The keynote speaker of TalTech Innovation Festival 2026, Carl Miller (Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, UK), will focus in his talk “Dark Influence – the Future of Information Warfare and How to Stop It” on one of the most complex security challenges of our time: how influence operates in the digital world and how it can be countered.
Miller is one of the leading researchers examining how social media and digital technologies shape society, politics, and power structures. He is a co-founder of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) and has spent over a decade studying information operations, cybercrime, radicalisation, and election interference in online environments. His work focuses on how the digital environment changes what people see, believe, and decide.
In his talk, Miller explains how information warfare has evolved over the past decade. While it was once a side aspect of traditional warfare, information itself has now become a weapon, and the digital space its primary battlefield.
The goal of influence operations is no longer just spreading false information, but shaping entire “realities,” where people’s perceptions and beliefs are systematically—and often invisibly—guided. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has accelerated this process even further.
Miller emphasizes that new technologies enable influence operations to be personalised and scaled in ways that were previously impossible—for example, through continuous, automated interaction flows that shape attitudes and behaviour without direct propaganda. This means that information warfare is increasingly moving toward subtle, long-term effects.
In addition to outlining the problem, Miller also offers solutions. His D-RAIL framework focuses not on debunking individual false claims, but on disrupting the infrastructure of influence operations—such as funding, networks, and technical channels. This approach helps reduce harm while preserving the core values of democratic societies.
Miller’s presentation provides a comprehensive view of how power operates in the digital age, how our understanding of reality is shaped, and what democratic societies can do to maintain trust in a world where information itself has become a tool of conflict.
The TalTech Innovation Festival 2026 brings together leading international and Estonian experts to address one of the central questions of the digital age: how to protect trust in a world where technological development, artificial intelligence, and information warfare are reshaping both security and human perception.