Carl Miller
Most leadership teams treat digital risk as a technical problem they can delegate. The real exposure is power: who controls the information, the platforms, and the narratives that now decide a company’s reputation, a market’s direction, and an election’s outcome. By the time that shift is visible on a balance sheet, the advantage has already moved.
Carl Miller investigates the hidden centres of power in the digital age and shows leaders how disinformation, online influence, and digital crime now shape markets, institutions, and politics, drawing on a decade of front-line research at Demos.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Carl Miller
- He coined the term SOCMINT (social media intelligence) in 2012 with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett, which means a room gets the person who defined the field of online influence analysis, not someone summarising it second-hand.
- His method is first-person and investigative. He has been on cyber-crime raids and spent five years tracing a dark-web murder-for-hire marketplace, so his account of how digital threats actually operate comes from inside them, not from a slide of statistics.
- He connects technology to power in terms a board can act on, explaining how a tweet moves a stock, how bots reach an electorate, and how disinformation lands on a brand before the communications team sees it coming.
- He has led more than forty research projects on extremism, electoral interference, and cyber-crime, giving him a span across the threats most organisations encounter only one at a time.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder and Research Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos, the first UK think tank institute dedicated to the digital world.
- Coined “social media intelligence” (SOCMINT) in 2012 with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett.
- Author of The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab (Penguin Random House, 2018), joint winner of the 2019 Transmission Prize.
- Host of Kill List (Wondery/Novel), The Guardian’s best podcast of 2024 and Broadcast Press Guild Podcast of the Year 2025, reaching #1 in seven countries.
- Visiting Fellow, Department of War Studies, King’s College London; founder of CASM Technology.
- Contributor to The Economist, Wired, the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian; former presenter on the BBC’s Click.
Biography
More crime now happens online than offline, and most organisations are still structured to defend a perimeter that no longer exists. Carl Miller has spent over a decade documenting where control has actually moved. In 2012, working with David Omand and Jamie Bartlett, he coined the term social media intelligence, SOCMINT, and built the discipline that now sits behind how governments and companies read online influence.
That work is grounded in an institution he helped create. He co-founded the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, the first UK think tank dedicated to the digital world, and has run more than forty research projects on extremism, electoral interference, radicalisation, and cyber-crime as its Research Director.
What separates him from most technology commentators is that he goes to the places he writes about. His book The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab traced power from a suburban cyber-crime raid to the engine rooms of Silicon Valley and won the 2019 Transmission Prize. The reporting is immersive, evidenced, and built from direct encounters with hackers, police units, and disinformation operators.
His Kill List podcast came from a five-year investigation into a dark-web marketplace selling murder for hire, where he raced to warn targeted strangers while authorities hesitated. The series topped charts in seven countries and was named The Guardian’s best podcast of 2024. It is the clearest demonstration of his core argument: digital systems now hold real power over real lives, and the people who understand that power are rarely the ones in charge of it.
Key speaking topics
- Disinformation and information warfare
- The transformation of power in the digital age
- Social media intelligence (SOCMINT)
- Digital crime and cyber-security
- Threats to democracy and elections
- Artificial intelligence and control
- The future of digital business risk
Ideal for
- Boards and CEOs setting strategy under digital, reputational, and information risk
- CISOs and heads of security reframing cyber as a leadership issue, not a compliance one
- Communications, public affairs, and risk leaders facing disinformation and online influence
- Government, policy, and institutional audiences working on democracy, security, and tech governance
Audience outcomes
- A clear map of where power has moved in the digital age and who now holds it
- A working grasp of how disinformation and online influence operations are built and deployed
- Front-line examples of how digital crime and cyber-threats actually function, drawn from direct investigation
- A sharper sense of which digital risks reach the balance sheet, and how early they become visible
Talks
A year-long journey to track down what power looks like now and where it has gone, from politics and journalism to business and crime.
Key takeaways:
- Where control has migrated in the digital age and who holds it
- How power is fought over, won, and lost across platforms and institutions
- What the shift means for organisations trying to keep up
An account of the hidden risks digital technologies create, from market disruption to the manufacture of fake news.
Key takeaways:
- How digital systems generate sudden, large-scale volatility
- Why crises in law enforcement and information now spill into markets
- Where the under-recognised risks sit for leadership teams
A first-hand account from cyber-crime raids and the world’s largest hacker gathering, on what Miller calls the worst crisis of law enforcement in modern policing.
Key takeaways:
- How digital crime operates from the inside
- Why traditional law enforcement is struggling to respond
- What organisations should understand about their own exposure
Where information warfare came from, how it is conducted, and where this new form of conflict is heading.
Key takeaways:
- The origins and mechanics of information warfare
- The tools and techniques used to manipulate at scale
- How the field is likely to evolve