David E. Sanger

AGS will welcome American journalist David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent on the White House and National Security for The New York Times, for a fireside chat, New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Defend the West. The event will take place on Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 5:30 PM in the Rhodes Conference Room, Sanford School 223.

Please use the following link to register for the event.

If would like the opportunity to join Mr. Sanger for our “invitation-only” dinner, please use the following link.

Sanger Bio:

Along with his team of White House correspondents, he covers President Trump, his administration and the foreign policy, intelligence and military advisers who shape the nation’s national security policy. White House reporters spend their days (and nights and weekends, alas) interviewing members of the president’s staff or other national security officials, attending speeches and conferences, and talking with critics of the president’s policies. They often travel with the President around the world, sometimes on Air Force One, which looks more luxurious in the movies than it is in reality.

Because he focuses on foreign policy and national security issues, he often ranges beyond the White House, interviewing foreign leaders, members of Congress, and academics. Mr. Sanger often writes analytical articles that explain the underlying factors that led to a major decision, or place a major event in a historical frame that gives readers some context of how hard choices are made.

His Background

He has worked at The Times for more than four decades, starting two months after he graduated from college. That makes him — for better or worse — one of the longest-serving correspondents, dating back to when the printed paper was our only product. Sanger served as a business correspondent covering the early days of Silicon Valley, and worked on the team that won a Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for uncovering the causes of the space shuttle Challenger disaster. He was a foreign correspondent and bureau chief in Japan for six years. In Washington, he has covered five presidents, from Clinton to Biden, and served on teams that won two other Pulitzers, most recently for uncovering Russia’s role in the 2016 election.

David Sanger has written four books on American national security, most recently “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Save the West,’’ a Times best seller on the re-emergence of superpower conflict which was published in April, 2024. Before that he wrote “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age,’’ which later became an HBO documentary by the same title. A second documentary, “Year One,’’ also on HBO, describes the tumultuous first year of the Biden presidency. He’s also the author of “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power,” and “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power.”

Each fall he also co-teaches a course at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government titled “Central Challenges in American National Security, Strategy and the Press.” When traveling, you often can find a small fly rod packed away amid his computer gear.

He graduated from Harvard College in 1982, and I grew up in White Plains, N.Y. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Sherill. (The New York Times)