From the publisher
From New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth, THIS IS HOW THEY TELL ME THE WORLD ENDS is the untold, bestselling account of the cyber arms trade-the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth-and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.
Reviews
The New Yorker:
“Perlroth’s storytelling is part John le Carré and more parts Michael Crichton—“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” meets “The Andromeda Strain.” Because she’s writing about a boys’ club, there’s also a lot of “Fight Club” in this book. (“The first rule of the zero-day market was: Nobody talks about the zero-day market. The second rule of the zero-day market was: Nobody talks about the zero-day market.”) And, because she tells the story of the zero-day market through the story of her investigation, it’s got a Frances McDormand “Fargo” quality, too…spellbinding.”
The New York Times:
“Perlroth dives into the shadowy and frightening world of cyberwarfare…a fast-paced account of the U.S. government’s digital vulnerability, how it has been exploited and why the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
Steven Levy, author of HACKERS and FACEBOOK:
“Usually, books like this are praised by saying that they read like a screenplay or a novel. Nicole Perlroth’s is better: her sensitivity to both technical issues and human behavior give this book an authenticity that makes its message–that cybersecurity issues threaten our privacy, our economy, and maybe our lives–even scarier.”
Kara Swisher, Host of the New York Times podcast “Sway”:
“A stemwinder of a tale of how frightening cyber weapons have been turned on their maker. Perlroth takes a complex subject that has been cloaked in techspeak and makes it dead real for the rest of us.”
Author
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. Her investigations, and 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 co-investigation of the use of commercial spyware in Mexico was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
She is 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 was recently shortlisted for 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.
Ms. Perlroth has been widely cited and published, beyond The Times, in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, 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, Lawfare, the Times’ podcast “Sway,” “The Daily,” and VOX’s “Pivot.”
She has delivered keynotes and speeches for the United States State Department, the World Bank, the Munich Security Conference, RSA, the Council on Foreign Relations, World Affairs Council, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Club, 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.
She has lectured at Stanford University, including the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she co-authored a case study on the hack of Home Depot. She has also lectured at Princeton University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard Kennedy School, Hult International Business School, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, the Naval War College, Fordham Law, the University of California, Berkeley, John Hopkins Medical School, Cornell University Medical School and was selected as the inaugural “Journalist in Residence” for the University of Texas Strauss Center’s Journalism and World Affairs program and the Jeanette Pontacq Investigative Journalism Fellow.
Before joining the Times, Ms. Perlroth worked as a deputy editor at Forbes Magazine, an analyst at the Corporate Executive Board, a subsidiary of Gartner, and worked for the late Senator Ted Kennedy. She serves on the board of the Searle Scholars Program, which offers grants to support independent biomedical sciences and chemistry research of exceptional young faculty. Among Searle Scholars was Dr. Jennifer Doudna, of the University of California, Berkeley, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her groundbreaking work developing the CRISPR.
Ms. Perlroth is a graduate of Princeton University (B.A.), Stanford University (M.A.)