written authorization.

 

Date: Time: - Location: Online
Nicole Perlroth

About the Author

Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times. She has covered Russian hacks of nuclear plants, airports, and elections, North Korea's cyberattacks against movie studios, banks and hospitals, Iranian attacks on oil companies, banks and the Trump campaign and hundreds of Chinese cyberattacks, including a months-long hack of The Times. Her first book, “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends,” about the global cyber arms race, published February 2021. The book, and several of her Times articles, have been optioned for television.

A Bay Area native, Ms. Perlroth is a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford University.

About the Book

Publisher's Summary

Bloomsbury presents This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth.

Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine).

For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world’s dominant hoarder of zero days. US government agents paid top dollar - first thousands and later millions of dollars - to hackers willing to sell their lock-picking code and their silence.

Then the United States lost control of its hoard and the market.

Now those zero days are in the hands of hostile nations and mercenaries who do not care if your vote goes missing, your clean water is contaminated or our nuclear plants melt down.

Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers and a few unsung heroes, written like a thriller and a reference, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing feat of journalism. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, The New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.