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Cognitive empires, Colonising the mind

Online | May 20, 2026 | 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM CEST
A new form of power is emerging, one that operates not through territory or industry, but through the human mind itself. In this next phase of the Information Age, the primary strategic asset is no longer land, labour, or even data, it is cognition.
 
As digital platforms evolve into AI-driven environments, they no longer simply distribute information; they shape perception in real time. Algorithms learn individual behaviours, optimise against emotional responses, and continuously influence attention, belief, and decision-making, often without conscious awareness. What was once media has become infrastructure for thought.
 
This marks the rise of “cognitive empires”: systems of power that influence societies not through coercion, but through the ambient, persistent shaping of how reality is interpreted. Control sits increasingly with those who own and operate the platforms, compute, and AI models mediating daily life, primarily large US and Chinese technology systems, leaving much of the world as participants in architectures they do not control.
 
The central challenge is cognitive sovereignty: the ability of individuals and nations to retain autonomy over attention, emotion, and thought. As more of human life becomes AI-mediated, the defining question is no longer just who controls technology, but who controls the formation of belief itself.
 
This session considers the world that is emerging from this critical phenomenon. 

Panelists:

Ketan Patel Ketan Patel, Chairman of Force for Good and ISII; Executive Director, WAAS. Ketan Patel is the Chairman of Force for Good and the Institute of Strategic Intelligence and Intervention (ISII); CEO, Found, Greater Pacific Capital; Executive Director, World Academy of Art and Science; Former Managing Director, Head of Strategic Group, Goldman Sachs; Former Partner, KPMG; Author ‘The Master Strategist’.  He was appointed by Jane Goodall to her Council of Hope.

Glenn Gaffney, Former Director of Science and Technology, CIA; Director, ISII. Glenn Gaffney is Director of the Institute for Strategic and Intelligence and Intervention (ISII), where he focuses on advancing U.S. strategic advantage through innovation and talent. He spent 31 years in the U.S. Intelligence Community, including senior leadership roles at the Central Intelligence Agency as Director of Science and Technology and a decade overseeing intelligence collection and shaping critical national security capabilities. He later helped bridge government research and industry as a co-founder of Emerge and an executive at in-Q-Tel.

Annika Rao-Monari, CEO, CleeAI; Entrepreneur in Crypto and Blockchain. Annika Rao-Monari is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of CleeAI, which has built a new AI architecture, the large knowledge model – a semantic reasoning and control layer combined with a distributed network of small language models – designed to run on CPU alone, cutting compute costs by more than half. She earned her MSci in Particle Physics from Imperial College London, where she worked with CERN applying deep neural networks to dark matter detection. She went on to co-found the Aventus Protocol, one of the first Layer-2 blockchains, and has since founded and scaled two further companies across blockchain and AI, earning Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe recognition and her first exit at 28.

Jon Miller, CEO of Integrated Media; Former Chairman and CEO of AOL; CEO, NewsCorp Online Media Group. Mr. Miller was previously the Chairman and CEO of the Digital Media Group and the Chief Digital Officer for News Corporation. Prior to that he was the founding partner of Velocity Interactive Group, an investment firm focused on digital media. He has served in positions of senior executive responsibility for 25 years at AOL, USA Information and Viacom. As Chairman and CEO of AOL, he led an industry-defining turnaround and restructured the company.

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