Bruce Schneier on AI and the Future of Democracy

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

Politics, News

4.4 • 783 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike talks with Bruce Schneier, an internationally renowned security technologist, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and the New York Times bestselling author of 14 books. They focus on his latest book, co-authored with Nathan Sanders: Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship. Topics Mike & Bruce discuss include: Democracy as an information system and what that means for governance. How AI differs from past technologies in shaping politics. Government adoption of AI worldwide, from pilots to legislation drafting. The risks of hallucinations, deepfakes, and overconfidence in AI systems. Transparency, explainability, and legitimacy concerns around AI use. The promise of public AI versus corporate-controlled systems. AI’s role in legislation, lobbying, and citizen participation. Potential for AI to make bureaucracies more efficient without replacing humans. The dangers and opportunities of AI for authoritarian regimes. Why regulation of human use of AI—not just AI itself—is essential. Bruce Schneier on X The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Check out the excellent Sustainable Planet podcast. Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.8	Atheists, agnostics, long-haired widows, short-haired widows, vand-haired widows, vandal, o'-legas.
0:35.9	Love the government, hug the government, love the government, hug the government,
0:40.4	love the government, hug the government.
0:42.7	Welcome to the politics, guys, a place for bipartisan, rational, and civil debate on
0:47.2	American politics and policy.
0:49.4	I'm Northern Kentucky University political scientist Michael Baranowski.
0:53.2	My guest today is Bruce Schneier,
0:54.6	an internationally renowned security technologist, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School,
0:59.6	and the New York Times bestselling author of 14 books. His latest book, co-author with Nathan
1:05.5	Sanders, is ReWiring Democracy, How AI Will transform our politics, government, and citizenship,
1:12.4	which we'll be discussing today.
1:14.2	Bruce Schneir, welcome to the show.
1:15.5	Thanks for having me.
1:17.3	Yeah, you know, one thing that caught my eye almost immediately is when you talked about
	...

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