One day in September 2014 the publisher of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, sent an e-mail to Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and billionaire. It could easily have been a message to a friend, or at least a kindred spirit, for, as many people who know them both have noted, the two have so much in common.

Rukmini Callimachi is arguably the best reporter on the most impor­tant beat in the world. As a New York Times correspondent covering terrorism, her work explores not just what jihadists do but how they do it. You’ve read her stories on ISIS’s use of birth control to maintain its supply of sex slaves, or the Kouachi brothers’ path to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, or the nature of lone-wolf attacks like the recent mass shooting in Orlando. Her byline often appears on the front page of the paper; at just 43, she’s received three Pulitzer Prize nominations. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Callimachi, though, is how she gets her insights into the world’s most hostile and secretive organizations. Sure, she spends months every year out of the country reporting, but increasingly her work requires just as much time staring at her phone and computer screen. Social media enables Callimachi to access what she calls the “inner world of jihadists”; she lurks in Telegram chat rooms, navigates an endless flood of tips on Twitter, and carefully tracks sources and subjects all over the Internet. Her cell phone battery dies up to four times a day. The truth, she has found, is as much online as it is on the ground.

WIRED: How did you start covering terrorism?