David Sanger

When readers of the New York Times look to understand the swirling dynamics of wars, diplomacy, cyber conflict and geopolitics, they look for the byline of one of the paper's most senior correspondents: David E. Sanger, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and White House and National Security Correspondent. Over a 40-year career at the Times, Sanger has become known for the depth of his sources in the world of national security, his painstaking reporting and research, and his in-depth investigations into the complex events of our time.

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And his reach goes far beyond the Times. He is a CNN contributor on national security and politics. He is the bestselling author of four books — The Inheritance, Confront and Conceal, The Perfect Weapon, and, most recently, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West, which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. Sanger also teaches national security at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where the class he conducts with Graham Allison, "Central Challenges in American National Security, Strategy and the Press,'' is among the most popular at the school.

His book, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age is an incisive look into how a new era of cyber conflict has changed the national security landscape, providing new ways to influence national elections, conduct sabotage, and execute short-of-war operations. The Emmy-nominated HBO documentary of the same name, directed by John Maggio, takes viewers deep into the cyber battles of the current age, interviewing current and former military and intelligence officials, while conducting new, on-the-ground reporting from the front lines of the cyber wars. In 2022, Sanger teamed up with Maggio and HBO again to executive produce Year One, a documentary chronicling President Biden's first year struggling to rebuild American democracy at home and alliances abroad.

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In 2016, Sanger was a key member of the Times team that examined Russia's interference in the presidential election — part of his broader coverage of nation-states' use of cyber power. That investigation was part of a series of stories that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. Several years previously, it was Sanger's investigation that broke the details of the “Olympic Games,’’ the federal government's codename for the secret cyber-attack on Iran's nuclear program mounted by the United States and Israel: one of the defining moments of the early cyber age. The story of how two Presidents guided that attack was part of Sanger's book Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. The book sent shockwaves around the globe and was called an “astonishingly revealing insider’s account” by Foreign Affairs. The docu-thriller, Zero Days, an Alex Gibney film about the secret effort to sabotage Iran's program, tells the story of how Sanger reported on one of the country’s most clandestine operations.

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At the Times, Sanger's previous investigative work led to Pulitzers for the investigation into the causes of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and into Chinese technology investment in the United States. His coverage of the Iraq and Korea crises won the Weintal Prize, one of the highest honors for diplomatic reporting. He also won the White House Correspondents’ Association Aldo Beckman prize for his coverage of the American presidency.