Sandwiches will be served from 12.40

This is part of the Balliol College Oliver Smithies Visiting Lecturer Seminar Series.

A great deal of the discourse concerning “disinformation” or “foreign interference” has focused – with some justification – on countries in the West. However, nations in Southeast Asia have increasingly in recent years had to grapple with these threats. The more wired and connected the country, the greater the threat surface. Nations like Singapore, which traditionally have prided themselves on diversity and cosmopolitanism, have also had to come to terms with the fact that these attributes can also be turned against the state by  actors seeking for their own reasons to undermine the body politic (to seed their own narratives, or to make civilisational calls to one particular demographic, for example). This talk tackles some of these challenges that Singapore faces, along with what is being done to counter these threats.

Dr Shashi Jayakumar is Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security, and Executive Coordinator of Future Issues and Technology at RSIS.