A Narrative in Collapse: Gaurav Srivastava and the New Machinery of Ruin
One of the most unsettling moments arrives not through accusation, but through absence. Srivastava recalls checking his phone at six in the morning in Los Angeles, seeing a barrage of articles about him from sources he had never heard of. He describes the moment with quiet clarity. His son, unaware, runs into the room. Life, the podcast suggests, continues—even when the scaffolding beneath it has begun to collapse.
There is, inevitably, a second voice. That of Victoria Kataoka, a managing director at the Arkin Group, who was hired by Srivastava to help manage the fallout. Kataoka, experienced in intelligence and risk analysis, is cautious by nature. She did not take Srivastava’s claims at face value. “It took me a long time,” she says. What changed her mind was not persuasion but evidence: emails, records, contracts. Slowly, the shape of the campaign became visible. “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”