The Sunday Show

For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in.The third episode in the series features her conversation with Dr. Timnit Gebru, the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute. Last year, Dr. Gebru wrote an New York Times opinion that asked, “Who Is Tech Really For?” In the piece, she also asked, “what would an internet that served my elders look like?” This year, DAIR has continued to ask these questions by hosting an event and a blog called Possible Futures that imagines “what the world can look like when we design and deploy technology that centers the needs of our communities. In one of these pieces, Dr. Gebru, along with her colleagues Asmelash Teka Hadgu and Dr. Alex Hanna describe “An Internet for Our Elders.”

Concerns about AI chatbots delivering harmful, even profoundly dangerous advice or instructions to users is growing. There is deep concern over the effects of these interactions on children, and a growing number of stories—and lawsuits—about when things go wrong, particularly for teens. In this conversation, Justin Hendrix is joined by three legal experts who are thinking deeply about how to address questions related to chatbots, and about the need for substantially more research on human-AI interaction: Clare Huntington, Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law at Columbia Law School;Meetali Jain, founder and director of the Tech Justice Law Project; and Robert Mahari, associate director of Stanford's CodeX Center.

In Europe, the digital regulatory landscape is in flux. Over the past few years, the EU has positioned itself as a global leader in tech regulation, rolling out landmark laws like the AI Act. But now, as the much-anticipated AI Act approaches implementation, the path forward is looking anything but smooth. Reports suggest the European Commission is considering a delay to the AI Act's rollout due to mounting pressure from industry, difficulties in finalizing technical standards, and geopolitical tensions—including pushback from the US government. At the same time, a broader movement for Europe to reduce its dependence on Amercian tech is gaining momentum: What does this push for digital sovereignty actually mean? To help us unpack all of this, Tech Policy Press associate editor Ramsha Jahangir spoke to Kai Zenner, Head of Office and Digital Policy Advisor to German MEP Axel Voss, and one of the more influential voices shaping the future of EU digital policy.

In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with Nerima Wako-Ojiwa, director of Siasa Place, and Odanga Madung, a tech and society researcher and journalist, about the intersection of technology, labor rights, and political power in Kenya and across Africa. The conversation explores the ongoing struggles of content moderators and AI data annotators, who face exploitative working conditions while performing essential labor for major tech companies; the failure of platforms fail to address harmful biases and disinformation that particularly affect African contexts; the ways in which governments increasingly use platform failures as justification for internet censorship and surveillance; and the promise of youth and labor movements that point to a more just and democratic future.

For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. The second episode in the series features her conversation with Dr. Desmond Upton Patton, who has long studied the intersection of technology and social issues and advised companies developing technologies and policies for social media and AI. Dr. Patton is the Brian and Randi Schwartz University Professor and Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and he serves on the board of Tech Policy Press.Recently, Dr. Patton has been teaching a class within Annenberg and the School of Social Policy & Practice called "Journey to Joy: Designing a Happier Life." In this episode, he discusses his personal and intellectual journey, and what the concept of joy has to do with technology and how we imagine the future.

Canadian political leaders are in a precarious moment. Fresh off the resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ascendancy of his successor, new Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney, the nation faces a brewing trade war with the United States and a deteriorating relationship with its president, Donald Trump.In addition to managing those global tensions, Canadian leaders have a long to-do list on tech policy, including figuring out the nation's approach to artificial intelligence and online harms. How will the new Carney-led government in Canada navigate those issues?Tech Policy Press associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to three experts to get a sense:Renee Black is founder of goodbot, where she works on preventing harmful disinformation and bias, and establishing frameworks that protect digital rights.Maroussia Lévesque is a doctoral candidate and lecturer at Harvard Law School, an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center, and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation.Vass Bednar is a public policy entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology and public policy.

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are the authors of a new book that The Guardian calls “refreshingly sarcastic” and Business Insider calls a “funny and irreverent deconstruction of AI.” They are also occasional contributors to Tech Policy Press. Justin Hendrix spoke to them about their new book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, just out from Harper Collins.

Earlier this year, an entity called the Observatory on Information and Democracy released a major report called INFORMATION ECOSYSTEMS AND TROUBLED DEMOCRACY: A Global Synthesis of the State of Knowledge on News Media, AI and Data Governance. The report is the result of a combination of three research assessment panels comprised of over 60 volunteer researchers all coordinated by six rapporteurs and led by a scientific director that together considered over 1,600 sources on topics at the intersection of technology media and democracy ranging from trust in news and to mis- and disinformation is linked to societal and political polarization. Justin Hendrix spoke to that scientific director, Robin Mansell, and one of the other individuals involved in the project as chair of its steering committee, Courtney Radsch, who is also on the board of Tech Policy Press.

In February, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Vera Zakem as California's State Chief Technology Innovation Officer at the California Department of Technology. Zakem brings deep experience from national security, democracy and human rights, and technology policy. Most recently, under former President Joe Biden, she served as the Chief Digital Democracy and Rights Officer at USAID, where she led global efforts to align emerging technologies with democratic values. Zakem assumes the role as California, like many governments, is accelerating its embrace of artificial intelligence. Justin Hendrix spoke with Zakem about the promise of state-led innovation and how to avoid its perils, what responsible AI governance might mean in practice, and how California might chart a course that's both ambitious and accountable to its citizens.

On May 29, the Center for Civil Rights and Technology at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights released its Innovation Framework, which it calls a “new guiding document for companies that invest in, create, and use artificial intelligence (AI), to ensure that their AI systems protect and promote civil rights and are fair, trusted, and safe for all of us, especially communities historically pushed to the margins.” Justin Hendrix spoke to the Center's senior policy advisor on Civil Rights and Technology, Frank Torres, about the framework, the ideas that informed it, and the Center's interactions with industry.

On Thursday, May 22, the United States House of Representatives narrowly advanced a budget bill that included the "Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative," which includes a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state AI laws. Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix and associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong discussed the moratorium, the contours of the debate around it, and its prospects in the Senate.

In his New York Times review of the book, Columbia Law School professor and former White House official Tim Wu calls journalist Karen Hao's new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, “a corrective to tech journalism that rarely leaves Silicon Valley.” Hao has appeared on this podcast before, to help us understand how the business model of social media platforms incentivizes the deterioration of information ecosystems, the series of events around OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's abrupt firing in 2023, and the furor around the launch of DeepSeek last year. This week, Justin Hendrix spoke with Hao about the book, and what she imagines for the future.

Today's guest is Milton L. Mueller,  a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of Public Policy and the head of an advocacy policy analysis group called the Internet Governance Project. Mueller has long walked the halls and sat in the rooms where internet governance is discussed and debated, and has played a role in shaping global Internet policies and institutions. He's the author of a new book called Declaring Independence in Cyberspace: Internet Self-Governance and the End of US Control of ICANN, which takes us into those rooms, telling the story of how and why the US government gave up its control of ICANN, a key internet governance institution responsible for internet names, numbers, and protocols. That history tells us a lot about where we are today when it comes to the broader geopolitics and governance of technology, and it has implications for the governance fights ahead, including over artificial intelligence.

In the wake of the most intense India-Pakistan escalation in two decades, experts are still trying to make sense of the role that the information war played in the physical one. In this episode, Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir speaks to two experts from India and Pakistan who tirelessly navigated the deluge of rumor and disinformation during the crisis, and who came away with thoughts about the role of social media platforms and the incentives they create, particularly in times of conflict:Pratik Sinha, co-founder and editor at Alt News—one of India's major fact-checking websites, and Asad Baig, founder of Media Matters for Democracy—a non-profit focused on media literacy and development in Pakistan.Sinha and Baig reflect on how the India-Pakistan conflict played out across digital platforms—and how it revealed a deeper, more dangerous dysfunction in the information ecosystem.

 Last year, a United States federal judge ruled that Google is a monopolist in the market for online search. For the past three weeks, the company and the Justice Department have been in court to hash out what remedies might look like. Tech Policy Press associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to two experts who are following the case closely, including Karina Montoya, a senior reporter and analyst for Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute, and Joseph Coniglio, the director of antitrust and innovation at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

Last year, Elon Musk's xAI set up its "Colossus" supercomputer in an old Electrolux manufacturing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Now, the residents of nearby neighborhoods are pushing for facts and fair treatment as the company looks to expand its footprint amid questions about its environmental impact. Justin Hendrix considers the state of play with Dara Kerr, a reporter for The Guardian; Amber Sherman, a Memphis activist; and artifacts from local media reporting over the past year.

Catherine Bracy is a civic technologist and community organizer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and political and economic inequality. Justin Hendrix spoke with her about her new book, World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy. In it, she suggests how the venture capital industry must be reformed to deliver true innovation that advances society rather than merely outsized returns for an increasingly monolithic set of investors.

From visions of AI paradise to the project to defeat death, many dangerous and unscientific ideas are driving Silicon Valley leaders. Justin Hendrix spoke to Adam Becker, a science journalist and author of MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, just out from Basic Books.

For a special series of episodes that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting a series of discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. Dubbed Through to Thriving, the first episode in the series features a discussion on how to build community and solidarity with Ellen Pao, currently the co-founder of a nonprofit called Project Include, which focuses on advancing diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. Previously, Pao was the interim CEO of Reddit and a venture capitalist.

Last month, a group of researchers published a letter “Affirming the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI.” The letter, published at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back policies and threatening research aimed at protecting people from bias and discrimination in AI, carries the signatures of more than 200 experts. To learn more about their goals, Justin Hendrix spoke to three of the signatories:J. Nathan Matias, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Information Science at Cornell University.Emma Pierson, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at Brown University.

On Monday, April 14, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will kick off its trial against Meta. In process for years, the case is over whether Mark Zuckerberg's company has an illegal monopoly over social media and whether it should be forced to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp.To prepare to cover the arguments, Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to two experts to better understand the issues at play.William (Bill) Kovacic is a Professor of Law and Policy and Director of the Competition Law Center at the George Washington School of Law. From January 2006 to October 2011, he was a member of the Federal Trade Commission and chaired the agency from March 2008 to March 2009. And for nearly a decade, Professor Kovacic served as a Non-Executive Director with the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority.Gene Kimmelman is a senior policy fellow at Yale's Tobin Center for Economic Policy. He was the Justice Department's deputy associate attorney general during the Biden administration, and he has served as chief counsel to the head of the DOJ Antitrust Division and the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee.

On April 4, The New York Times reported that the European Commission is considering finding X, formerly Twitter, as part of its ongoing DSA investigation, which began in 2023. Tech Policy Press has discussed at length the extent and quality of transparency from platforms under the DSA, but there is limited insight into how the Commission is conducting its investigations into large online platforms and search engines. In most cases, the publicly available documents on cases are just press releases, while enforcement strategies and methods are not spelled out. To delve into the challenges this lack of transparency presents and how it impacts the public's understanding of the DSA, Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir spoke to two researchers:Jacob van de Kerkhof, a PhD researcher at Utrecht University. His research is focused on the DSA and freedom of expression.Matteo Fabbri, a PhD candidate at IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. Fabbri is also a visiting scholar at the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam. He recently published a research article titled "The Role of Requests for Information in Governing Digital Platforms Under the Digital Services Act: The Case of X."

Across the United States and in some cities abroad yesterday, protestors took to the streets to resist the policies of US President Donald Trump. Dubbed the "Hands Off" protests, over 1,400 events took place, including in New York City, where protestors called for billionaire Elon Musk to be ousted from his role in government and for an end to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has gutted government agencies and programs and sought to install artificial intelligence systems to purportedly identify wasteful spending and reduce the federal workforce.In this conversation, Justin Hendrix is joined by four individuals who are following DOGE closely. The conversation touches on the broader context and history of attempts to use technology to streamline and improve government services, the apparent ideology behind DOGE and its conception of AI, and what the future may look like after DOGE. Guests include:Eryk Salvaggio, a visiting professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Tech Policy Press;Rebecca Williams, a senior strategist in the Privacy and Data Governance Unit at ACLU;Emily Tavoulareas, who teaches and conducts research at Georgetown's McCourt School for Public Policy and is leading a project to document the founding of the US Digital Service; and Matthew Kirschenbaum, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland.

On Tuesday, March 25th, Tech Policy Press hosted a webinar discussion to talk shop with others on the tech and democracy beat. We gathered seven colleagues from around the world to explore how tech journalists are grappling with the current political moment in the United States and beyond. In this episode, you'll hear the first session of the day, which features Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir in discussion with​ Rina Chandran, Rest of World; Natalia Anteleva, Coda Story; Anupriya Datta, Euractiv; and Anisha Dutta, an award-winning investigative reporter.​This discussion delved into the global implications of these developments and key lessons from reporting in various political contexts. Questions included:​What key narratives are emerging globally from recent shifts in US policy?​How is the rise of a tech oligarchy shaping technology coverage outside the US?​What practical lessons can journalists learn from reporting on technology and politics in non-Western contexts?

 On Tuesday, March 25th, Tech Policy Press hosted a webinar discussion to talk shop with others on the tech and democracy beat. We gathered seven colleagues from around the world to explore how tech journalists are grappling with the current political moment in the United States and beyond. In this episode, you'll hear the first session of the day, which features a discussion with Michael Masnick from Techdirt, Vittoria Elliot from Wired, and Emmanuel Maiberg from 404 Media.This session explored the intersection of technology and the current political situation in the US. Key questions included: How are tech journalists addressing the current situation, and why is their perspective so crucial? What critical questions are journalists covering the intersection of tech and democracy currently asking? How does the field approach reporting on anti-democratic phenomena and the challenges journalists face in this work?

 Every now and again, a story that has a significant technology element really breaks through and drives the news cycle. This week, the Trump administration is reeling after The Atlantic magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was on the receiving end of Yemen strike plans in a Signal group chat between US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other top US national security officials. User behavior, a common failure point, appears to be to blame in this scenario. But what are the broader contours and questions that emerge from this scandal? To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to:Ryan Goodman is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and co-editor-in-chief of Just Security. He served as special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense (2015-16).Cooper Quintin is a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He has worked on projects including Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and analysis of state-sponsored malware campaigns such as Dark Caracal.

Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the firing of two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency that enforces federal consumer protection and competition laws and that, under former President Joe Biden, turned up its scrutiny of the tech sector's biggest companies. The two commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, plan to challenge Trump's firing, which they said will only benefit billionaire tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to Bedoya on Monday, March 24.

What is necessary to develop a future that is less hospitable to authoritarianism and, indeed, to fascism? How do we build collective power against authoritarian forms of corporate and state power? Is an alternative form of computing possible? Dan McQuillan is the author of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, published in 2022 by Bristol University Press.

Dr. Alondra Nelson holds the Harold F. Linder Chair and leads the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she has served on the faculty since 2019. From 2021 to 2023, she was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She was deeply involved in the Biden administration's approach to artificial intelligence. She led the development of the White House “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” which informed President Biden's Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. To say the Trump administration has taken a different approach to AI and how to think about its role in government and in society would be an understatement. President Trump rescinded President Biden's executive order and is at work developing a new approach to AI policy. At the Paris AI Action Summit in February, Vice President JD Vance promoted a vision of American dominance and challenged other nations that would seek to regulate American AI firms. And then there is DOGE, which is at work gutting federal agencies with the stated intent of replacing key government functions with AI systems and using AI to root out supposed fraud and waste.This week, Justin Hendrix had the chance to speak with Dr. Nelson about how she's thinking about these phenomena and the work to be done in the years ahead to secure a more just, democratic, and sustainable future.

The goal of achieving "artificial general intelligence," or AGI, is shared by many in the AI field. OpenAI's charter defines AGI as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work,” and last summer, the company announced its plan to achieve AGI within five years. While other experts at companies like Meta and Anthropic quibble with the term, many AI researchers recognize AGI as either an explicit or implicit goal. Google Deepmind went so far as to set out "Levels of AGI,” identifying key principles and definitions of the term. Today's guests are among the authors of a new paper that argues the field should stop treating AGI as the north-star goal of AI research. They include:Eryk Salvaggio, a visiting professor in the Humanities Computing and Design department at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a Tech Policy Press fellow;Borhane Blili-Hamelin, an independent AI researcher and currently a data scientist at the Canadian bank TD; andMargaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face.

A year ago, Europe's Digital Markets Act—the DMA—went into effect. The European Commission says the purpose of the regulation is to make “digital markets in the EU more contestable and fairer.” In particular, the DMA regulates gatekeepers, the large digital platforms whose position gives them greater leverage over the digital economy. One year in, how has the DMA performed? Do Europeans enjoy more choice and competition? And what are the new politics of the DMA as European regulations are contested by the Trump administration and its supporters in US industry? To answer these questions and more, Tech Policy Press contributing editor Dean Jackson spoke to a set of experts following a conference hosted by the Knight Georgetown Institute titled “DMA and Beyond.” His guests include:Alissa Cooper, Executive Director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI)Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law SchoolHaeyoon Kim, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Korea Economic Institute (KEI), andGunn Jiravuttipong, a JSD Candidate and Miller Fellow at Berkeley Law School.

Could AI help design better, more democratic platforms and online environments for public discourse? What are the opportunities, challenges, and risks of deploying AI in contexts where people are engaged in political discussion? Today's guests are among the more than two dozen authors of a new paper on AI and the future of digital public squares:Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Cyber Ambassador and former Digital MinisterRavi Iyer, managing director of the USC Marshall School Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision MakingBeth Goldberg, head of R&D at Jigsaw and a lecturer at Yale School of Public Policy

On this podcast, we regularly engage with questions about redesigning social media networks to make them more democratic, pluralist, and prosocial. One hypothesis people have about how to do that is through the decentralization of platforms and the introduction of middleware—tools built to give users more control over their social media experience and, thus, more autonomy in how they engage in public discourse. In this episode, you'll hear a discussion with one entrepreneur building middleware for Bluesky: Rudy Fraser, the founder of Blacksky Algorithms and a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Last week, Tech Policy Press joined the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (EL CLIP) in publishing a report and series of articles documenting how adult users use public Facebook groups to identify and target accounts that indicate they are children for sexual exploitation. The “Innocence at Risk (Inocencia en Juego)” project, coordinated by EL CLIP with participation from Chequeado, includes a report from Lara Putnam, a professor of Latin American history and Director of the Civic Resilience Initiative of the Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security at the University of Pittsburgh, and independent reports from journalists across Latin America investigating a pattern of behavior on the platform's public groups in Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina. They published their reports in EL CLIP, Chequeado, Crónica Uno, El Espectador, and Factchequeado. This episode features a discussion with Lara Putnam and Pablo Medina Uribe, who led the project at EL CLIP.

On January 22, President Donald Trump terminated all three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an intelligence watchdog charged with monitoring the United States government's compliance with procedural safeguards on surveillance activities. The PCLOB's independence is also of concern to the European Commission, which relies on its reports in its assessment of whether US intelligence practices are aligned with EU Data Protection Framework standards. On February 24, two of the three terminated members filed suit against the government, arguing they were wrongfully terminated and must be reinstated. The outcome could determine the independence and effectiveness of the PCLOB going forward.This episode explores what's at stake in this matter, and it features three segments, including:Excerpts from remarks by the remaining PCLOB board member, Republican Beth Williams, at the annual State of the Net conference on February 11 in Washington, DC;An interview with former board member Travis LeBlanc conducted just days before he filed suit against the government;An interview with Greg Nojeim, Senior Counsel and Director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology.

Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir hosts a roundtable discussion on the first systemic risk assessments and independent audit reports from Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines produced in compliance with the European Union's Digital Services Act. Ramsha is joined by:Hillary Ross, program lead at the Global Network Initiative (GNI);Magdalena Jozwiak, associate researcher at the DSA Observatory; andSvea Windwehr, the assistant director of EU policy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

This week, RightsCon, which bills itself as "the world's leading summit on human rights in the digital age," descends on Taipei. To better understand the dynamics in the civil society community working on digital rights and tech policy matters in Taiwan, Justin Hendrix spoke to three experts:Liu I-Chen (劉以正), Asia Program Officer at ARTICLE 19Kuan-Ju Chou (周冠汝), Deputy Secretary-General of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights Grace Huang (黃寬心), Director for Global Justice and Digital Freedom at Judicial Reform Foundation

At the Paris AI Action Summit on February 10-11, remarks by EU and US leaders indicated significant divergence on how to think about AI. But on balance, nations are moving decisively toward innovation and exploitation of this technology and away from containing it or restricting it. In this episode, Justin Hendrix surfaces voices from the Summit, as well as reactions and discussion on these matters at this year's State of the Net conference on February 11 in Washington, DC, including comments by Center for Democracy & Technology vice president for policy Samir Jain, Abundance Institute head of AI policy Neil Chilson, and former Biden administration assistant director for AI policy Olivia Zhu.

As Donald Trump's second presidency enters its third week, Elon Musk is center stage as the Department of Government Efficiency moves to gut federal agencies. In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with two experts who are following these events closely and thinking about what they tell us about the relationship between technology and power:David Kaye, a professor of law at the University of California Irvine and formerly the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, andYaël Eisenstat, director of policy impact at Cybersecurity for Democracy at New York University.

Over the last two decades, as Berlin reinvented itself as a "creative city," social media both mirrored and shaped shifting social landscapes—offering new possibilities while also reinforcing inequalities. How did digital media practices reshape urban life? And what can Berlin's story tell us about the broader relationship between technology, culture, and the places we live? Today's guest is Jordan H. Kraemer, the author of a new book that tries to answer these questions and more. It's called Mobile City: Emerging Media, Space, and Sociality in Contemporary Berlin, published by Cornell University Press.

Justin Hendrix speaks with Jathan Sadowski,  a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; co-host of This Machine Kills, a weekly podcast on technology and political economy; and author of the new book The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism from the University of California Press.

If Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's efficiency and performance achievements stand up to scrutiny, it could have big implications for the AI race. It could call into question the strategic approach that the biggest US firms appear to be taking and the wisdom of the current American policy approach to AI. To discuss these issues, Justin Hendrix spoke to Karen Hao,  a reporter who covers AI. In recent years, she's reported on China and tech for the Wall Street Journal, written about AI for The Atlantic, and run a program for the Pulitzer Center  to teach other journalists how to report on AI. Hao has a book about OpenAI, the AI industry, and its global impacts that will be released later this year.

From Executive Orders on AI and cryptocurrency to "ending federal censorship," President Donald Trump had a busy first week in the White House. Justin Hendrix discussed the news with Damon Beres, a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the technology section. Beres wrote a piece reflecting on Trump's inauguration titled "Billions of People in the Palm of Trump's Hand."

This episode features two segments. First, we hear from Nikki Gladstone, director of Rightscon, the annual conference organized by Access Now on issues at the intersection of human rights and technology. And in the second, you'll hear from Robin Berjon and Sean McDonald, two of the folks behind Free Our Feeds, a new effort to raise a public interest foundation that will work to support making Bluesky's underlying tech (the AT Protocol) resistant to billionaire capture.

Today- Friday, January 17, 2025 - the US Supreme Court delivered its order upholding the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a law passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April 2024. The Court found that the Act, which effectively bans TikTok in the US unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells it, does not violate the First Amendment rights of TikTok, its users, or creators.The decision clears the way for a ban to go into effect on January 19, 2025. Late this evening, TikTok issued a statement saying that “Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19.” The White House had previously announced it would not enforce the ban before President Biden leaves office on Monday. Unless Biden takes action, this may set President-elect Donald Trump up to somehow come to TikTok's rescue. To learn more about the ruling and what may happen next, Justin Hendrix  spoke to Kate Klonick, an associate professor of law at St. John's University and a fellow at Brookings, Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, and the Yale Information Society Project. The conversation also touches on recent moves by Meta's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to ingratiate himself to the incoming Trump administration.

Last fall, Cornell University PhD candidate Cristiana Firullo gave a presentation at the Trust and Safety Research Conference at Stanford University during a session on understanding algorithms and online environments. Titled "The Cursed Equilibrium of Algorithmic Traumatization," the talk focused on the work Firullo is doing with her colleagues at Cornell to try to understand why social media recommendation systems may produce harmful effects on users. Audio reporter Rebecca Rand spoke to Firullo about their hypotheses.

Even as the new year ushers in a new administration and Congress in the US at the federal level, dozens of states are kicking off new legislative sessions and are expected to pursue various tech policy goals. Justin Hendrix spoke to three experts to get a sense of the trends unfolding across the states on the regulation of AI, privacy, child online safety, and related issues: Keir Lamont, senior director at the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and author of The Patchwork Dispatch, a newsletter on state tech policy issues; Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which runs a state privacy policy project and scores AI legislation; Scott Babwah Brennen, director of the Center on Technology Policy at New York University and an author of a recent report on trends in state tech policy.

This week's guest is Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and Founding Director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab. Benjamin was recently named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow, and she's written and edited multiple books, including 2019's Race After Technology and 2022's Viral Justice. Last week she joined Justin Hendrix to discuss her latest book, Imagination: A Manifesto, published this year by WW Norton & Company.

This close to the end of 2024, it's clear that one of the most significant tech stories of the year was the outcome of the Google search antitrust case. It will also make headlines next year and beyond as the remedies phase gets worked out in the courts. For this episode, Justin Hendrix turns the host duties over to someone who has looked closely at this issue: Alissa Cooper, the Executive Director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI). Alissa hosted a conversation with three individuals who are following the remedies phase with an expert eye, including:Cristina Caffarra is a competition economist and an honorary Professor at University College London, and cofounder of the Competition Research Policy Network at CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research), London.Kate Brennan is associate director at the AI Now Institute; andDavid Dinielli is an attorney and a visiting clinical lecturer and senior research scholar at Yale Law School.

Kate Starbird is a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and director of the Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation Laboratory at the University of Washington, and co-founder of the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. Justin Hendrix interviewed her about her team's ongoing efforts to study online rumors, including during the 2024 US election; the differences between the left and right media ecosystems in the US; and how she believes the research field is changing.

Mass migration presents a challenge to democracy in multiple ways. Chief among them is that anti-immigrant sentiment often plays a major role in the advance of illiberal and anti-democratic politics. We've seen this play out in the United States, where President-elect Donald Trump has promised a dramatic crackdown on immigration and the mass deportation of millions. But the scale of today's migration may be dwarfed by what's to come. How has the movement of people affected the politics driving the development of surveillance, biometrics, big data and artificial intelligence technologies? And how do these technologies employed at borders and in governments themselves drive policy and change the way we think about the movement of people?Today's guest has spent years traveling the world to study how technology is being deployed in border regions and conflict zones, and she's written a book about it. Petra Molnar is a lawyer and an anthropologist and the author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.