You're Hello and welcome to Spycast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

I'm Mark Stout historian at the museum. I'm a PhD

author and historian who served for 13 years as an analyst in the U.S.

Intelligence Community. Every month the museum brings you interesting talks

with authors, scholars, and practitioners who has something to do with the world of intelligence and espionage.

We're joined today by Yevgeny Morozov who is one of the world's leading

analysts of the political implications of the internet and social media. Yevgeny's a

native of Belarus originally and he wears many hats.

He's a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and Boston Review.

He's a fellow at the New America Foundation here in Washington.

And also at present, he's actually hanging his

hat out at Stanford University my old stomping grounds at something called the

Center for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law. Yevgeny is also the

author of a new book just out, The Net Delusion, The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,

which should be in fine bookstores everywhere.

Yevgeny, welcome.

Good to be here.

Yevgeny, many people are very optimistic about the potential of the

internet and of social media to bring about openness and democracy in

authoritarian countries and these people have often been called cyber utopians.

One might almost say, however, that you're a cyber-dispopian.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to that somewhat unusual and unpopular even point of view.

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