In 2024, a finance employee at the engineering firm Arup joined a video call with his chief financial officer and several colleagues.
They asked him to make a series of transfers. He did. About $25 million.
Everyone on that call except him was a deepfake.
What's the pattern?
Perception has been a battlefield for as long as there have been armies. The Trojan horse was a perception attack. So was every forged letter, every planted rumor, every propaganda leaflet dropped from a plane. Sun Tzu wrote that all warfare is based on deception, twenty-five centuries ago.
What changed is the cost. Faking a person used to take a studio, a team, and weeks. Now it takes a laptop and an afternoon. When the cost of manufacturing reality drops to near zero, the volume goes up, and the target stops being generals. It's everyone. Your finance team. Your parents. You.
I've spent the last few years thinking about this under a name I use: perceptual security. Cybersecurity protects the machine. Perceptual security protects the human looking at it. And right now we spend billions on the first and almost nothing on the second.
In my next book I write about the three defenses: focus, discernment, and innovation. The Arup employee didn't lack technology. He lacked a moment of pause, and a culture that made it normal to say "let me call you back on a number I trust."
What should leaders do now?
So, three things.
Build the pause in. Any request that moves money or data gets verified on a second channel, every time, no matter who appears to be asking. Make it a rule so nobody has to be brave.
Train perception, not just passwords. Show your people what a deepfake looks like today. Then remind them it will look better tomorrow.
And treat discernment as a skill you hire and promote for. The person who says "something feels off" is the most valuable sensor you own. Reward them for saying it, even when they're wrong.
The battlefield was always perception. We just used to have more time. Now the time is what you have to build yourself.
When did you last verify a request that looked completely normal?
Related: Will you have to prove you're human online?
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