How Information Warfare Shapes Your World
How do politicians in today’s world attain power? How do nations become powerful? Why do human beings follow others unquestioningly, even if it is to their own detriment? What factors determine which politicians, nations and organizations will dominate the modern world? Through much of human history, societal control was determined by militaristic strength. Individuals and tribes fought to control vital resources and land. In the next part of evolution marked by colonialism and the emergence of mega-corporations, money determined power. In the recent decade, the key to supremacy has shifted again. The power and control individuals, leaders and nations have is now determined by their ability to mould the information environment. In this talk based on their recent book The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities, Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan will explain how the power to manipulate your thoughts is being harnessed, and how information warfare is shaping your life and world.
SHIVAM SHANKAR SINGH
Shivam Shankar Singh headed data analytics and campaigns for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the Manipur and Tripura Legislative Assembly elections under the guidance of the party’s National General Secretary, Ram Madhav. He was a Senior Research Fellow at India Foundation, and briefly worked with Prashant Kishor’s company, IPAC, during the Punjab Legislative Assembly campaign. He was a Legislative Assistant to a Member of Parliament (LAMP) Fellow and has graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a B.Sc. in Economics.
ANAND VENKATANARAYANAN
Anand Venkatanarayanan is a cyber security and privacy researcher who also dabbles in financial modelling. He has over twenty years of experience in designing and developing system software. He was called as an expert witness before the Supreme Court of India for the Aadhaar case and has deposed before the Kenyan High Court for the country’s digital identity project. He writes extensively on cybersecurity and was one of the first to break the story on the hacking of the Kudankulam nuclear reactor in 2019. He studies reality creation techniques deployed at population scale.
