AI as a Weapon: Deepfakes and Voice Cloning

Article originally published on Inc. Magazine in January 2026.

A convincing fake now costs almost nothing. A 30-second clip from a public speech or a handful of podcast snippets is enough for a model to synthesize a voice. A few public Instagram clips, stock footage, and smart editing can produce a video that looks real to an audience in a hurry. The result is not theater. It is operational risk. Finance teams, ops staff, and on-call spokespeople are the vectors. Attackers are exploiting predictable human behaviors rather than brittle technical defenses.

Here is the loop I see across industries. First the attackers harvest public signals. Then they synthesize a believable artifact. Next they hit a soft internal process. Finally, they monetize. The playbook often targets payments, vendor changes, or urgent public statements. The reason it works is simple: humans shortcut verification when something appears time sensitive and authoritative. Generative AI just makes authenticity feel faster and more urgent than your processes.

This is not primarily a tech problem. You can add detection tools and still lose money if a human approves a wire based on a fake call. The board level risk is governance. If your approval rules live in a person’s head, not in a process, you are betting the company on luck. That bet is no longer viable.

The framework

Treat authenticity like cash-flow control. Defend on three levels at once:

1. Technical: Reduce weak signals (no SMS MFA for critical lines), require hardware-backed keys, and add anti-spoofing for inbound audio/video.

2. Process: Codify verification rituals so people cannot short-circuit them under pressure.

3. Market and relationships: Prepay access to forensics, PR, and legal teams. Lock in carrier and platform response SLA language so takedowns and proofs move faster.

Those three axes work because they change the attacker’s math: Fraud becomes slower, costlier, and easier to spot.

Action: A playbook you can run today

Picture this scenario and run it as a drill. The CFO gets a call that sounds like you, requesting an immediate wire. Under the old rules the CFO would call, trust the voice, and send the money. Under your new rules the CFO follows a script.

First, the finance system flags the request as a trigger event because the amount exceeds a preset threshold. Second, the CFO initiates a two-channel verification routine: an authenticated voice check to a pre-registered device that requires hardware authentication, plus an independent confirmation from the CEO via the company’s secure messaging app that is linked to single-sign-on. Third, if either verification fails, the payment is paused and the incident hotline defined in your retainer is activated. The hotline connects your legal partner, your PR lead, and a forensic team who starts collecting evidence and preserving chain of custody.

Now imagine a deepfake video lands on social. The on-call PR person does not improvise. They execute a takedown kit: gather original timestamps, package the evidence described in your playbook, call the platform contacts you prearranged, and release a short verified statement that signals control without amplifying the fake. You trained for both scenarios. You practiced the takedown drill quarterly. Because you rehearsed, the public sees containment, not chaos.

Identity reset

CEO visibility drives deals, customers, and valuation. That visibility is now a liability without governance. The job is not to retreat from public life. The job is to make exposure predictable and auditable. Buy a retainer, codify simple verification rituals, rehearse scenarios, and demand post-incident KPIs from your vendors: time to block, time to remove, and time to restore verified channels. Do that and you turn authenticity from a fragile advantage into a governed asset.