Red Team: How to Succeed By Thinking Like the Enemy

by Micah Zenko

Micah Zenko's Red Team explores the practice of adversarial thinking across military, intelligence, corporate, and cybersecurity domains. Drawing from extensive research and interviews with red team practitioners, Zenko examines how organizations use structured devil's advocacy, alternative analysis, and simulated attacks to challenge assumptions and improve decision-making. The book covers the history of red teaming from medieval Catholic Church advocatus diaboli to modern military wargames and corporate penetration testing. Zenko analyzes why organizations resist red teaming, how institutional politics can undermine its effectiveness, and what makes some red team programs succeed while others are reduced to checkbox exercises. Essential reading for anyone building or managing red team programs, as it provides the strategic and organizational context that technical manuals miss.