CARL
MILLER
Carl combines immersive first-person story-telling with data and evidence to talk to audiences about the real dangers and opportunities of the digital age. He draws on links and contrasts between dozens of investigations, from cracking sophisticated networks of organised crime sites to information warfare campaigns, AI lovebots to interviewing Presidents. He brings these together on stage to help audiences understand how every single aspect of our lives are changing in often unseen yet important ways.
Fifteen years ago, Carl founded the first digital research team in the UK using AI to investigate digital spaces at the think tank Demos. Since then, he’s combined crypto-currency tracing, dark net investigations, cyber-crime raids with the police and investigative journalism with the BBC to research manipulation, hacking, crime and information warfare. Most recently, he led a four-year long secret investigation into a sophisticated network of organised criminal sites which led to a global cooperation with the FBI. It resulted in 34 arrests, 28 convictions and over 180 years of prison time being sentenced, becoming the global #1 podcast Kill List, winner of the Guardian podcast of the year and the Broadcasting Press Guild Best Podcast of 2025.
He’ll show how scam and crime groups really work. How criminals create social trust, how they recruit and cooperate with each other and how criminal groups are leveraging and building new technology . He’ll talk about an emerging new wave of criminal scams bolstered by AI-generated manipulation, crypto-currencies, and state-sponsored support. How the threat is changing? Where is it going? Who will it target? And are we ready?
Information spaces are now treated as theatres of war. Hundreds of state-aligned hacktivist groups have emerged, coordinating attacks against Western critical national infrastructure. From artificial intelligence models to the hyper-scalers, TikTok’s algorithm to the very basic protocols on which the Internet sits, how and where states clash and compete, indeed what geopolitical power actually is - has become dramatically entangled with technology.
Over 2024, Carl Miller has been at the forefront of understanding how democracies push back against autocratic geopolitical pressure. He gave keynotes at NATO summits, led technology teams fighting back against information warfare, caused Russian-aligned hacker groups to be arrested, and released a new strategy - D-RAIL - for disrupting malign influence. He will talk about this new geopolitical terrain, the new blocs and factions, alliance and rivalries that have formed, and how it combines to change the landscape of risk and volatility that we all need to act within. Carl will suggest what the future might bring and what businesses need to do about it.
Divorces are happening because of love affairs with AI chatbots. Models can seamlessly summarise a video in Icelandic as a Shakespearean sonnet. English is the newest coding language, and prompting AI is perhaps the only future-proofed skillset left. From culture and politics to business and economic value, power is changing in ways that are both fundamental and mysterious.
Carl Miller is one of the UK’s leading writers and investigators of where power sits and how it works in the digital age. From watching criminals using AI to dissecting addictive technology, he’s charted and exposed the often hidden ways that technology is used to shape our lives and businesses. Fresh from ‘Power Trip’, his 5-part exploration of power and AI with Intelligence Squared, Carl will chart and diagnose the reality of power today and where it is going. How are we being liberated? How controlled? And what can we all do, to take power back?