Democracy Hacked: Political Turmoil and Information Warfare in the Digital Age

Democracies are being gamed. Authoritarian governments, elite populists, and freextremists are exploiting our digital information infrastructure and the vulnerabilities in our democratic system to distort and undermine our politics and elections. It is a war waged through information and it is personal and it is perpetual. Our current digital information ecosystem is inherently unstable and prone to wild volatility. There is a vacuum in the middle of the system that is open to influence by those with the motivation, the money or the expertise. Played successfully it can lead to unprecedented swings of public opinion. This book shows how hackers are gaming democracy, why they can do it, and what we need to do to save democracy for the digital age. This is a story about 'active measures', election hacking, psy-ops, intelligence services, mercenaries, hard-right nutjobs, plutocrats, the collapse of local news, Silicon Valley, Trump, trolling, surveillance - and you.