Bio

I'm a foreign correspondent, author, and technologist who writes about the ways that technology is upending lives, communities, governments and businesses worldwide. My work takes me to the world’s most authoritarian and far-off places, from inside North Korea to the trans-Siberian railway across Russia, from investigations into genocide in Cambodia to experiments in technological surveillance in China. My first book, Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech, was published by Crown in March 2020, and was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, and named a Cult of Mac best tech book of 2020. My second book, The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future, was published by PublicAffairs in June 2021. I was a correspondent at The Economist, and remain a writer and commentator in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Foreign Policy, and The New Republic. I'm also a regular guest on CNN, MSNBC, BBC and Bloomberg. From 2020 to 2021, I was a technology policy advisor to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. As a consultant, I've advised the World Health Organization, Open Government Partnership, the United Nations humanitarian affairs office, and large hedge funds on technology and media. I hold degrees from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and The George Washington University, which I attended on a music scholarship. I'm a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.