Carl Miller

Carl Miller’s debut book, The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab (published by Penguin, Random House) was awarded the 2019 Transmission Prize. In it, Carl threw himself into the wildest and most spectacular parts of the digital age. He came face-to-face with hikikomori – ‘the departed’ – in South Korea who only live online, lived in a political-technology commune, had a knife held to his throat and become involved in the struggle for control of an online assassination market, all to work towards helping us understand how the digital revolution is causing traditional power structures to crumble and evolve, and how this process is changing all of our lives in ways we may not have noticed.

As well as everything else, Carl is a visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, a member of the Society Board of the British Computing Society, an Associate of the Imperial War Museum, a member of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, and a Commissioner of the Democracy and Civic Participation Commission.

He writes for Wired, New Scientist, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph and the Guardian and is the author of over a dozen major reports on the effect of the digital world on society and politics and the different lenses through which this can be studied. This includes the influence of the internet on radicalisation, policing and counter-terrorism, hate crime and social media, digital democracy, and changing identities and beliefs in the digital world.

• The Hidden Reality of Power Today – How the most precious commodity of the digital age is being fought over, won, lost and transformed.  From politics to journalism, business to crime, Carl will talk about his year-long journey to track down the nature of power today, show where it has gone and the shape it now takes.
• Understanding 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.
• Digital crime and cyber security – Carl draws on going on a cyber-crime raid with the police, going to the largest annual gathering of hackers in Las Vegas, and even trying to do some cyber-crime himself to show how we’re all living through an extraordinary moment: the worst crisis of law enforcement in the history of modern policing.
• 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?
• Synthetic Media – Is seeing believing? Maybe not. Carl talks about the struggle between truth and lies online. He covers the rise of attention hacking, fake news, and information warfare. How new technology can create fake photos and videos that look very, very real. How social media platforms are being systematically subverted, and how militaries increasingly fight wars in information. It’s a new arms race, but one everyone is part of.