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The Biden administration’s effort to counter ransomware may not be especially creative, but it is comprehensive. The administration is pushing all the standard buttons on the interagency dashboard, including the usual high-level task force and a $10 million reward program (but not including hackback authority for victims, despite headlines suggesting otherwise. And all the…

We begin the episode with the Biden administration’s options for responding to continued Russian ransomware outrages. Dmitri Alperovitch reprises his advice in the Washington Post that Putin will only respond to strength and U.S. pressure. I agree but raise the question whether the U.S. has the tools to enforce another set of alleged red…

We couldn’t avoid President Biden’s trip to Europe this week. He made news (but only a little progress) on cybersecurity at every stop. Nick Weaver and I dig into the President’s consultations with Vladimir Putin, which featured veiled threats and a modest agreement on some sort of continuing consultations on protecting critical infrastructure.

Jordan…

The Biden administration is pissing away one of the United States’ most important counterterrorism intelligence programs. At least that’s my conclusion  from this episode’s depressing review of the administrations halting and delusion-filled approach to the transatlantic data crisis. The EU thinks time is on its side, and it’s ignoring Jamil Jaffer’s heartfelt plea to…

We don’t get far into my interview with the authors of a widely publicized Ransomware Task Force report, before I object that most of its recommendations are “boring” procedural steps that don’t directly address the ransomware scourge. That prompts a vigorous dialogue with Philip Reiner, the Executive Director of the Institute for Security and…

Paul Rosenzweig kicks off the news roundup by laying out the New York Times’s brutal overview of the many compromises Tim Cook’s Apple has made with an increasingly oppressive Chinese government. There is no way to square Apple’s aggressive opposition to US national security measures with its quiet surrender to much more demanding Chinese…

Bruce Schneier joins us to talk about AI hacking in all its forms. He’s particularly interested in ways AI will hack humans, essentially preying on the rough rules of thumb programmed into our wetware – that big-eyed, big-headed little beings are cute and need to have their demands met or that intimate confidences…

Our interview is with Kevin Roose, author of Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation debunks most of the comforting stories we use to anaesthetize ourselves to the danger that artificial intelligence and digitization poses to our jobs. Luckily, he also offers some practical and very personal ideas for how to…

Our interview is with Mark Montgomery and John Costello, both staff to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. The Commission, which issued its main report more than a year ago, is swinging through the pitch, following up with new white papers, draft legislative language, and enthusiastic advocacy for its recommendations in Congress, many of…

They used to say that a conservative was a liberal who’d been mugged. Today’s version is that a conservative who’s comfortable with business regulation is a conservative who’s been muzzled by Silicon Valley. David Kris kicks off this topic by introducing Justice Thomas’s opinion in a case over Trump’s authority to block users he…