How Syria’s Dictatorship Lost the War of Information

How Syria’s Dictatorship Lost the War of Information

In an age ruled by artificial intelligence, satellites and supercomputers, the engineer Mohammed al-Ahmad spent six months imprisoned in the basement cells of the Military Security Branch in Damascus for no reason other than a coincidence of names. His name, his father’s, his mother’s and his hometown’s matched those of a man wanted by the directorate.  Readers may be tempted to dismiss this story as fiction or exaggeration. It is neither. What …