About Me
I study emerging technology and international security with a focus on information manipulation. Since 2019, I've served as resident senior fellow and in various leadership positions at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), where I direct efforts to identify and disrupt hostile state influence operations. I've also worked to increase the accountability of large technology companies and more recently to ensure that the AI revolution advances the public interest.
I regularly write and speak on issues relating to US defense policy, information warfare, and AI. My 2018 book, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (coauthored with P.W. Singer), helped popularize the study of disinformation and online influence. I have since worked on or supported many efforts to standardize and professionalize the field, and to steer the counter-propaganda strategies of democratic states and social media platforms in a healthier direction.
My work always seems to find its way back to the surreal depths of the internet. I'm fascinated by the flow and diffusion of information, the history of communications mediums, and the evolution and governance of our shared digital commons. I enjoy learning about new inventions, but try to avoid taking a deterministic view of technology and history. It is fragile human nature and even more fragile human systems, not machines, that are most responsible for the course of human events.
Work
Two events most shaped my professional interests. The first was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, whose stupidity inspired me to understand how it could have possibly happened. The second was my teenage years spent in the wacky corners of the internet, which saw me making friends around the world before I could drive. It has always seemed natural to me to wonder how these two things—the nature of political violence and the weird power of the internet—might combine in unexpected ways.
I began my career as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, focused on US defense policy. In this role, I supported the Hon. Janine Davidson in her study of civil-military friction and the national security decision-making process.