Jim Sciutto

CNN’s Chief National Security Correspondent, Anchor of The Brief, and Bestselling Author

Chief national security correspondent for CNN and anchor of The Brief on CNN International and CNN Max, covering U.S. foreign policy, intelligence, and military affairs.
Author of The Return of Great Powers (NYT bestseller) and The Shadow War, exploring today’s geopolitical shifts and covert warfare by global powers.
Reported from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Arctic alongside U.S. military and officials; led coverage of major events like the Paris attacks and Ukraine elections.
Recipient of the George Polk Award, Overseas Press Club citation, and two Emmys for outstanding Iraq war coverage.
CNN special Targeting Terror: Inside the Intelligence War recognized with a Headliner Award for excellence in investigative journalism.

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Jim Sciutto's 2025 Biography

Jim Sciutto: Global Conflict, National Security, and the Battle for Truth

Jim Sciutto is CNN’s chief national security correspondent and anchor of The Brief with Jim Sciutto, which airs weekdays at 6pm ET on CNN International and CNN Max. Previously, he was co-anchor of CNN Newsroom alongside Poppy Harlow.

He reports and provides analysis across the network’s programs and platforms on all aspects of U.S. national security including foreign policy, the military, intelligence community, and the ongoing Russia investigation. Sciutto also serves as a fill-in anchor for several of the network’s programs.

Sciutto has reported from throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Arctic with the U.S. military and senior U.S. leaders and played a key role in CNN’s overseas coverage of the Charlie Hebdo and Paris terrorist attacks in France and the violent elections in the Ukraine.

Sciutto is the author of a book on the driving forces behind Islamic radicalization, Against Us: The New Face of America’s Enemies in the Muslim World, and a second book on Russian and Chinese efforts to undermine the U.S., entitled The Shadow War. His book, The Return of Great Powers, explores the definitive break between the post–Cold War era and an entirely new and uncertain one based on the insights he gained through multiple assignments in China, Russia, Europe, and Asia.

Sciutto’s one-hour CNN special, Targeting Terror: Inside the Intelligence War, was recognized with a Headliner Award for documentaries and his reporting from inside Iran during the 2009 election protests earned him an Edward R. Murrow award. He was also awarded the George Polk Award and a citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his undercover reporting from Myanmar, where he bucked government restrictions to tell the stories of that country’s repressive regime. Additionally, his reporting for the series Iraq: Where Things Stand was recognized with an Emmy Award for two consecutive years.

Prior to joining CNN, Sciutto served as ABC News’ senior foreign correspondent, based primarily in London and later in Washington. In his role, he reported from more than 50 countries across the globe including dozens of assignments from inside Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.

Prior to ABC News, he served as the Hong Kong-based correspondent for Asia Business News. A graduate from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in Chinese history, Sciutto began his career as the moderator and producer of a weekly public affairs talk show on PBS.

Sciutto has also served as chief of staff and senior advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to China, Gary Locke.

Along with CNN colleagues Jake Tapper, Carl Bernstein and Evan Perez, Sciutto was awarded the White House Correspondence Association’s Merriman Smith Award in the broadcast category for their report on how the intelligence community believed Russia had compromising information on then President-elect Trump.

Jim is married to Gloria Riviera-Sciutto, Washington Correspondent for ABC News.

Jim Sciutto's 2025 Talks & Topics

What Keeps US Spies Up at Night: America’s (and the World’s) Five Biggest National Security Threats

Experienced national security officials warn that they have never seen the range and severity of national security crises they’re witnessing today. The United States and the West face an ever-growing and daunting slate of foreign policy challenges: a nuclear North Korea as well as nuclear advancement in Iran and the Gulf; an increasingly aggressive China and Russia; instability and division in Europe and the need to address global concerns such as climate change, cybersecurity, and the advance of new technologies including artificial intelligence and space weapons.

CNN Chief National Security Correspondent and Anchor Jim Sciutto gives a global overview of risks and opportunities to be on the lookout for in the upcoming year. This tour around the world is very effective for business audiences investing worldwide. As a foreign correspondent based in Europe, the Middle East and Asia for more than two decades, the former chief of staff to the U.S. Ambassador to China, and now covering national security for CNN, Sciutto provides a unique, on-the-ground perspective from each crisis zone around the globe and far beyond the news desk.

The Shadow War

Jim Sciutto, CNN Anchor and Chief National Security Correspondent, reveals the invisible fronts of a twentyfirst century war underway on the US and takes audiences right to the frontlines of battles being waged—often without the public’s full knowledge—from cyber attacks to disinformation campaigns to ground invasions in Europe to war in space.

The United States is currently under attack from multiple adversaries—yet most Americans have no idea of the dangers threatening us. In this eye-opening presentation based on his book, Sciutto traces the expanding web of attacks that together amount to an undeclared but deeply dangerous war on America. America is engaged in a Shadow War on multiple fronts, with multiple enemies, principally Russia and China, whose aim is to weaken and overcome the United States and the global system it has built and defended since the end of World War Two. But unlike conventional warfare, these conflicts are conducted in the shadows, with no formal declaration. In fact, The Shadow War is designed explicitly to remain below the threshold of a shooting war with the US.

Sciutto takes audiences on the ground to several fronts of this war – from a spy plane over the South China Sea to a nuclear submarine under the Arctic to the battlefields of Eastern Ukraine, inside Russia’s 2016 election interference and China’s ongoing theft of US secrets right up into space, where Russia and China are deploying space weapons – all skirmishes in a new and much larger superpower war.

But America is adapting and fighting back. In The Shadow War, Sciutto introduces the dizzying array of soldiers, sailors, submariners and their commanders, space engineers, computer scientists, and civilians who are on the front lines of this new kind of forever war. Understand how these countries and governments, particularly Russia and China, are conducting these attacks, creating national security, business risks and risks to America’s democracy

The US-China Trade War

The US-China trade war has upended the world’s most crucial economic relationship and threatened to send the world economy into recession. For two years, Jim Sciutto was at the center of the US-China trade dispute while Chief of Staff to the US Ambassador to China and in the years since then, covering the broader relationship as Chief National Security Correspondent and Anchor for CNN, including multiple assignments in China and interviews with US and Chinese officials. At the core are differences that each country sees as essential to its economic health and national security – differences that are therefore difficult to impossible to resolve without concessions that both countries are loth to make. In addition, domestic political pressure in both countries prevent US and Chinese leaders from being perceived as caving to pressure from the other side. The combination makes progress on a wide-ranging deal difficult, with enormous implications for the US, China and the world.

Jim Sciutto's Latest Books

The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War

The Return of Great Powers analyzes a historic and visible shift in real time. It details the realities of this new post-post-Cold War era, the increasingly aligned Russian and Chinese governments, and the flashpoint of a new, global nuclear arms race. And it poses a question: As we consider uncertain, even terrifying, outcomes, will it be possible for the West and Russia and China to prevent a new World War?

The Madman Theory: Trump Takes On the World

In The Madman Theory, Jim Sciutto showed how Trump’s supporters assumed he had a strategy for long-term success – that he somehow played three-dimensional chess. Four years into Trump’s presidency, it was clear his unpredictable focus on short-term headlines did in fact lead to predictably mediocre results in the short and long run. Trump’s foreign policy undermined American values and national security interests, while hurting allies who had been on our side for decades, leaving them isolated and vulnerable without American support. Meanwhile, Trump had comforted and emboldened our enemies. The White House’s revolving door of staff demonstrated that Trump had no real plan; all serious policymakers—and those who would be a check on his most destructive impulses—were exiled or jumped ship. Sciutto interviewed a wide swath of then-current and former administration officials to assemble the first comprehensive portrait of the impact of Trump’s erratic foreign policy. Smart, authoritative, and compelling, The Madman Theory is the definitive take on Trump’s calamitous legacy around the globe, showing how his proclivity for chaos was creating a world which was more unstable, violent, and impoverished than it had been before.

The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America

In The Shadow War,CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto provides us with a revealing and at times disturbing guide to this new international conflict. This Shadow War is already the greatest threat to America’s national security, even though most Americans know little or nothing about it. With on-the-ground reporting from Ukraine to the South China Sea, from a sub under the Arctic to unprecedented access to America’s Space Command, Sciutto draws on his deep knowledge, high-level contacts, and personal experience as a journalist and diplomat to paint the most comprehensive and vivid picture of a nation targeted by a new and disturbing brand of warfare. Thankfully, America is adapting and fighting back. In The Shadow War, Sciutto introduces readers to the dizzying array of soldiers, sailors, submariners and their commanders, space engineers, computer scientists, civilians, and senior intelligence officials who are on the front lines of this new kind of forever war. Intensive and disturbing, this invaluable and important work opens our eyes and makes clear that the war of the future is already here.

Against Us: The New Face of America's Enemies in the Muslim World

Against Us is an urgent wake-up call for all Americans-and in particular those charged with formulating U.S. foreign policy-to rebuild relations with the Arab world and restore confidence in American values.

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