Renée DiResta Keynote Speaker

Renée DiResta is a highly regarded expert and speaker on adversarial abuse online – in other words, on how bad actors manipulate the digital public square. From spammers and scammers to state sponsored trolls, she investigates how social media platforms and technologies (such as generative AI) are used for evil. Although she studies abuse, she also uses and loves technology. Renée was the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies.  She is now Associate Research Professor at Georgetown University McCourt School. Renée was featured in the notable Netflix documentary film ‘ The Social Dilemma’ in 2020.

Renée has spent a decade studying rumors, propaganda, and influence in the digital age, in contexts ranging from conspiracy theories, to terrorist activity, to state-sponsored information warfare. At the behest of the bipartisan leadership of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, she led one of the two research teams that produced comprehensive assessments of the Internet Research Agency’s and GRU’s influence operations targeting the U.S. from 2014-2018. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and civil society organizations on technology policy in areas ranging from transparency legislation to AI implications for women and children. She frequently speaks to business leaders about risks to brand and executive reputation.

Renée regularly writes and speaks about the role that technology plays in society today, describing her own firsthand deep dives into fascinating and specific case studies. She was the keynote speaker for BlackHat cybersecurity conference in 2020. She is a contributor at The Atlantic. Her writing has appeared in Wired, Foreign Affairs, Columbia Journalism Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Yale Review, The Guardian, POLITICO, Slate, and Noema, as well as many academic journals. She is a 2020 Emerson Fellow, a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar, a 2018 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, and a 2019 Truman National Security Project security fellow, and was a Council on Foreign Relations term member. She was a founding advisor to the Center for Humane Technology.

Renée is the author of Invisible Rulers: The People who turn Lies into Reality, published by Public Affairs at Hachette Book Group, and The Hardware Startup: Building your Product, Business, and Brand, published by O’Reilly Media.