Erin Banco is a national security reporter for POLITICO focusing on the intelligence community.

She previously worked for two years as POLITICO’s global health reporter covering the pandemic and vaccine equity.

Prior to POLITICO, Banco worked as a national security reporter for The Daily Beast and as a Middle East correspondent for IBT Media in Istanbul. She has a long history covering the Middle East region, from Cairo to Baghdad to Aleppo where she’s reported on the Arab Spring and its aftermath, including the civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS. Her 2017 book, Pipe Dreams, focuses on the development of the oil and gas industry in the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Banco attended The University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she majored in Arabic and journalism. She earned a master’s in public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2014. Banco lives with her husband outside New York City.