Democracy in the Age of Social Media, with Cyrus Krohn

On this episode of .think Atlantic, IRI’s Thibault Muzergues and tech expert Cyrus Krohn discuss how much the internet has changed in the past 13 years since the two first met during the 2008 election cycle. Touching on themes of surveillance capitalism, information warfare and a potential dystopian outcome, Krohn delves into the solutions he presented in his recently published book Bombarded: How to Fight Back Against the Online Assault on Democracy. Krohn, who’s background includes tech giants Microsoft and Yahoo, has a great deal to say about information warfare, psychological operations, and data protection. Will the U.S. – and to a greater extent, global democracy – be able to curtail the harmful effects of information warfare before it’s too late? How exactly can we challenge surveillance capitalism, and what makes the current online trend described in Krohn’s book more dangerous than what has happened before? Find out the answers to these questions and more on this intriguing episode of the podcast. Cyrus Krohn is the author of the 2020 book Bombarded: How to Fight Back Against the Online Assault on Democracy. Krohn has been in the digital realm practically since the beginning, when he helped bring the internet to the White House as an intern in the early 1990s. He then went on to consolidate his reputation as a frontline digital innovator with companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Slate.com. He has moved back and forth from the West Coast to Washington D.C., where he was most recently the Social Media manager for the Republican National Committee. Find Cyrus on Twitter at @CyrusK Find Thibault on Twitter at @tmuzergues Visit IRI’s website at www.iri.org Further reading: Bombarded: How to Fight Back Against the Online Assault on Democracy by Cyrus Krohn (https://cyruskrohn.com/)