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Garrett Graff

Aspen Bio

Garrett Graff, the executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity & Technology Program, is an award-winning journalist who has spent nearly a decade covering national security.

He has an extensive background in journalism and technology, including working as Governor Howard Dean’s first webmaster, helping to launch an internet strategy consulting firm, and, in 2005, becoming the first blogger admitted to cover a White House press briefing.

More recently, as a journalist, he’s been editor of both Washingtonian and POLITICO Magazine—where he helped lead the magazine to its first National Magazine Award—and writes regularly for publications like WIRED and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

He has authored multiple books on both technology and national security, including, most recently, Raven Rock, about the government’s Cold War Doomsday plans, which was published in May 2017, as well as a 2011 history of the FBI, The Threat Matrix.1)

Career History

Garrett's 2004 website reads like a keyword ad for Apple & Apache.

“Now you can use Mac OS X Personal Web Sharing to publish web pages or share files on the Internet — or on your company’s (or school’s) local area network — from a folder on your hard disk.

You can display your documents on the Internet — or restrict access to a chosen few within a local area network. Mac OS X Personal Web Sharing makes it a snap.

Here’s how it works: Once you’re online, all you need to do is copy a file in HTML format to the Web Pages folder (in the Sites folder in your Home directory, on your computer’s hard disk), and that’s it. You’re done — your page is ready for viewing. Make sure you have someone handy to exchange high fives with.

Something else you’ll notice about Mac OS X Personal Web Sharing: as server software goes, it’s about as stable as a block of granite. That’s because it’s built on the Apache web server, one of the many industrial-strength, industry-standard technologies that are part of the modern Darwin core foundation underlying Mac OS X.

The Apache server has earned such a reputation for rock-solid reliability that it currently hosts over half the websites on the Internet — and almost all of the coolest and most heavily-visited ones. Including Apple’s own website — and now yours, too.” 2)

Washington Insider 2007 About Me

Garrett M. Graff is editor-at-large at Washingtonian Magazine, where he writes covers media and politics and edits the Capital Comment section. He is also the founding editor of mediabistro.com's Fishbowl D.C. (www.fishbowldc.com), a blog that covers the media and journalism in Washington.

He was formerly the co-founder and vice president of communications at EchoDitto, Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based internet consulting firm. Linked as a client SEIU Union 3)

A Vermont native, he served as deputy national press secretary on Howard Dean's presidential campaign and, beginning in 1997, was then-Governor Dean's first webmaster. In college, Garrett was a news writer and executive editor at the Harvard Crimson, Harvard University's daily newspaper, where he wrote more news articles than any other writer in half-a-century, and held internships at ABCNews' Political Unit and at the Atlantic Monthly.

As the first blogger admitted to cover a White House press briefing, he is a frequent speaker on blogging and cable news commentator and the intersection of politics and technology. He has appeared on Fox News, CNN, CNN Headline News, CNN International, CNBC, and MSNBC. He has spoken at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the National Press Club, and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as well as companies, trade groups, and to overseas audiences at the invitation of the U.S. State Department.

Garrett is also writing a book about the 2008 presidential race focusing on technology and globalization, due to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in Fall 2007. The working title is “The First Campaign: Globalization and the Future of American Politics.”

Personally, he enjoys sailing, cooking, scotch, and Graham Greene novels. His father, Christopher Graff was the long-time bureau chief of the Associated Press in Vermont and his mother, Nancy Price Graff, is a historian, childrens' book author, and former magazine editor. 4)

2008 Fish Bowl Blog 5)

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