Carl speaks to audiences around the world about how the digital revolution is causing power structures to crumble and evolve. He’s spoken in Parliament, to NATO, the Hay Literary Festival, Oxford University, the British Academy, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Wired, Shell, the Mayor of London, and Latitude. He’s delivered keynotes at major international events in Chicago, Bangkok, Berlin, Vienna, Oslo, Leiden, Berlin, San Francisco, Riga, Prague and Ottawa.

Carl’s debut book is The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab. In it, he traces how new, digital forms of power have chipped away at the old, familiar places where power used to sit; scaring CEOs, forcing politicians to resign, swallowing up newspapers, eclipsing experts, and pulling down companies.  It won the 2019 Transmission prize.  

From living in a political technology commune to visiting an information warfare base, meeting fake news merchants in Kosovo, hikikomori in South Korea, digital democrats in Taiwan, hackers in Las Vegas to assassination markets on the dark net, these are Carl's long-term, immersive investigations.

Over the last 15 years, Carl has led over 40 major projects to research the digital world. He highlighted the influence of conspiracy theories in 2010, called for digital literacy education in 2012. He warned about the rise of crypto-currencies in 2013, and how the digital world was transforming policing. With the former Director of GCHQ, he coined 'SOCMINT' - social media intelligence. In 2015 he led a team monitoring the rise of digital politics over the General Election. In 2016 he worked on using machine learning to measure how social media was targeting minority groups for abuse. From 2019 onwards, he has focussed on confronting the rise of shadowy forms of influence, disinformation and information warfare.