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A new and exceptionally timely eight-part podcast series is shining a light on the ever-increasing threats facing democracy today, from foreign interference by the usual suspects like Russia, to more troubling home-grown varieties.
Ctrl Alt Deceit promises to gather the expertise of former intelligence agents, disinformation researchers, government insiders, and policy analysts, to expose the “covert forces and strategies that influence public opinion and threaten our democratic freedoms”.
“Given the increasingly sophisticated tactics being used to influence public opinion, we believe it’s more important than ever to bring these issues to the forefront”, Nina Dos Santos, co-host of the show, said in a press release.
“Ctrl Alt Deceit provides the context listeners need to better understand the true scale of threats to our democracy.”
Dos Santos shares presenting duties with BBC radio regular Owen Bennett-Jones, and together will be seeking answers to some of the most pressing questions of our time — How vulnerable is our democracy? Who stands to gain from manipulating the public narrative? And what can be done to stop it?
“We have all got used to taking democracy for granted and don’t realise how fragile it is”, Bennett-Jones says. “Russia and China are both trying to undermine our democratic systems and some people in the West are helping them, sometimes knowingly.
“There are many dangers for us to look at, from false narratives, to hacking and even manipulating the electoral process itself.”
And some of the loudest voices in the US right now are saying the quiet part out loud, as the first episode of Ctrl Alt Deceit lays out.
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Disinformation
“I don’t believe in democracy”, social media personality Lauren Chen said earlier this year, adding: “I believe individual rights and limited government are way more important than the idea of everybody having a vote.
“And if the past few generations have shown us anything, it’s that democracy and individual rights, and limited government don’t often go hand in hand.”
While it may be tempting to simply dismiss the comments of yet another controversial social media personality, it should be noted that Chen is the co-founder of Tenet Media, which in September was accused of allegedly receiving funding from Russia.
“The Russians are, unfortunately, extremely involved in (the 2024 US presidential campaign)”, disinformation expert Darren Linville tells Ctrl Alt Deceit.
Linville says that while Russian interference in previous US presidential elections was characterized by bots and troll farms, this time around it has become far more sophisticated.
“What we’re seeing this year more is the use of real people in their disinformation campaigns, real influencers that are spreading both propaganda and disinformation on behalf of the Russians”, he says.
Bennet-Jones highlights that there are many people in Russia and China who would agree with Chen’s sentiments, but to hear it said so openly in the US is a phenomenon that cannot be overstated.
“It’s unusual to hear it in America, the country that traditionally has defended democracy, but it’s all part of the messaging that’s flying around”, he says.
And if foreign interference wasn’t a big enough threat on its own, the main focus of the first episode of Ctrl Alt Deceit is a completely home-grown menace — US election deniers hacking voting systems.
Susan Greenhalgh, senior advisor on election security for Free Speech For People, highlights several cases where people affiliated with the Trump campaign have been able to make copies of the software used in vote counting machines.
“So they downloaded the software that records and counts votes, uploaded it to share file sites, and shared it with a network of election deniers”, she says, adding: “How can that software be misused?”
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“So there are several things that they could use the software for, subverting or undermining the… election”, she says.
“And one way, which has been predicted by people like myself and the computer scientists that I work with, is to use the software to claim that there’s evidence that the machines are vulnerable, potentially corrupting the election”.
And no discussion about disinformation and the upcoming US presidential election would be complete without mentioning X-owner Elon Musk, who in recent months has gone all-in on supporting Trump.
Highlighting a recent case in which Musk promoted a social media post falsely accusing a homeless centre in Philadelphia of voter fraud, Ctrl Alt Deceit outlines how he has used his social media platform to influence the election.
“He’s using it with aplomb”, Dos Santo says, adding: “But he’s also using his sizeable fortune as well to convince a really important group of American voters to back Trump with tactics that lots of people claim could potentially be illegal.”
The first episode of Ctrl Alt Deceit is out now and can be listened to here.