Decoding Trust: Why a Tech Firm Looks to History to Secure Our Future

LONDON – September 01, 2026 – In an era defined by an escalating arms race between artificial intelligence and digital fraud, one technology company is making a surprising strategic pivot: back in time. Sumsub, a firm known for its AI-powered compliance and anti-fraud solutions, today launched 'Trust Forward,' a narrative podcast series that eschews code for case studies from antiquity, swapping server logs for stories of pirate codes and ancient currency.

The six-part series, hosted by anthropologist and broadcaster Mary-Ann Ochota, aims to deconstruct the very architecture of human belief. It’s a move that seems counterintuitive on the surface. Why would a company on the front lines of combating deepfakes and synthetic identity fraud invest in a deep dive into the history of promissory notes and the sociology of reputation?

"The truth is, deepfakes and forgeries are just the latest take on old tricks," Ochota explains in the announcement. "The technology evolves, but the pattern never changes: we've been building, breaking, and rebuilding trust for millennia." This sentiment is echoed by Sumsub's leadership. "Trust itself is much bigger than software—it's the fundamental technology that holds human society together," says Andrew Sever, the company's Co-founder and CEO. The podcast, he notes, takes a step back to understand how these mechanisms have always worked, and what that history tells us about securing the future.

The Architecture of Credibility

Sumsub's initiative is more than just a novel content marketing play; it's a public thesis on the nature of its own industry. The company has positioned itself as the market's "first AI-powered trust infrastructure," a platform designed to unify the typically fragmented and chaotic world of corporate compliance. Where businesses once juggled up to nine separate tools for identity verification, fraud prevention, and risk management, Sumsub offers a single, integrated layer. This consolidation, it argues, provides a more holistic and continuous view of risk across the entire customer lifecycle.

By launching 'Trust Forward,' the company is effectively arguing that a truly robust "trust infrastructure" cannot be built on algorithms alone. It requires a foundational understanding of the human and historical context in which trust operates. The podcast serves as an intellectual extension of its product—a strategic effort to establish itself not just as a tool provider, but as the definitive thought leader on the very concept of trust in a digital age. This represents a significant evolution from its previous podcasting efforts, such as the more industry-focused "What The Fraud?" series, signaling a new level of ambition to shape the broader discourse.

A Council of Experts for a Digital Age

To build its case, Sumsub has assembled a formidable roster of experts whose credentials extend far beyond Silicon Valley. The lineup for 'Trust Forward' reads like a syllabus for a cross-disciplinary super-course on credibility. Each episode pairs Ochota with luminaries from fields that have wrestled with questions of trust for centuries.

Harvard cryptographer Bruce Schneier, a figure The Economist once dubbed a "security guru," appears in two episodes, tracing the line from ancient seals that made trust portable to the planetary-scale social platforms that manipulate it today. His work provides the technical and historical spine for the series, connecting the dots between the first forms of currency and the cryptographic principles that underpin modern digital identity.

But the series quickly moves beyond pure technology. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the pioneering astrophysicist who discovered pulsars, joins an episode to discuss how status has historically served as a proxy for scientific truth—a crucial lesson in an era of rampant misinformation. Psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Maria Konnikova, whose book 'The Confidence Game' is a masterclass on the mechanics of the con, unpacks the architecture of fabricated reputation. Oxford Criminology Professor Federico Varese explores the self-enforced honor systems of outlaw groups like pirates, demonstrating how trust functions even outside formal law. And Tom Standage, Deputy Editor of The Economist, details the critical shift from community gossip to structured financial ledgers like credit scores.

This deliberate curation of experts underscores the podcast's central premise: that to defeat the modern digital con artist, one must understand the timeless psychological and societal vulnerabilities they exploit.

The AI Arms Race and the Human Element

The podcast's launch comes at a critical juncture. According to industry analysis, fraud powered by artificial intelligence is evolving faster than ever, with deepfake incidents reportedly increasing fourfold globally over the past two years, now accounting for 7% of all fraud attempts. This escalating threat has created what many in the field call an "AI arms race."

Sumsub is deeply engaged on the technological front of this battle. In 2025, the company launched its AI Academic Program, establishing pioneering research partnerships with Germany's Constructor University and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. These collaborations are focused on developing next-generation defenses, from advanced Bayesian methods for detecting synthetic fraud to human-imperceptible watermarks that can secure personal images against deepfake manipulation. The company's own AI research team has contributed peer-reviewed work to top machine learning conferences, signaling its commitment to advancing the state of the art.

'Trust Forward' represents the other, equally critical front in this war: the human one. While its academic partnerships build better algorithmic shields, the podcast aims to arm the public and the industry with a better understanding of the spear. By dissecting the historical patterns of deception and the societal structures of belief, the series provides a crucial intellectual framework for navigating a world where seeing is no longer believing.

From Ancient Seals to Digital Signatures

Ultimately, 'Trust Forward' is a compelling bet that the solutions to our most futuristic problems may lie in our collective past. The series argues that the challenge of verifying an identity over the internet is a direct descendant of the challenge a Mesopotamian merchant faced when using a cylinder seal to guarantee the contents of a clay jar. The dynamics of reputation on a social media platform echo the gossip and governance of an ancient merchant guild, just amplified to a planetary scale.

By drawing these parallels, Sumsub is doing more than launching a podcast; it is reframing the entire conversation around digital security. It suggests that the most resilient systems will be those that are not only technologically advanced but also deeply informed by the long, complex, and often messy history of human credibility. In an age of synthetic reality, understanding the fundamental architecture of belief may be our most essential line of defense.