Latest News
Audio: The Coming AI Hackers. How Will They Put Society At Risk?
Listen to the Audio on SoundCloud.com
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, author, fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. In this episode, he joins host Hillarie McClure to discuss his latest research and paper “The Coming AI Hackers.”
Audio: The Coming AI Hackers
Listen to the Audio on HBR.org
AI hackers are coming, and it’s not just our computer networks at risk – our laws and regulations are also vulnerable. Bruce Schneier, internationally renowned security technologist and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, joins Azeem Azhar to explore how humans have always exploited loopholes in rule-based systems, and how that will change as AIs become more powerful.
They also discuss:
- Why making AI systems easier to monitor and regulate also makes them less powerful.
- Why we need mechanisms for agile policy response when legislation and regulation get hacked…
Audio: The Next Phase in Cyber Warfare
Listen to the Audio on TheRedLinePodcast.com
With each major technological leap forward in warfare the rules of war also change. Today’s challenge is Cyber Warfare, which has completely thrown out the conventional concept of the first strike. With tens of thousands of attacks occurring each day from all of the major players, we look at the landscape of cyber warfare and ask whether any nation can truly be prepared to defend itself.
Part 4: Free For All (1:01:12)
- Bruce Schneier looks at the difference between cyberattacks and cyber warfare – the former we see every day, the latter we have not yet really seen…
When AI Becomes the Hacker
Bruce Schneier explores the potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) systems gone rogue in society.
For the past couple of years, renowned technologist and researcher Bruce Schneier has been researching how societal systems can be hacked, specifically the rules of financial markets, laws, and the tax code. That led him to his latest examination of the potential unintended consequences of artificial intelligence on society: how AI systems themselves, which he refers to as “AIs,” could evolve such that they automatically – and inadvertently – actually abuse societal systems.
“It’s AIs as the hacker,” he says, rather than hackers hacking AI systems…
Bruce Schneier Wants You to Make Software Better
Producing effective code means understanding more than just programming
Security technologist Bruce Schneier has a warning: “What you code affects the world now. Gone are the days when programmers could ignore the social context of what they code, when we could say, ‘The users will just figure it all out.’ Today, programs, apps, and algorithms affect society. Facebook’s choices influence democracy. How driverless cars will choose to avoid accidents will affect human lives.”
Schneier should know, because synthesizing and explaining the impact of technology is what he does. “I work at the intersection of security, technology, and people, mostly thinking about security and privacy policy . I don’t have a single job,” says Schneier. “Instead, I do a portfolio of related things.”…
Video: Data, Surveillance & Internet Security with Bruce Schneier
Watch the Video on YouTube.com
The recent Russian hack is just a reminder of the continued importance of internet security and how vulnerable we are as a society to ongoing breaches. Audrey Kurth Cronin, Director of American University’s Center for Security, Innovation and New Technology (CSINT), had an in-depth discussion with internationally renowned security technologist, Bruce Schneier as a part of the CSINT Conversations series. Schneier is a public-interest technologist, fellow and lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School, a board member of EFF, and the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc. Together they discussed the topics of data, surveillance, and internet security, including the recent government hack. Professor Cronin also fielded questions submitted by our attendees during this live session…
Video: Artificial Intelligence in Politics
Watch the Video on Unpublished.vote
Artificial intelligence. The emergence of the technology which allows machines to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence.
What could go wrong?
Many of us were twigged to the notion of artificial intelligence with the investigation into Cambridge Analytica and it’s impact on the election. While artificial intelligence will soon give us self driving vehicles, there is a growing skepticism of applying it in the political realm or public policy making. Politicians consistently rank near the bottom of the list when it comes to being respected. What if A.I could improve on that?…
Cybersecurity: Same Threats, New Challenges
The pandemic created opportunities for hackers to exploit old vulnerabilities in new ways.
For business leaders, 2020 was many things. A test. A catalyst. An opportunity.
For chief information security officers (CISOs), it was all of these things at once—with the security of the business hanging in the balance. This was especially true when it came to the rapid shift to remote work.
The vulnerabilities of working from home were known before the shift—insecure personal devices, weak passwords on home devices—but not always prioritized. Other threats were given new life, such as phishing attacks that exploited Covid’s chaos to trick beleaguered employees. And some threats were unique to cloud technology itself…
Bruce Schneier on Technology Security, Social Media, and Regulation
GrowthPolicy. In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, you write: “American democracy is an information system, in which the information isn’t bits and bytes but citizens’ beliefs. […] When you really need to worry is when insiders go bad. And that is precisely what is happening in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.” What advice would you offer policy makers seeking to safeguard future elections from disinformation campaigns undertaken by bad inside actors?
Bruce Schneier: We need to break up the tech monopolies. Companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google wield enormous power in the market, and by extension in politics. Decentralization brings security, and the world would be much safer if there were twenty smaller Amazons and Facebooks and Googles than one of each. So we need both smaller companies and the ability to move, delete, combine, and reuse data from a variety of companies. Enforcing existing antitrust laws will make an enormous difference in how these companies affect society. And in areas where decentralization doesn’t make sense—when we have natural monopolies—we need to treat them like the utilities they are…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.