Skip To Main Content
Yael Grauer on Muck Rack

Yael Grauer

Verified
(She/Her)
Phoenix
As seen in: LinkedIn, Forbes, Medium, MSN, MSN UK, OneZero, Wirecutter, ETTelecom, The Independent (UK), Yahoo Canada and
Covers:  technology, with a focus on privacy, security, civil liberties, etc. investigative, journalism and media, and sometimes health and fitness
i moved to bluesky bsky.app/profile/yaelwrites.com

Get in touch with Yael

Contact Yael, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.

Learn more about Muck Rack

Actions

Share this page

Yael Grauer’s Biography

Read Full Bio →

I am a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative tech reporter covering privacy and security, digital freedom, hacking, and mass surveillance.

I’ve freelanced for over a decade, with bylines at the Associated Press, Atlantic, Ars Technica, Insider, Slate, The Intercept, The Verge, OneZero, Popular Science, Vice, Wirecutter, WIRED, and other publications.

Yael Grauer’s Journalist Portfolio

See all →
Made in America, Watched Worldwide

Made in America, Watched Worldwide

Made in America, Watched Worldwide AP's award-winning investigation about government surveillance in China, t…

View article →
Attack of the killer script kiddies

Attack of the killer script kiddies

In the aftermath of Mythos, AI-assisted amateur hackers are waiting to strike.

View article →
Silicon Valley enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China, internal documents show

Silicon Valley enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China, internal documents show

An AP investigation reveals that U.S. technology companies to a large degree designed and built China's surve…

View article →
What Big Tech Knows About Your Body

What Big Tech Knows About Your Body

The most intimate details of your health are just data points.

View article →
Online voting provider paid for academic research in attempt to sway U.S. lawmakers

Online voting provider paid for academic research in attempt to sway U.S. lawmakers

Democracy Live directed academic research to demonstrate its product's security and used that material in lob…

View article →
Millions of Leaked Police Files Detail Suffocating Surveillance of China's Uyghur Minority

Millions of Leaked Police Files Detail Suffocating Surveillance of China's Uyghur Minority

Invasive digital monitoring and community informants drive a system all too ready to classify Muslims in Ürüm…

View article →

Articles

Stop Telling Me To Ask An LLM

|
By Yael Grauer Verified
| yaelwrites.com
I'm a million times more likely to send an email or a text than to pick up the phone. But I had a question I thought was worth an actual call, so I scheduled one with someone senior enough to have real scar tissue, the kind you only get from watching a decision go sideways in a boardroom. I asked him where he'd look, personally, for the answer to a hard question I was chasing, one without industry consensus. Not what the textbook says. If five studies conflicted, which would he trust?
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?

Read this before you vibe-code another app

|
By Yael Grauer Verified
| The Verge Verified
Bob Starr was delighted with his vibe-coded website. “Boomberg” showed how much US tax money is going to tech companies, and Starr launched it online immediately after making it. It wasn’t until months after the site went live that he realized there was a problem: a hidden SQL injection risk. It could’ve left the site open for an attacker to read or alter data they shouldn’t have access to. “It was just a glaring oversight on my part.
Open in Who Shared View Duplicates (6) Issue with article?

Read this before you vibe-code another app

|
By Yael Grauer Verified
| Tech News Tube
Tech News Tube is a real time news feed of the latest technology news headlines.Follow all of the top tech sites in one place, on the web or your mobile device.
Open in Who Shared View Duplicates (692) Issue with article?
See all 1,268 licensed articles (1,348 Total)

Interview

See all →

What was your first job as a journalist?

made zines in my basement since I was 12 or 13; was a National Teen Correspondent for Blue Jean magazine when I was 17 or 18

What tools and software do you use to do your job?

Signal, Todoist, Wave, Ghost

Who do you wish followed you?

Josh Waitzkin

Awards

See all →

Pulitzer Prize

2026 - international reporting

For an astonishing global investigation into state-of-the-art tools of mass surveillance, created in Silicon Valley, advanced in China and spreading worldwide before returning to America for secret new uses by the U.S. Border Patrol.

View Award

Society of Publishers in Asia

2026 - Excellence In Technology Reporting, Global

Detailed and disturbing. Painstaking work to pull together U.S. companies involved in surveillance in China. An important piece of work- well-done. Crucial investigative reporting in building up a picture of the technology behind the high surveillance state in China. This three-year, three-part package shines an important spotlight onto how technology enables surveillance. Good pulldowns show how the technology is applied.

View Award

Overseas Press Club Malcolm Forbes and Morton Frank Award

2026 - best international business news reporting in any medium

The AP team exposed how the Chinese regime has enlisted American technology companies, including IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, to build what is arguably the world’s most repressive technology-based system of citizen surveillance. Similar systems now operate in Gaza, Lebanon, Nepal and even the United States.

View Award