News Tagged "Harvard Kennedy School"
Page 1 of 1
DOGE Is Putting the Country’s Data and Computing Infrastructure at Risk, HKS Expert Argues
Cyber security expert Bruce Schneier worries that DOGE’s access to highly sensitive information is giving bad actors a chance to take advantage.
Before the Trump administration took office, what has become known as DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, was touted as a tool for injecting private sector efficiencies into the federal workforce. Under the leadership of Elon Musk, DOGE has taken an unexpectedly radical tack—it has initiated mass layoffs and the wholesale shuttering of federal offices and agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development. Perhaps less visible are the effects of DOGE’s unprecedent access to many highly sensitive federal databases and payment tools. Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and lecturer at the Kennedy School, wrote about this for The Atlantic and Foreign Policy. We spoke with him to learn more about the risks to federal data…
Video: How the Powerful Hack the System
Watch the Video on YouTube.com
Hacking is more than just a term for rogue programmers breaking into computer systems. Bruce Schneier, adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, thinks hacking goes well beyond the digital realm. Tax accountants hack the tax code by finding loopholes for their clients. Silicon Valley hacks the taxi system with rideshare companies. And now, the biggest tech companies are using artificial intelligence to hack their way further into our lives. His latest book, “A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back,” explores the ways that society is manipulated by those seeking and exploiting loopholes. …
Audio: AI Can Be Democracy’s Ally, But Not If It Works for Big Tech
Bruce Schneier says we need a public AI option and a regulatory agency to ensure that artificial intelligence becomes a public good.
Listen to the Audio on HKS.Harvard.edu
Kennedy School Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy Bruce Schneier says artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the democratic process in ways that could be good, bad, and potentially mind-boggling. The important thing, he says, will be to use regulation and other tools to make sure that AI tools are working for everyone, and just not for Big Tech companies—a hard lesson we’ve already learned through our experience about social media and other tech tools.
Bruce Schneier’s policy recommendations:…
Bruce Schneier Wants to Recreate Democracy
Arguing that American democracy has been hacked, the computer security expert doesn’t want to just fiddle on the margins when it comes to re-envisioning what a new 21st-century American democracy should look like.
Like many people cooped up at home during COVID-19, Bruce Schneier had a pandemic project. In this case, it was a new book called A Hacker’s Mind, which encourages readers to apply the hacker mentality to our various social, political, economic, and legal systems. Schneier’s work on the book sparked deeper thinking about the suitability of our centuries-old democratic processes and institutions and whether they were still up to the task in our ever-increasing polarized and fractured political climate.
“Democracy has been hacked, mostly for the worse,” Schneier, a computer security specialist and privacy expert who is a faculty affiliate at the Ash Center, is quick to note. “Our democracy in the United States is really just not suited to the task anymore.” But if American democracy is no longer up to snuff in Schneier’s mind, the question quickly arises: What should a new American democracy look like?…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.