EP256 Rewiring Democracy & Hacking Trust: Bruce Schneier on the AI Offense-Defense Balance

Guest:

• Bruce Schneier

Topics:

• Do you believe that AI is going to end up being a net improvement for defenders or attackers? Is short term vs long term different?
• We're excited about the new book you have coming out with your co-author Nathan Sanders "Rewiring Democracy". We want to ask the same question, but for society: do you think AI is going to end up helping the forces of liberal democracy, or the forces of corruption, illiberalism, and authoritarianism?
• If exploitation is always cheaper than patching (and attackers don't follow as many rules and procedures), do we have a chance here?
• If this requires pervasive and fast "humanless" automatic patching (kinda like what Chrome does for years), will this ever work for most organizations?
• Do defenders have to do the same and just discover and fix issues faster? Or can we use AI somehow differently?
• Does this make defense in depth more important?
• How do you see AI as changing how society develops and maintains trust?

Resources:

• "Rewiring Democracy" book
• "Informacracy Trilogy" book
• Agentic AI's OODA Loop Problem
• EP255 Separating Hype from Hazard: The Truth About Autonomous AI Hacking
• AI and Trust
• AI and Data Integrity
• EP223 AI Addressable, Not AI Solvable: Reflections from RSA 2025
• RSA 2025: AI's Promise vs. Security's Past — A Reality Check