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Peter Singer continues his excursion into what he calls “useful fiction” – thrillers that explore real-world implications of emerging technologies – in Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution, to be released May 26, 2020. This interview explores a thoroughly researched (and footnoted!) host of new technologies, many already in production or on the horizon, all packed inside a plot-driven novel. The book is a painless way to understand what these technologies make possible and their impact on actual human beings. And the interview ranges widely over the policy implications, plus a few plot spoilers.…

Continue Reading Episode 316: Our AI Future – Sexbots, Toilet Drones, and Robocops?

We begin with a new US measure to secure its supply chain for a critical infrastructure – the bulk power grid. David Kris unpacks a new Executive Order restricting purchases of foreign equipment for the grid.

Nick Weaver, meanwhile, explains the remarkable extent of surveillance built into Xiaomi phones and questions the company’s claim that it was merely acquiring pseudonymous ad-related data like others in the industry.

It wouldn’t be the Cyberlaw Podcast if we didn’t wrangle over mobile phones and the coronavirus. Mark MacCarthy says that several countries – Australia, the UK, and perhaps France – are deviating from the Gapple model for using phones for infection tracing. Several have bought in. India, meanwhile, is planning a much more government-driven approach to using phone apps to combat the pandemic.…

Continue Reading Episode 314: Mirror-Image Decoupling

We interview Ben Buchanan about his new book, The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics. This is Ben’s second book and second interview on the podcast about international conflict and cyber weapons. It’s safe to say that America’s strategic posture hasn’t improved. We face more adversaries with more tools and a considerably greater appetite for cyber adventurism. Ben recaps some of the stories that were undercovered in the US press when they occurred. The second large attack on Ukraine’s grid, for example, was little noticed during the US election of 2016, but it appears more ominous after a recent analysis of the tools used, and perhaps most importantly, those available to the GRU but not used. Meanwhile, the US is not making much progress in cyberspace on the basic requirement of a great power, which is making our enemies fear us.…

Continue Reading Episode 301: Ratchet to Disaster

This episode puts our experts on the spot with an election-eve question: Will foreign governments attack US electoral rolls or vote-counting machinery in 2018? Remarkably, no one on our panel (Matthew Heiman, Nick Weaver, David Kris, and I) thinks they will. So if you want cybersecurity news, you can stop listening to election coverage and tune in to Episode 238 of The Cyberlaw Podcast.

Our interview features Steve Rice (Deputy CIO for DHS) and Max Everett (CIO for the Department of Energy) and was originally taped at a session of the Homeland Security Week conference.…

Continue Reading Episode 238: Bold Prediction Episode: Foreign governments will not hack this election