Jacob is an investigative journalist based in London. His work regularly appears in outlets that include The New York Times, The Economist, The Times, The Financial Times and many others.

He most recently was the lead author on an investigation with The New York Times into the most secretive parts of Russian intelligence. He obtained a classified counterintelligence circular from within the Russian F.S.B. that provided a unique view into how the relationship between Russia and China.

Jacob has reported from across Europe, Asia, and Africa. He has reported on the War in Ukraine, the Islamic insurgency in Mozambique, and embedded with insurgents in the Sahel. He has broken stories on how Russia is using A.I. to target Britons, how China allegedly hacked sensitive military documents from U.S. allies in the Pacific, and on how millions of U.S. emails were being leaked due to common typos. He also regularly reports on science, climate issues, and technology.

In 2024, Jacob was nominated for a British Journalism Award for an investigation into how dozens of young African footballers had been lured to Transnistria, an unrecognised Russian-backed statelet, before being abandoned.

Jacob was also granted the 2024 Reporting Award by the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. This supported a long-form reporting project from the Bering Strait for The Economist’s 1843 on how the changing Arctic is endangering the future of the most remote villages in North America.

Jacob previously worked as a staff reporter with the Jewish Chronicle and was the U.K. and Ireland Correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the largest Jewish newswire. His reporting from Ukraine for the JTA won the American Jewish Press Association’s Rockower Award for Excellence in Writing on the War in Ukraine in 2023.

Jacob works regularly with think tanks, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. In 2025, Jacob contributed a chapter on Cyprus for a book published titled: ‘Turbulence in the Eastern Mediterranean: Geopolitical, Security and Energy Dynamics’.