Bryan Bender

Bryan Bender (born May 18, 1972) is a communications executive and former award-winning national security reporter and editor who advises tech companies, nonprofits and research universities for SMI, a Washington, DC, government affairs firm, and is an adjunct professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

He is former senior national correspondent and defense editor for POLITICO, where he authored the Morning Defense newsletter and edited POLITICO Space.

He previously served as the Pentagon correspondent for The Boston Globe and Washington Bureau Chief for Jane’s Defence Weekly.

Bender has covered U.S. military and diplomatic operations in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has reported on a range of topics such as domestic and international terrorism; the international arms trade; veterans affairs; military training; nuclear arms control; the anti-war movement; the nexus between climate change and national security; government secrecy; and newly declassified government files on Cuba, Vietnam, the Kennedy Administration, and unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.

He is author You Are Not Forgotten, the story of an Iraq War veteran’s search for a missing World War II fighter pilot in the jungles of New Guinea. He has also extensively covered the U.S. military ongoing search for missing personnel from past conflicts.

Bender is researching a book on the early political careers of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the House of Representatives.