David Shimer

David Shimer is an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar with Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. From 2021 until 2025, Shimer served at the White House National Security Council (NSC), most recently as the Director for Eastern Europe and Ukraine, and previously as Director for Russian Affairs. In these roles, Shimer helped to shape and execute the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Prior to joining the NSC, Shimer worked in the national security division of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. 

Shimer is the author of the book Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference (Knopf, 2020), which was named a notable book of the year by the Washington Post and an editor's pick by the New York Times Book Review. Shimer's research has been published in the  New York Times, The New Yorker,  Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.  Shimer previously was a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Before serving in government, Shimer worked as a journalist, reporting for the New York Times from Berlin, Brussels, and elsewhere in Europe.

Shimer received his doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar and a Truman Scholar, and his bachelor's and master's degrees in history from Yale University.