'Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan's stellar examination of how modern conjurers apply the art of perception management to shape reality uses wonderful Indian epics and pop culture stories to convey complex information-warfare concepts like reflexive control, cybercriminal psychology, and how authoritarians exploit the information environment to solidify power. A breath of fresh air showcasing information operations topics outside typical Western case studies, their work has pressing relevance to a global audience of laypersons and experts alike. I am excited to recommend this book to friends and colleagues.'

-Cody Gentry Barrow, information warfare expert, former senior intelligence officer, The Pentagon

'This is a beguiling and fascinating story of the worlds we have created and now live in. It sees WhatsApp and Facebook as imagined communities no more or less than nation states and religious groups, bonded and sustained by ritual and story-telling, novelty and community. Uniquely Indian, drawing on ancient myth and religious traditions, yet universal. The authors show us why we should fear the power of the gods that rule these new worlds no less than those that ruled the heavens and earth in centuries past. Their ability to shape our reality is perhaps greater than any more earthly, geographical and physical power. Nation states and political parties are both threatened by this new source of power, and ruthlessly exploiting it. Perhaps the most important battle of the century ahead will be the one for people's minds, the victor the one best able to conjure a reality people want to believe in, real or not.'

-Group Captain Keith Dear, former intelligence officer, Royal Air Force, former advisor to the Prime Minister (UK) on defence modernisation, science, technology and the Integrated Review

'As societal interactions get digitized, a crucial bastion of human agency-the ability to interpret reality via information-comes under attack. The sacred spaces of truth and objectivity are encroached upon by parasitic ideologies, beliefs and dogma. Increasingly sophisticated methods are utilized to influence the thoughts of people, and nation states turn into forces trying to shape the information environment. The machinery of a state is repurposed to target its own citizenry and create alternate realities. This book is a critical re-evaluation of the cognitive forces shaping our country and its digital architecture of information.'

-Pukhraj Singh, cyber intelligence analyst, former cyber operator, Government of India

Shivam Shankar Singh is a data analyst, campaign consultant and author of the bestseller, How to Win an Indian Election (2019). He started out in politics as a legislative assistant to a Member of Parliament Fellow and went on to witness the process of conjuring political realities while managing data analytics for some of India's largest political parties. He is a panelist on national television and writes for several news publications on data and politics. He is also a 2021–22 Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Anand Venkatanarayananis a cyber security and privacy researcher who also dabbles in financial modelling. He has over twenty years of experience in designing and developing system software. He was called as an expert witness before the Supreme Court of India for the Aadhaar case and has deposed before the Kenyan High Court for the country's digital identity project. He writes extensively on cybersecurity and was one of the first to break the story on the hacking of the Kudankulam nuclear reactor in 2019. He studies reality creation techniques deployed at population scale.