Jamie Bartlett
Boards are now expected to have a view on AI, online manipulation and digital trust without having lived inside any of those worlds. The gap between what executives understand about the internet and what is actually happening on it has become a governance problem, not a technology problem. Most strategy documents treat that gap as a training issue. It is closer to a credibility issue.
Jamie Bartlett is a British journalist and author whose books and BBC investigations help leaders make sense of how the internet, online fraud and generative AI are reshaping democracy, institutions and corporate risk.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jamie Bartlett
- He has spent more than a decade inside the parts of the internet that boards now worry about: dark net markets, crypto fraud, online radicalisation, generative AI manipulation. The reporting is first-hand, not desk-based.
- He built and ran the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, giving him a rare combination of investigative journalism and large-scale data work on online behaviour.
- The People Vs Tech won the 2019 Transmission Prize and set out a specific argument about how digital systems destabilise democratic institutions, an argument that now reads as a forecast of the AI-and-elections debate.
- The Missing Cryptoqueen is one of the most successful financial-crime podcasts ever made; he can talk about crypto fraud and influence operations from inside the case file, not from a slide deck.
- He is comfortable in front of regulators, insurers and corporate boards, having spoken at the ABI Annual Conference and worked with governments on online harms and disinformation policy.
Biography highlights
- Founder and former Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos.
- Author of The Dark Net, Radicals Chasing Utopia, The People Vs Tech and The Missing Cryptoqueen, published by Penguin Random House and Hachette.
- Winner of the 2019 Transmission Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing for The People Vs Tech.
- Presenter of the BBC Two documentary The Secrets of Silicon Valley and the BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen and Believe in Magic.
- TED speaker; “How the mysterious dark net is going mainstream” has been viewed several million times.
- Technology contributor to The Telegraph, The Spectator, the New York Times, The Times, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and Prospect; writes the Substack newsletter How to Survive the Internet.
Biography
The OneCoin fraud took roughly four billion dollars from ordinary investors before its founder, Ruja Ignatova, vanished. Jamie Bartlett spent two years inside that story for the BBC, and the podcast he co-wrote and presented, The Missing Cryptoqueen, became one of the most-downloaded financial-crime investigations the BBC has ever produced. It is the clearest example of his method: long, embedded reporting inside the parts of the digital economy that institutions struggle to see clearly.
That method runs through four books. The Dark Net mapped the subcultures, markets and ideologies operating below the public internet. Radicals Chasing Utopia tracked fringe political movements that have since shaped mainstream politics. The People Vs Tech, which won the 2019 Transmission Prize, argued that digital platforms were quietly hollowing out the conditions democracy needs to function. Boards reading it in 2018 found it provocative. Boards reading it now read it as a forecast.
The analytical foundation came earlier, at Demos. Bartlett founded and led the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media for around a decade, combining investigative reporting with large-scale data work on online extremism, political movements and information operations. That work fed into BBC Two’s The Secrets of Silicon Valley and into regular contributions to the New York Times, The Times, the Guardian, Foreign Policy and Prospect.
His current focus is the generative AI cycle and what it does to fraud, trust and democratic infrastructure. He writes the Substack How to Survive the Internet, speaks to insurers, regulators and corporates on digital risk, and has appeared at venues including the Association of British Insurers Annual Conference. The brief he answers most cleanly: help senior leaders see what is actually happening online, not what their dashboards say is happening.
Key speaking topics
- Generative AI, democracy and corporate trust
- Online fraud, crypto scams and financial crime
- Disinformation, influence operations and information integrity
- Dark net markets and digital underworld economies
- Technology, regulation and the future of online harms
- Political radicalisation and digital subcultures
Ideal for
- Boards, audit committees and risk committees grappling with AI, fraud and digital trust as governance issues
- Insurers, banks and financial services firms exposed to crypto fraud, identity risk and information operations
- CISOs, Chief Risk Officers and Heads of Compliance briefing executive teams on the changing online threat landscape
- Government, regulatory and policy audiences shaping rules on AI, online harms and platform accountability
Audience outcomes
- A clearer picture of how generative AI is changing fraud, influence and information integrity in practice, beyond the headline narrative.
- Specific case material on OneCoin, dark net markets and online radicalisation that leaders can use to brief their own teams.
- A sharper sense of where digital risk now sits inside corporate governance, not only inside IT.
- Confidence in talking about technology, democracy and trust without leaning on consultancy abstractions.
- A reading of where the next two years of regulatory and reputational pressure on technology are likely to land.