Catherine Herridge will deliver a lecture, “Emerging Threats: The Grey Zone,” in the University of Delaware’s Trabant Theater from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 16. Herridge is an award-winning chief intelligence correspondent for the Fox News Channel.

The lecture, originally scheduled May 8, is co-sponsored by UD’s Cybersecurity Initiative and Institute for Public Administration.

A reception will follow in the Trabant Lobby. RSVP to Wendy Jordan at wjordan@udel.edu.

Lecture abstract

The “Grey Zone” is the battle space between peace and conventional warfare, where the lines are blurred and the enemy is hard to identify. The Grey Zone is where bad actors go to play when they cannot compete militarily or economically against the United States on a level playing field. 

This lecture investigates how terrorist groups are exploiting technology to further territorial ambitions as well as the new “digital jihad” and how nation-states including Russia used unconventional warfare, cyberattacks, and influence operations to meddle in the U.S. election.

Speaker bio

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning chief intelligence correspondent for the Fox News Channel. The first network correspondent assigned to the Homeland Security beat in 2001 she now covers intelligence and the Justice Department, as well as the Department of Homeland Security.

A graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia School of Journalism, Herridge began her career as a London-based TV and radio correspondent for ABC News. She has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Qatar, Israel, the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Guantanamo Bay and New York City on 9/11. Herridge is one of the few reporters to sit in the same military courtroom as the self-described architect of the attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-conspirators.

Her first book, published by Crown in June 2011, The Next Wave: On the Hunt for al Qaeda’s American Recruits, reveals how social networking is the lifeblood of the “digital jihadist” as well as the profound influence of the first American on the CIA’s kill or capture list, Anwar al-Awlaki.