Dmitri Alperovitch (; born 1980)
is an American think-tank founder, author, philanthropist, podcast host and former computer security industry executive. He is the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a
geopolitics
Geopolitics () is the study of the effects of Earth's geography on politics and international relations. Geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them, it may also focus on two other kinds of State (polity), states: ''de fac ...
think-tank in Washington, D.C., and a co-founder and former chief technology officer of
CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.
The company has been involved in investigations of seve ...
. Alperovitch is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Russia who immigrated from the country in 1994 with his family.
Early life and education
Born in
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
in the
Russian SFSR
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...
, a constituent republic of the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, Alperovitch left Russia at the age of 13 in 1994. In 1994, his father was granted a visa to Canada, and a year later the family moved to
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga ( ) is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located along the Tennessee River and borders Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the south. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee ...
, where his father got a job at the
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...
(TVA) corporation. When still in high school, he and his father Michael, a nuclear physicist, started an encryption-technology business. Alperovitch earned a BS in
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
in 2001, and a MS in
information security
Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...
in 2003, both from
Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...
. It was the school's first graduate degree in information security. Alperovitch is a U.S. citizen.
Career
Alperovitch worked at a number of computer security startups in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including e-mail security startup
CipherTrust,
where he was one of the leading inventors of the
TrustedSource reputation system. Upon acquisition of
CipherTrust by
Secure Computing
Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) was a public company that developed and sold computer security appliances and hosted services to protect users and data. McAfee acquired the company in 2008.
The company also developed filtering systems used b ...
in 2006, he led the research team and launched the Software-as-a-Service business for the company. Alperovitch took over as vice president of threat research at
McAfee
McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American proprietary software company focused on online ...
, when the company acquired
Secure Computing
Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) was a public company that developed and sold computer security appliances and hosted services to protect users and data. McAfee acquired the company in 2008.
The company also developed filtering systems used b ...
in 2008.
In January 2010, he led the investigation into
Operation Aurora
Operation Aurora was a series of cyber attacks performed by advanced persistent threats such as the Elderwood Group based in Beijing, China, with associations with the People's Liberation Army. First disclosed publicly by Google (one of the vic ...
, the Chinese intrusions into Google and two dozen other companies. Subsequently, he led the investigation of
Night Dragon espionage operation of the Western multinational oil and gas companies, and traced them to
Song Zhiyue, a Chinese national living in
Heze City, Shandong.
In August 2011, he published ''
Operation Shady RAT
Operation Shady RAT is an ongoing series of cyber attacks starting in mid-2006 reported by Dmitri Alperovitch, Vice President of Threat Research at Internet security company McAfee in August 2011, who also led and named the Night Dragon Operation ...
'', a report on suspected Chinese
intrusions
In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of Intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety o ...
into at least 72 organizations, including defense contractors, businesses worldwide, the United Nations and the
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee (IOC; , CIO) is the international, non-governmental, sports governing body of the modern Olympic Games. Founded in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas, it is based i ...
.
CrowdStrike
In late 2011, along with entrepreneur
George Kurtz
George Kurtz (born October 14, 1970) is an American businessman. He is a co-founder and chief executive officer of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity technology company.
He founded Foundstone, a security products and anti-virus software company, an ...
and Gregg Marston, Dmitri Alperovitch co-founded and became the chief technology officer of
CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.
The company has been involved in investigations of seve ...
,
a security technology company focused on helping enterprises and governments protect their intellectual property and secrets against cyberespionage and cybercrime.
In 2015, CapitalG (formerly
Google Capital
CapitalG Management Company LLC (file no. 5324444) (formerly Google Capital) is the independent growth fund under Alphabet Inc.
Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mounta ...
), led a $100 million capital drive for CrowdStrike.
The firm brought on board senior FBI executives, such as Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director (EAD) of the
FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch, and Steve Chabinsky, former deputy assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division. By May 2017, CrowdStrike had received $256 million in funding from
Warburg Pincus
Warburg Pincus LLC is a global private equity firm, headquartered in New York City, with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia and India. Warburg has been a private equity investor since 1966. As of April 2024 the f ...
,
Accel Partners
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is a global venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ope ...
, and
Google Capital
CapitalG Management Company LLC (file no. 5324444) (formerly Google Capital) is the independent growth fund under Alphabet Inc.
Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mounta ...
and its stock was valued at just under $1 billion.
In June 2019, the company made an initial public offering (
IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
) on the
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
, which valued the company at over $10 billion.
Silverado Policy Accelerator
In February 2020, Alperovitch left CrowdStrike to launch the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a nonprofit focused on solving policy challenges connected to great power competition between the U.S. and its adversaries. The organization focuses in particular on policy issues related to military strategy, cybersecurity, international trade and industrial security, and economic and energy security. Silverado Policy Accelerator launched in March 2021 with Alperovitch as its executive chairman.
In December 2021, Alperovitch correctly predicted the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...
, which began in February 2022. Alperovitch, who is a strong critic of
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
's leader
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
, said: "For Putin, it's really not about whether he can capture a village and keep it occupied. His determination from day one has been to control Ukraine, to prevent Ukraine from being part of the Western alliance."
On November 11, 2022, he was personally sanctioned by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MFA Russia; , МИД РФ) is the central government institution charged with leading the foreign policy and foreign relations of Russia. It is a continuation of the Ministry of Foreig ...
and banned from entry to Russia, along with
David Petraeus
David Howell Petraeus (; born 7 November 1952) is a retired United States Army General (United States), general who served as the fourth director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 2011 until his resignation in November 2012. Pri ...
,
James Stavridis and
Ian Bremmer
Ian Arthur Bremmer (born November 12, 1969) is an American political scientist, author, and entrepreneur focused on global political risk. He is the founder and president of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. He is al ...
.
In December 2024, along with Cold War historian
Sergey Radchenko, Alperovitch proposed that the incoming Trump administration try to pry
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
away from the emerging Russia-China-Iran axis and attempt to negotiate a peace deal that does not demand full denuclearization but instead prioritizes nonproliferation, moratorium on nuclear tests, end to provocative missile launches and termination of cyber attacks against the West.
U.S. Government
Alperovitch is an inaugural member of the
Cyber Safety Review Board, an independent U.S. government board set up by Presidential Executive Order in 2021 with responsibility for cybersecurity incident investigations.
In 2023, he was the Deputy Chair of the
Cyber Safety Review Board's review of Microsoft Exchange Online intrusion by Storm-0558, a Chinese government-affiliated group of hackers. The review discovered that Storm-0558 broke into Microsoft's corporate network and stole a cryptographic key used for signing authentication tokens for accessing customer email accounts. It then used that key to forge tokens to access Microsoft Exchange Online mailboxes of 22 organizations and over 500 individuals around the world, including the email accounts of then Commerce Secretary
Gina Raimondo, United States Ambassador to China
R. Nicholas Burns
Robert Nicholas Burns (born January 28, 1956) is an American diplomat and international relations scholar. He served as the United States ambassador to China from 2022 to 2025.
Burns has had a 25-year career in the State Department and has serv ...
, and Congressman
Don Bacon
Donald John Bacon (born August 16, 1963) is an American politician and retired military officer who has served as the United States House of Representatives, U.S. representative for Nebraska's Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, 2nd congress ...
.
In March 2022, he was appointed a member of
Homeland Security Advisory Council
The Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. It was created by an Executive Order
In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United ...
.
Alperovitch has also served as a Special Advisor to the Department of Defense.
Board memberships
Alperovitch is the chairman of the board of directors of Automox, a cloud-based IT operations company, a board member of Dragos, a company that provides cybersecurity solutions for industrial controls systems, and a board observer for Sublime Security, an email security company.
Philanthropy
In October 2021, Alperovitch announced the launch of the Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies to be based at the
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
's
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C. The school also maintains campuses in Bologna, Italy and Nanjing, China.
The school is devoted to the study of int ...
. The institute will offer Master of Arts and doctor of philosophy degrees in cybersecurity studies and policy, and an Executive Education program for private sector and government leaders.
Podcasting and public speaking
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Alperovitch became the host of ''Geopolitics Decanted'' podcast, where he discusses current geopolitical events with military experts, historians, economists and political scientists. Dmitri is also an occasional guest on the Risky Business IT Security podcast to provide his insights into the field and geopolitics.
Alperovitch spoke at the
WORLD.MINDS meeting in June 2025 in Washington DC about China, AI and the transatlantic relationship.
Books
''World on the Brink''
Alperovitch is an author, along with
Garrett Graff
Garrett M. Graff (born 1981) is an American journalist and author. He is a former editor of ''Politico Magazine'', editor-in-chief of '' Washingtonian'' magazine in Washington, D.C., and instructor at Georgetown University in the Master's in Prof ...
, of the book: ''World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century''.
The book was released in the United States on April 30, 2024. It "offers practical advice about how America can win against China" and lays out the case for why China's Xi Jinping is preparing to conquer Taiwan in the coming years and the dire stakes for America and the whole world if he is not deterred.
The book argues that the world is already in the midst of
Cold War II between the US and China, and that Taiwan is the perilous strategic flashpoint that risks triggering a devastating war between major nuclear powers in a similar role that
West Berlin
West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...
nearly played during Cold War I. It offers a comprehensive strategy for the US to deter war and maintain its place as the world's leading superpower in the face of rising China.
Awards
Alperovitch was awarded the
Outstanding American by Choice Award by the
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that administers the country's naturalization and Immigration to the United States, immigration system.
History
...
in 2023 and the
Federal 100 Award for his contributions to the U.S. federal information security and was recognized in 2013 and 2015 as one of
Washingtonian's Tech Titans for his accomplishments in the field of cybersecurity.
In August 2013, he was selected as one of ''MIT Technology Reviews
Top 35 Innovators Under 35.
In 2016,
''Politico'' magazine featured him as one of "
Politico 50" influential thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming U.S. politics.
In 2017,
''Fortune'' magazine listed Alperovitch in
"40 Under 40" annual ranking of the most influential young people in business.
He was named in December 2013 as one of ''Foreign Policys
Top 100 Leading Global Thinkers.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Alperovitch, Dmitri
Living people
American foreign policy writers
Chief technology officers of computer security companies
American technology company founders
American chief technology officers
American computer businesspeople
American nonprofit chief executives
American podcasters
Anti-spam
Georgia Tech alumni
Businesspeople from Washington, D.C.
1980 births
Russian emigrants to the United States
McAfee