News in the Category "Text"
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Will A.I. Be a Creator or a Destroyer of Worlds?
Excerpt
In examining the effect of artificial intelligence on politics, especially politics in this country, Bruce Schneier, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a lecturer at the Kennedy School, takes speculation to a new level.
In an essay that was published last week, “How AI Will Change Democracy,” Schneier wrote:
AI can engage with voters, conduct polls and fund-raise at a scale that humans cannot—for all sizes of elections. More interestingly, future politicians will largely be AI-driven. I don’t mean that AI will replace humans as politicians. But as AI starts to look and feel more human, our human politicians will start to look and feel more like AI…
Audio: How Can We Build a More Secure Digital Future?
Listen to the Audio or Read the Transcript on BruceMcCabe.com
Cyber-attacks and data-breaches are escalating, attackers are employing all manner of sophisticated tools, AI is transforming the “arms race” for attackers and defenders. We see the headlines, but is this a future we have to accept? What are the pathways to a more secure digital future?
I asked Bruce Schneier, the biggest name in cybersecurity.
Bruce is a DEEP thinker. He’s been researching and writing prolifically on cybersecurity since 1998, has authored more than 12 books, is a Fellow and lecturer at …
The Hacking of Organizational Systems
“There are only two types of organizations. Those that have been hacked and those that don’t know it yet.”—John Chambers
Comcast said nearly 36 million U.S. Xfinity accounts were compromised after hackers accessed its systems through a vulnerability in third-party cloud-computing software. The breach occurred between October 16 and October 19, 2023.
On Sunday, February 18, 2024, at the Munich Security Conference, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China’s cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure are “unprecedented.”
AT&T announced that the cause of its 12-hour nationwide outage on February 22, 2024, was the “execution of an incorrect process,” not a cyberattack. In simpler terms, the company admitted to human error…
Harvard Technologist Encourages Use of AI to Protect Democracy
Exploring ways in which generative artificial intelligence will affect democracy, prominent Harvard lecturer and public-interest technologist Bruce Schneier said it’s important for people to look both ways and to be unafraid of using the technology when it can help.
Schneier said he foresees an “arms race” where those who fail to engage with the technology will quickly lose ground to those who do. He offered examples of how AI can be used throughout the democratic process, including to augment polling, fundraising and campaign strategies in electoral politics, and to more routinely submit comments to regulatory agencies, craft legislation, and improve law enforcement…
The Best Information Security Books of 2023
Excerpt
It’s been a year since I wrote The 5 Best Information Security Books of 2022, two years since The 5 Best Information Security Books of 2021, which was preceded by The Best Information Security Books of 2020 and The Best Information Security Books of 2019. With that, as the year is coming to a close, here’s my list of the Best Information Security Books of 2023.
Information security book of the year
When it comes to information security rock stars, Bruce Schneier is on everyone’s list. He’s written numerous books over the decades, the most important of which may be his classic …
Audio: How Will AI Affect Democracy
Two AI experts join Governors Bredesen and Haslam to discuss the potential impact of AI on democracy
Listen to the Audio on Baker.UTK.edu
Policymakers are increasingly focused on how to regulate AI, but what impact might AI have on democracy itself? The risks of AI technology for the democratic system, including misinformed voters and manipulated election processes are becoming more evident by the day, but is it all bad news? Dr. Sarah Kreps, a political scientist and director of the Cornell Tech Policy Institute, and Bruce Schneier, a technologist and Harvard Kennedy School lecturer, join Governors Bredesen and Haslam to dig into the good, the bad, and the unknown about how AI will impact democracy…
Book Review: A Hacker’s Mind by Bruce Schneier
I have known Bruce Schneier for many years, and met him most recently just after he gave one of the keynotes at this year’s RSA show. The keynote extends his thoughts in his most recent book, A Hacker’s Mind, which he wrote last year and was published this past winter. (I reviewed some of his earlier works in a blog for Avast here.)
Even if you are new to Schneier, not interested in coding, and aren’t all that technical, you should read his book because he sets out how hacking works in our everyday lives.
He chronicles how hacks pervade our society. You will hear about the term Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich (how Google and Apple and others have hacked and thus avoided paying US taxes), the exploits of the Pudding Guy (the person who hacked American Airlines’ frequent flyer system by purchasing thousands of pudding cups to obtain elite status), or when the St. Louis Browns baseball team hacked things by hiring a 3’7″ batter back in 1951. There are less celebrated hacks, such as when investment firm Goldman Sachs owned a quarter of the total US aluminum supply back in the 2010’s to control its spot price. What was their hack? They moved it around several Chicago-area warehouses each day: the spot price depends on the time material is delivered. Clever, right?…
Bruce Schneier’s Plan to Reinvent Democracy
I have a confession to make: I am a complete Bruce Schneier fanboy. I have been following the cryptographer, Harvard lecturer and privacy specialist for many years, and was delighted to meet him face-to-face at last week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco, where he gave a keynote (registration required) on how to reinvent democracy using cybersecurity concepts. His oeuvre spans decades with numerous books along with his own blog that publishes interesting links to security-related events, strategies and failures that you should follow.
Schneier began his talk by saying that “the political systems that were invented in the 18…
Bruce Schneier on His New Book, a Hacker’s Mind
GrowthPolicy: I’d like to talk about your brilliant, and timely, new book, A Hacker’s Mind. In the book’s introduction, you write: “Security technologists look at the world differently than most people. When most people look at a system, they focus on how it works. When security technologists look at the same system, they focus on how it can be made to fail.” Tell our readers what first made you interested in the psychology of security technologists and hackers? In other words, what is the origin story of this book?
Bruce Schneier: These threads have been percolating in my head for a while now. I started writing about the psychology of security around 2008. That quote is something I have been saying for decades. The notions of socio-technical systems and how they can be attacked are just as old…
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.