Essays Tagged "Next Big Idea Club"
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Will AI Strengthen or Undermine Democracy?
- Bruce Schneier & Nathan E. Sanders
- Next Big Idea Club
- October 20, 2025
Listen to the Audio on NextBigIdeaClub.com
This essay also appeared in Fast Company.
Below, co-authors Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders share five key insights from their new book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship.
What’s the big idea?
AI can be used both for and against the public interest within democracies. It is already being used in the governing of nations around the world, and there is no escaping its continued use in the future by leaders, policy makers, and legal enforcers. How we wire AI into democracy today will determine if it becomes a tool of oppression or empowerment…
A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back
- Next Big Idea Club
- March 3, 2023
Listen to the Audio on NextBigIdeaClub.com
Bruce Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a cryptographer, computer security professional, and privacy specialist. He has been called a "security guru" by The Economist.
Below, Bruce shares 5 key insights from his new book, A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back.
1. Hacking is ubiquitous.
We normally think about hacking as something done to computers, but any system of rules can be hacked. Take the tax code as an example. It’s not computer code, but its code is a series of rules, of algorithms. It has vulnerabilities—we call them loopholes. It has exploits—we call them tax avoidance strategies. And there is an industry of black hat hackers finding exploitable vulnerabilities, whom we call tax attorneys and tax accountants…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.