Micah Zenko earned a PhD from the Department of Politics at Brandeis University in 2009.

[2] He has published articles in The Atlantic,[4] The Guardian,[5] Foreign Policy,[6] and Business Insider.

In a review for the Journal of Peace Research, Mark Naftalin criticized Zenko for leaving out an "analysis and contextualization of concepts, threats and legal and technological frameworks", adding that there was a "lack of rigorous detail in each of the author's policy recommendations.

"[8] Zenko's second book, Red Team: How to Succeed By Thinking Like the Enemy, was published in 2015.

A review in The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada wrote that "Zenko offers a compelling argument for forcing ourselves to think differently, which is ultimately the main purpose of a red team.