50. Peter W Singer - On Ukrainian information warfare, social media dominance and the power of narrative

Today, I spoke with Dr Peter Warren Singer, who is a Strategist at New America, a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and Founder & Managing Partner at Useful Fiction LLC. He is a New York Times Bestselling author with a multitude of accolades to his name.

His non-fiction books include ‘Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry’; ‘Children at War’; ‘Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century’; ‘Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know’ and most recently, ‘LikeWar: the Weaponization of Social Media’, which is the book we talked about today.

Peter is also the co-author of a new type of novel, using the format of a technothriller to communicate non-fiction research. ‘Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War’ was both a top summer read and led to briefings everywhere from the White House to the Pentagon. His latest is ‘Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution’ and has been described by the creator of Lost and Watchmen as “A visionary new form of storytelling—a rollercoaster ride of science fiction blended with science fact,” and by the head of US Army Cyber Command as “I loved Burn-In so much that I’ve already read it twice.”

Some of the topics we covered are:

• How the concept of #LikeWar was born
• The individual vs social media
• The power of storytelling in communication
• The role of social media in the invasion of Ukraine
• Social media – shifting the Who, the When, and the Where
• Ukrainian application of best practices
• Disconnectedness of Russian narrative
• Justness of the Ukrainian cause
• 'Democratisation' of war
• The malleability of the ‘truth’
• Lessors learnt from Ukraine’s

During the chat, I referred to an article Peter recently published with Politico. You can access it here.

If you like what you’ve heard, please take 30 seconds to like and review the show wherever you get your pods. It will help the show grow.

You can also support the show on our Patreon and Buy Me A Coffee page on the links below:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thevoicesofwar

Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thevoicesofwar