Teaser: S4:E37🎙️of the Leadership & Success Podcast is LIVE with Dr. P.W. Singer

23 Jul 2025 · 3 min

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3:13

In this teaser for the Leadership & Success Podcast, Dr. Peter W. Singer—professor of practice at Arizona State University, author, and strategist at the New America think‑tank— outlines his career focus on the intersection of technology, national security, and the way science‑fiction concepts become reality. He distinguishes traditional cyberwar (hacking networks) from its “evil twin,” which he calls “likewar”: the manipulation of people on social platforms through viral likes, shares, and misinformation. Singer cites the rise of ISIS and the election of Donald Trump as stark examples of likewar’s destructive power, while also noting its positive uses in activism, marketing, and celebrity culture. He recounts his early research (circa 2013) with Emerson Brooking on how social media is weaponized in war zones. The second speaker reinforces Singer’s message, criticizing the hype‑driven narrative that inflates cyber threats without addressing the underlying human vulnerabilities—beliefs, trust, and psychology. Singer calls for clarity over alarmism, emphasizing that cyber and information warfare are fundamentally human problems that require nuanced, human‑centric solutions.

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So I'm Peter W. Singer, a professor of practice here at Arizona State. I'm also an author of multiple books on changes in technology, national security, and I'm also a strategist at New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C. That's a partner of ASU. So I've always been interested in two areas. One is politics and history, and secondly, I've always been interested in the cross between technology and science fiction and science fiction becoming real. The books that I've been writing explore these issues of change, changes in everything from new technologies like robotics, changes in new types of threats like cybersecurity, changes in warfare to even changes in the types of online activities and threats, issues that are emerging in great importance but we don't have a really good handle on. That's what I've been naturally drawn to. So if you think of the idea of cyber war, which we've all grown, you know, a bit comfortable with talking about over the last decade plus, it's the idea of hacking networks. But cyberwar has an evil twin, so to speak. Mm-hmm. Um, and we called that likewar. And it's the idea of not hacking the network, but hacking the people on social networks by driving ideas viral through their likes, their shares, but also, of course, sometimes lies. Mm-hmm. And, um, we see this play out, uh, in episodes that range from, um, the rise of ISIS to the rise of Donald Trump. To— it can have positive effects. We think of all sorts of activist movements. It's used in marketing. It's used by celebrities. And so myself and a young researcher named Emerson Brooking, we started on that project— gosh, I want to say like 2013 period. And essentially, we started out trying to understand how social media was being used in war zones.
Instead of focusing on what we need to learn, we've instead fed on hype that fuels fears but doesn't solve problems. Understanding the difference between hackers doing something annoying and something with the capacity to cause serious harm will better direct our fears and resources. If you think of the idea of cyberwar, it's the idea of hacking networks, but at the end of the day, it's really about human vulnerabilities, psyches, beliefs, trust. Dr. Singer emphasizes clarity over alarmism in cybersecurity. A stance still vital today. He reminds us that cyber and information warfare aren't just technical; they're profoundly human, affecting what people think and trust.