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

Dec 15, 2025

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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?

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