Nicole Perlroth, who writes about cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times, is the author of This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyber Weapons Arms Race (Bloomsbury). It’s a chilling tale about how the world, and the United States in particular, has grown increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks by nation-states and contract cyber warriors. She has covered this beat for the Times since 2011. Prior to that, she wrote about startups and venture capital for Forbes. Perlroth, who is based in Silicon Valley, is a graduate of Princeton and Stanford universities. She is also a lecturer at Stanford Business School. What follows is a lightly edited Q&A. Nicole Perlroth.Illustration by Lauren Crow Q: A few years ago, there was a lot of talk about Google secretly working on a project to get back into China. Can you say anything about that?  A: Google’s secret plan to re-enter China was code-named Dragonfly and it was a huge reversal from Google’s