The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities
How Information Warfare Shapes Your World
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Narrated by:
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Sumit Kaul
About this listen
'Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan's stellar examination of how modern conjurers apply the art of perception management to shape reality uses wonderful Indian epics and pop culture stories to convey complex information-warfare concepts like reflexive control, cybercriminal psychology, and how authoritarians exploit the information environment to solidify power. A breath of fresh air showcasing information operations topics outside typical Western case studies, their work has pressing relevance to a global audience of laypersons and experts alike. I am excited to recommend this book to friends and colleagues.'
- Cody Gentry Barrow, information warfare expert, former senior intelligence officer, The Pentagon
'This is a beguiling and fascinating story of the worlds we have created and now live in. It sees WhatsApp and Facebook as imagined communities no more or less than nation states and religious groups, bonded and sustained by ritual and story-telling, novelty and community. Uniquely Indian, drawing on ancient myth and religious traditions, yet universal. The authors show us why we should fear the power of the gods that rule these new worlds no less than those that ruled the heavens and earth in centuries past. Their ability to shape our reality is perhaps greater than any more earthly, geographical and physical power. Nation states and political parties are both threatened by this new source of power, and ruthlessly exploiting it. Perhaps the most important battle of the century ahead will be the one for people's minds, the victor the one best able to conjure a reality people want to believe in, real or not.'
- Group Captain Keith Dear, former intelligence officer, Royal Air Force, former advisor to the Prime Minister (UK) on defence modernisation, science, technology and the Integrated Review
'As societal interactions get digitized, a crucial bastion of human agency-the ability to interpret reality via information-comes under attack. The sacred spaces of truth and objectivity are encroached upon by parasitic ideologies, beliefs and dogma. Increasingly sophisticated methods are utilized to influence the thoughts of people, and nation states turn into forces trying to shape the information environment. The machinery of a state is repurposed to target its own citizenry and create alternate realities. This book is a critical re-evaluation of the cognitive forces shaping our country and its digital architecture of information.'
- Pukhraj Singh, cyber intelligence analyst, former cyber operator, Government of India
HOW DO POLITICIANS IN TODAY'S world attain power? How do nations become powerful? Why do human beings follow others unquestioningly, even if it is to their own detriment? What factors determine which politicians, nations and organizations will dominate the modern world?
Through much of human history, societal control was determined by militaristic strength. Individuals and tribes fought to control vital resources and land. In the next part of evolution marked by colonialism and the emergence of mega-corporations, money determined power. In the recent decade, the key to supremacy has shifted again. The power and control individuals, leaders and nations have is now determined by their ability to mould the information environment.
In The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities, Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan dive into the operations of political parties, cyber criminals, godmen, nation states and intelligence agencies from around the world to explain how the power to manipulate your thoughts is being harnessed, and how information warfare is shaping your life and world.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan (P)2022 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Aaron Good
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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To trace the evolution of the American state, Aaron Good takes a deep-politics approach. The term “deep state” was badly misappropriated during the Trump era. In the simplest sense, it here refers to all those institutions that collectively exercise undemocratic power over state and society. To trace how we arrived at this point, American Exception explores various deep state institutions and history-making interventions.
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I buy the premises, but not the conclusions...
- By Clark on 01-05-23
By: Aaron Good
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The Russia Conundrum
- How the West Fell for Putin's Power Gambit—and How to Fix It
- By: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Martin Sixsmith - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin's regime—and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years. Now freed, working as a pro-democracy campaigner in enforced exile, Khodorkovsky brings us the insider's battle to save his country's soul. Offering an urgent analysis of what has gone wrong with Putin, The Russia Conundrum maps the country's rise and fall against Khodorkovsky's own journey.
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This should be required reading!
- By Jasmine J. on 10-29-22
By: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and others
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Who Controls the Internet
- Illusions of a Borderless World
- By: Jack Goldsmith, Tim Wu
- Narrated by: Bob Loza
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Is the Internet erasing national borders? Who's really in control of what's happening on the Net--Internet engineers, rogue programmers, the United Nations, or powerful countries?In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the fascinating story of the Internet's challenge to governmental rule in the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world.
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Mostly delves into questions of law
- By Amazon Customer on 05-07-11
By: Jack Goldsmith, and others
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The Plot to Hack America
- How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election
- By: Malcolm Nance
- Narrated by: Gregory Itzin
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 2016, computer technicians at the Democratic National Committee discovered that someone had accessed the organization's computer servers and conducted a theft that is best described as Watergate 2.0. In the weeks that followed, the nation's top computer security experts discovered that the cyber thieves had helped themselves to everything: sensitive documents, emails, donor information, even voice mails.
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Short and Terrifying
- By Teadrinker on 03-19-17
By: Malcolm Nance
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The End of Power
- From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be
- By: Moises Naim
- Narrated by: Matt Kugler
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím illuminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research and a lifetime of experience in global affairs, Naím explains how the end of power is reconfiguring our world.
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Another Power book
- By Anonymous User on 04-12-24
By: Moises Naim
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The Square and the Tower
- Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Elliot Hill
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and field marshals. It's about states, armies, and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?
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Not his best by a long chalk: Read Steven Pinker.
- By David on 02-05-18
By: Niall Ferguson
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Stealth War
- How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept
- By: Robert Spalding
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The media often suggest that Russia poses the greatest threat to America's national security, but the real danger lies farther east. While those in power have been distracted and disorderly, China has waged a six-front war on America's economy, military, diplomacy, technology, education, and infrastructure - and they're winning. It's almost too late to undo the shocking, though nearly invisible, victories of the Chinese. In Stealth War, retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding reveals China's motives and secret attacks on the West.
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A General with a backbone loaded with truth "woke"
- By Jason on 10-01-19
By: Robert Spalding
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The Deep State
- The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government
- By: Mike Lofgren
- Narrated by: Brian O'Neill
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Mike Lofgren is back with a book perfectly pitched for the frenzied circus of the primaries. His argument this time is that for all of the backstabbing and money grubbing of the campaign season, the politicians we elect have as little ability to shift policy as Communist party apparatchiks. Welcome to Mike Lofgren's Washington, DC - a This Town where the political theater that is endlessly tweeted and blogged about has nothing to do with actual decision making.
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Almost good, but profoundly misunderstands economics and very biased towards Democrats
- By Nina Prevot on 04-08-16
By: Mike Lofgren
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The Shadow Party
- How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party
- By: David Horowitz, Richard Poe
- Narrated by: Gregg Rizzo
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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America is under attack. Its institutions and values are under daily assault. But the principal culprits are not foreign terrorists. They are influential and powerful Americans secretly stirring up disunion and disloyalty in the shifting shadows of the Democratic Party. Radical infiltrators have been quietly transforming America's societal, cultural, and political institutions for more than a generation. Now, backed by George Soros, they are ready to make their move.
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Best introduction to the Democrat party in 2019
- By Larry on 06-12-19
By: David Horowitz, and others
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How Democracy Ends
- By: David Runciman
- Narrated by: David Runciman
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the end of World War II, democracy's sweep across the globe seemed inexorable. Yet today, it seems radically imperiled, even in some of the world's most stable democracies. How bad could things get? In How Democracy Ends, David Runciman argues that we are trapped in outdated 20th-century ideas of democratic failure. By fixating on coups and violence, we are focusing on the wrong threats. Our societies are too affluent, too elderly, and too networked to fall apart as they did in the past. We need new ways of thinking the unthinkable....
By: David Runciman
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Whistleblowers
- Honesty in America from Washington to Trump
- By: Allison Stanger
- Narrated by: Kate Mulligan
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Misconduct by those in high places is always dangerous to reveal. Whistleblowers thus face conflicting impulses: by challenging and exposing transgressions by the powerful, they perform a vital public service - yet they always suffer for it. This episodic history brings to light how whistleblowing, an important but unrecognized cousin of civil disobedience, has held powerful elites accountable in America.
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Wow!
- By Private on 11-15-20
By: Allison Stanger
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The Hacker and the State
- Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics
- By: Ben Buchanan
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Packed with insider information based on interviews, declassified files, and forensic analysis of company reports, The Hacker and the State sets aside fantasies of cyber-annihilation to explore the real geopolitical competition of the digital age. Tracing the conflict of wills and interests among modern nations, Ben Buchanan reveals little-known details of how China, Russia, North Korea, Britain, and the United States hack one another in a relentless struggle for dominance.
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A good overview of hacking influence on government
- By Eric Jackson on 08-05-20
By: Ben Buchanan
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The Death of Truth
- Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases.
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Prescient Account of the Mechanics of Tyranny
- By Brian Price on 07-27-18
By: Michiko Kakutani
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System Error
- Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
- By: Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, Jeremy M. Weinstein
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology’s liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. System Error exposes the root of our current predicament - how big tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get- and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.
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Excellent on tech. Weak on political speech.
- By Kindle Customer on 11-05-21
By: Rob Reich, and others