Candace Rondeaux

Candace Rondeaux is a geopolitical risk analyst, investigative journalist, and author of Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos (PublicAffairs, 2025). She is the Founding Principal of Frontline Atlas, an independent public-interest intelligence platform, and co-editor of Understanding the New Proxy Wars (Hurst/Oxford, 2022). She is currently leading an investigative project on the changing character of conflict across NATO — sabotage, infrastructure disruption, and covert influence — that will inform a new work of narrative nonfiction.

A Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and a Senior Fellow with New America's Future Security Initiative, she writes a regular column for World Politics Review and contributes frequently to the Financial Times. An award-winning journalist, she served as Afghanistan and Pakistan Bureau Chief for the Washington Post and was part of a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting team. She has testified before Congress and advised NATO and UN panels on conflict and the outsourcing of violence.