Kate Brannen

Kate Brannen is a Senior Contributing Editor at Just Security and Non-Resident Journalism Fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. She was most recently deputy editor at Foreign Affairs magazine. Prior to joining Foreign Affairs in 2021, Brannen was the editorial director of Just Security 2016-2021. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy (FP), The Guardian,  The Daily Beast,  Slate, USA Today, Newsweek, and Vice. Previously, she was a senior reporter covering the Pentagon for FP. Before that, Brannen was a defense reporter for POLITICO, where she was also responsible for “Morning Defense,” POLITICO‘s daily national security newsletter.

Brannen has also covered budget and defense policy debates on Capitol Hill as the congressional reporter for Defense News. She spent three years covering the U.S. Army — first as a reporter for InsideDefense.com, then as the land warfare correspondent for Defense News. She has discussed her reporting on CNN; MSNBC; NPR’s All Things Considered, On Point, and The Diane Rehm Show; and PRI’s To the Point.

Brannen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in history. She has master’s degrees from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and School of International and Public Affairs.