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Latest Essays
How AI Could Drive the 2026 Midterm Elections
- Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier
- Time
- October 4, 2025
We are nearly one year out from the 2026 midterm elections, and it’s far too early to predict the outcomes. But it’s a safe bet that artificial intelligence technologies will once again be a major storyline.
The widespread fear that AI would be used to manipulate the 2024 U.S. election seems rather quaint in a year where the president posts AI-generated images of himself as the pope on official White House accounts. But AI is a lot more than an information manipulator. It’s also emerging as a politicized issue. Political first-movers are adopting the technology, and that’s opening a …
Digital Threat Modeling Under Authoritarianism
Authoritarian threats, coupled with ongoing corporate surveillance, demand that we rethink how we use digital technologies.
- Lawfare
- September 22, 2025
Today’s world requires us to make complex and nuanced decisions about our digital security. Evaluating when to use a secure messaging app like Signal or WhatsApp, which passwords to store on your smartphone, or what to share on social media requires us to assess risks and make judgments accordingly. Arriving at any conclusion is an exercise in threat modeling.
In security, threat modeling is the process of determining what security measures make sense in your particular situation. It’s a way to think about potential risks, possible defenses, and the costs of both. It’s how experts avoid being distracted by irrelevant risks or overburdened by undue costs…
DOGE’s Flops Shouldn’t Spell Doom for AI in Government
- Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier
- Tech Policy Press
- September 6, 2025
Just a few months after Elon Musk’s retreat from his unofficial role leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), we have a clearer picture of his vision of government powered by artificial intelligence, and it has a lot more to do with consolidating power than benefitting the public. Even so, we must not lose sight of the fact that a different administration could wield the same technology to advance a more positive future for AI in government.
To most on the American left, the DOGE end game is a dystopic vision of a government run by machines that benefits an elite few at the expense of the people. It includes AI …
The AI Agents of Tomorrow Need Data Integrity
From data inputs to decisions, nothing can be corrupted
- Davi Ottenheimer and Bruce Schneier
- IEEE Spectrum
- August 18, 2025
Think of the Web as a digital territory with its own social contract. In 2014, Tim Berners-Lee called for a “Magna Carta for the Web” to restore the balance of power between individuals and institutions. This mirrors the original charter’s purpose: ensuring that those who occupy a territory have a meaningful stake in its governance.
Web 3.0—the distributed, decentralized Web of tomorrow—is finally poised to change the Internet’s dynamic by returning ownership to data creators. This will change many things about what’s often described as the “CIA triad” of …
It’s Time for the Semiconductor Industry to Step Up
Semiconductor firms have a lot to learn from America’s banks; investing in compliance is the price of entry in a critical industry.
- Andrew Kidd, Bruce Schneier, and Celine Lee
- The National Interest
- August 1, 2025
Earlier this week, the Trump administration narrowed export controls on advanced semiconductors ahead of US-China trade negotiations. The administration is increasingly relying on export licenses to allow American semiconductor firms to sell their products to Chinese customers, while keeping the most powerful of them out of the hands of our military adversaries. These are the chips that power the artificial intelligence research fueling China’s technological rise, as well as the advanced military equipment underpinning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…
The Return to Identity-First Architecture: How the Solid Protocol Restores Digital Agency
Solid brings different pieces together into a cohesive whole that enables the identity-first architecture we should have had all along.
- Davi Ottenheimer and Bruce Schneier
- The Inrupt Blog
- July 22, 2025
The current state of digital identity is a mess. Your personal information is scattered across hundreds of locations: social media companies, IoT companies, government agencies, websites you have accounts on, and data brokers you’ve never heard of. These entities collect, store, and trade your data, often without your knowledge or consent. It’s both redundant and inconsistent. You have hundreds, maybe thousands, of fragmented digital profiles that often contain contradictory or logically impossible information. Each serves its own purpose, yet there is no central override and control to serve you—as the identity owner…
Cyberattacks Shake Voters’ Trust in Elections, Regardless of Party
- Ryan Shandler, Anthony J. DeMattee, and Bruce Schneier
- The Conversation
- June 27, 2025
This essay also appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Governing.
American democracy runs on trust, and that trust is cracking.
Nearly half of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, question whether elections are conducted fairly. Some voters accept election results only when their side wins. The problem isn’t just political polarization—it’s a creeping erosion of trust in the machinery of democracy itself.
Commentators blame ideological tribalism, misinformation campaigns and partisan echo chambers for this crisis of trust. But these explanations miss a critical piece of the puzzle: a growing unease with the digital infrastructure that now underpins nearly every aspect of how Americans vote…
The Age of Integrity
- IEEE Security & Privacy
- May-June 2025
We need to talk about data integrity.
Narrowly, the term refers to ensuring that data isn’t tampered with, either in transit or in storage. Manipulating account balances in bank databases, removing entries from criminal records, and murder by removing notations about allergies from medical records are all integrity attacks.
More broadly, integrity refers to ensuring that data is correct and accurate from the point it is collected, through all the ways it is used, modified, transformed, and eventually deleted. Integrity-related incidents include malicious actions, but also inadvertent mistakes…
Will AI Take Your Job? the Answer Could Hinge on the 4 S’s of the Technology’s Advantages over Humans
Sometimes speed matters – and sometimes it doesn’t.
- Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders
- The Conversation
- June 16, 2025
This essay also appeared in Fast Company, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Tech Xplore.
If you’ve worried that AI might take your job, deprive you of your livelihood, or maybe even replace your role in society, it probably feels good to see the latest AI tools fail spectacularly. If AI recommends glue as a pizza topping, then you’re safe for another day.
But the fact remains that AI already has definite advantages over even the most skilled humans, and knowing where these advantages arise—and where they don’t—will be key to adapting to the AI-infused workforce…
AI and Trust
- Communications of the ACM
- June 12, 2025
Note: The text in this column is taken, for the most part verbatim, from a talk by Mr. Schneier during the 2025 RSA Conference in San Francisco, CA on April 29, 2025.
This is a discussion about artificial intelligence (AI), trust, power, and integrity. I am going to make four basic arguments:
- There are two kinds of trust—interpersonal and social—and we regularly confuse them. What matters here is social trust, which is about reliability and predictability in society.
- Our confusion will increase with AI, and the corporations controlling AI will use that confusion to take advantage of us…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.