The Swing

Weaponizing Hate: Gendered Disinformation Attacks on Social Infrastructure

Gendered disinformation is both a sophisticated weapon and a blunt-force tool of hybrid warfare that is being used to silence women. It is a threat to collective security -- and democracies are paying the price. In this episode of The Swing, host Heather Bakken is joined by three leading experts to unpack one of the most urgent and underexamined threats to democratic participation. Dr. Janos Botschner is a behavioural scientist and public safety leader. Dr. Mateusz Łabuz is a cybersecurity researcher specializing in AI-driven disinformation and cognitive warfare. And Professor Jennifer Irish is a Principal at Pendulum Group's Geopolitical Strategic Advisory and Lead of the Information Integrity Practice. The panel examines how AI is supercharging gendered attacks by making them more scalable, more believable, and more damaging. The chilling effect and harm it causes is a fundamental threat to all citizens, communities and society. Synthetic pornography and coordinated harassment campaigns have real-world consequences: PTSD and mental health impacts that harm well being and productivity, the chilling effect on who chooses to enter politics, public leadership, or journalism, and the permission structures that allow misogyny to proliferate across platforms and cross from the digital world into physical threat. These experts tackle hard questions: how state and non-state actors are actively exploiting gendered disinformation as a geopolitical tool, where legal frameworks and platform accountability are failing, and what a whole-of-society response actually looks like. This is not just a conversation about online abuse. It's a conversation about who gets to participate in democracy and who is being systematically pushed out. The call to action is stronger platform accountability, updated criminal codes, digital literacy education, and coordinated institutional support. Broader Bios: Prof. Jennifer Irish is a principal at Pendulum's Geopolitical team and the Information Integrity practice lead. She is an accomplished former Canadian diplomat and senior international and national security executive, currently serving as an Associate at University of Ottawa’s Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership, where she directs its security and intelligence programming. Her work advances the understanding, analysis and mitigation of disinformation, misinformation and foreign influence operations. Dr. Mateusz Łabuz is the head of "International Cybersecurity" project at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), You can learn more about NCII and 'deep fakes' through his report: Non Consensual Sexualizing Deepfakes - Threats and Recommendations for Legal & Societal Action. [https://ceeddw.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/NCII_DeepFakes_ThreatsRecommendations.pdf] Dr. Janos Botschner is Principal of HumInsight and a Senior Associate with the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance (CSKA). He has presented aspects of this work globally, and continues to be active in this area. Janos and CSKA recently led a major initiative focusing on gendered disinformation in collaboration with Sapper Labs Group, Actua and others. Learn more here: Tackling Online Gendered Disinformation: New Canadian Research and Resources [https://cskacanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Press-release_-GD-CSKA_AUG-20_2025F.pdf] Special thanks to our audio engineer, Paul MacInnis.

Powering Canada: Can Energy Ambition Overcome Regulatory Reality?

Prime Minister Mark Carney's office announced it will hold the first Canada Investment Summit in September. In this episode of The Swing, Pendulum examines whether Canada can turn its vast energy wealth into a competitive advantage in an increasingly power-hungry world. Host Heather Bakken is joined by industry leaders Lorena Patterson, President and CEO of Water Power Canada; Leah Lawrence, Corporate Director and President of Clean Energy Capitalists; and Cam McAlpine, Principal at Pendulum. Canada is simultaneously one of the most resource-rich and one of the most regulatory-constrained countries in the developed world. Slow permitting, fragmented federal-provincial governance, and complex consultation processes are creating uncertainty that deters investment, even as global demand for energy surges. This conversation takes electrification beyond the grid to a broader human and economic story where more of life is being powered, monitored, stored, and optimized through electricity that includes everything from phones, watches, rings, and cloud-based memory to organizations, industrial equipment, and critical infrastructure that are increasingly monitored in real time. Unlocking Canada’s energy potential requires more than policy tweaks. In the race for AI data centers and industrial reshoring, it demands political will, coordinated governance, and a shift in how Canadians understand energy as a foundation of economic sovereignty and national strategy that can unleash future prosperity and security. Check out Lorena's opinion piece in the Financial Post for more insights on large-scale hydroelectricity: Canada’s hydro power problem is all the barriers blocking it | Financial Post [https://financialpost.com/opinion/canada-hydro-power-problem-barriers-blocking] Special thanks to our audio engineer, Paul MacInnis, aka "the guy",

Statecraft to Stagecraft: The Use of AI in Cognitive Warfare

War with Iran marks the first truly AI-native information environment in warfare where the human brain is both the target and the weapon, and the battlefield is your phone. In this episode, producer and host Heather Bakken is joined by two experts in the field of cognitive and gray zone warfare. Jennifer Irish is a principal at Pendulum Geopolitical Advisory Group and leader of the Information Integrity Practice. She's also a former Canadian diplomat and security executive. Elizabeth Anderson is a former senior advisor to Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs and a fellow at the Montreal Institute for Global Security. Her research specializes in cognitive warfare and democratic resilience. The 2026 threat environment has our adversaries working at machine speed against our human-paced institutions. From deep fakes to cheap fakes and video cartoons, AI is industrializing information manipulation at warp speed. Identity can be cloned, platforms can be mimicked and content can be mass-produced. Have we crossed a threshold where we cannot guarantee what truth is anymore? Tune in to find out. With special thanks to our audio engineer, "The Guy", Paul MacInnis.

Is the Strait of Hormuz a Straitjacket for Democracy?

This episode host Heather Bakken is joined by Pendulum colleagues Jennifer Irish and Yaroslav Baran to discuss how the seemingly unplanned aspects of U.S. strategy in Iran are actually playing out geopolitically and what impact it has on Canada. The trio unpacks what the war reveals about great power dynamics and the consequences that reach well beyond the Strait of Hormuz. Irish argues this conflict is an example of what warfare is going to become in the hybrid warfare space, which involves multiple fronts, and the implications for Canada. She notes the yawning gap in cognitive warfare readiness as Iran deploys AI-generated disinformation at unprecedented scale. Baran raises the stakes by arguing Canada needs to get serious about energy sovereignty and that while Trump keeps score on who shows up to help and who doesn't, the NATO military alliance underpinning Canadian security for 76 years may be more fragile than Ottawa wants to admit. It`s time to make hard calls on Arctic sovereignty, energy infrastructure, and the information integrity that holds a democracy together.

War in Ukraine: Canadian Support for Humanitarian Aid

This week marks four years since the most recent unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Ukrainians have been at war for 12 years and have spent the last four shedding blood, tears, and the stability they once enjoyed to defend the freedoms and values of their democracy. It was – and continues to be – a cruel and unjustified assault on a sovereign country. It goes against international law and defies human decency. This episode Pendulum host and co-founding partner, Heather Bakken, is joined by Valeriy Kostyuk, Executive Director of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, and Pendulum co-founding partner, Yaroslav Baran. They discuss how Canadians have opened their hearts and their wallets to provide humanitarian assistance for Ukrainians while Putin pummels civilian infrastructure. Hear about what's at stake, who is impacted, and why it's in Canada's interest to prevent Moscow from winning its war of ethnocide.