Speaking

Carl combines immersive first-person story-telling with data and evidence to talk to audiences about the the real dangers and opportunities that new technology have created. He draws on links and contrasts between dozens of investigations, from time with police cyber-crime teams to cyber-criminals, information warfare officers, spoken with fake news merchants, presidents, spies and digital ministers. These voices come together on the stage to help audiences understand how every single aspect of our lives are changing in often unseen yet important ways: who is really in control of AI, how crime has completely transformed, the way that disinformation really works, how democracies are embattled and politics is in upheaval, how how professional journalism is being choked and changed, digital geopolitics, and how business in the digital age sits on a knife-edge between two visions.

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Keynotes

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Kill List. Carl talks about a four-year long investigation where he, and a small team of journalists and a hacker secretly surveilled a murder-for-hire website on the dark net. The investigation ultimately led to 175 kill orders being disclosed, over 30 arrests and  100 years of prison time being handed down. He reflects on the lessons those frenetic years have for all of us: on stepping into the unknown, on grit and tenacity, the importance of finding moments of laughter and about making decisions in extremely imperfect conditions.

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‍^{‍Disinformation. Yura, the Romanian cyber-criminal mastermind at the heart of the Kill List story ran an enormous and successful disinformation campaign for years. In this keynote, Carl takes that campaign apart to show how the reality of online disinformation really isn’t what you think.}

‍Power Trip: the Age of AI. When did you first hear of GPT, Claude, DALL-E or Bard? AI has penetrated our conversations, our places of work and dominates the culture. It also threatens to make some of those pillars of society redundant in years to come. In this keynote, Carl draws on his 5-part podcast series for Intelligence Squared to discover how AI is changing power from the workplace to culture, our friends and even what it means to be human at all.

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‍How to Win the Digital Revolution. From hackers to cyber-criminals, citizen journalists to fake news merchants, information warriors to digital presidents, what are the lessons that we can all learn from those on the front-lines of the digital revolution?  

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‍_{Risk and Volatility in the Digital Age. Whether it is a crisis of law enforcement or the production of fake news, enormous disruptions to markets or the undermining of political systems, Carl will explain the important, and often hidden risks that digital technologies have created.}