{"id":258846,"date":"2026-05-29T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/29\/governing-luminaries-the-global-cyber-war-hits-home\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T12:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T16:20:10","slug":"governing-luminaries-the-global-cyber-war-hits-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/29\/governing-luminaries-the-global-cyber-war-hits-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Governing Luminaries: The Global Cyber War Hits Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Governing Luminaries: The Global Cyber War Hits Home<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.governing.com\/magazine\/governing-luminaries-the-global-cyber-war-hits-home<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-29 12:10:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.governing.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: This article appears in Governing’s\u00a0Q2 2026 Magazine. You can subscribe\u00a0here.<\/p>\n

Nicole Perlroth spent more than a decade covering cybersecurity for The New York Times, reporting on everything from state and local ransomware attacks to global cyber warfare.<\/p>\n

In 2021, she turned her experiences into a best-selling book, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, which documents the international digital arms race and details an unregulated gray market where private hackers develop and sell dangerous cyber weapons to the highest bidder. Perlroth\u2019s popular 2025 podcast series, To Catch a Thief, investigated the evolution of China\u2019s state-sponsored hackers.<\/p>\n


Today, she advises multiple cybersecurity companies and regularly keynotes on cybersecurity topics. She is also the founding partner of Silver Buckshot Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage cybersecurity startups.<\/p>\n

Perlroth spoke with Governing about how cybersecurity threats are evolving \u2014 especially with the emergence of powerful AI software \u2014 and why state and local governments are a prime target for a growing class of uniquely dangerous threats from hostile foreign governments.<\/p>\n

You spent years reporting on cyber warfare and vulnerabilities. What should state and local government officials be concerned about?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start by saying the threat landscape has never moved so quickly. A few years ago, I would have talked about ransomware. Cities and counties were being held hostage with ransomware attacks.<\/p>\n

Now, the bigger threat is that there are actors \u2014 predominantly China \u2014 probing state and local computer systems and critical infrastructure like water systems, ports, railways and vendors that supply all those entities. They\u2019re getting inside those systems and then lying in wait. They\u2019re not dropping malware. They\u2019re not siphoning off personal data.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re doing that because if…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Governing Luminaries: The Global Cyber War Hits Home https:\/\/www.governing.com\/magazine\/governing-luminaries-the-global-cyber-war-hits-home Publish Date: 2026-05-29 12:10:00 Source Domain:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":258847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/erepublic.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/4b7aff1\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/840x408+0+0\/resize\/1440x700!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ferepublic-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F47%2Fc2%2F2377463148e1b56fae4e6a093e23%2Fgovq2web-art-luminary.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[20,32],"class_list":["post-258846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-malware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258848,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258846\/revisions\/258848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}