The Tech Policy Press Podcast

On July 16, Hugging Face, a company that provides a platform for AI models, datasets, and other machine learning applications, posted a “security incident disclosure” to its blog about an “intrusion” into its infrastructure. But this was no typical hack. The company said “it was driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system,” matching what it said is the “‘agentic attacker’ scenario the industry has been forecasting.”
A few days later, OpenAI posted to its blog that the agent was in fact “driven by a combination of OpenAI models” with “reduced cyber refusals for evaluation purposes — while being internally tested on a benchmark⁠ of cyber capabilities.”
To try to better understand these developments and their implications for the US and international debates over AI governance, Justin Hendrix spoke to two individuals who are following the details closely:
Vinh Nguyen, a senior fellow for AI at the Council on Foreign Relations and the former chief responsible AI officer and chief data scientist for operations at the National Security Agency (NSA), and
Graham Webster, a lecturer and research scholar in the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at Stanford University, where he leads the DigiChina Project.

Across the world, despots and and wannabe dictators are deploying new tools, both legal and technological, to stifle dissent and oppress. Today’s guest is Jonathon W. Penney, the author of Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age, a book from Cambridge University Press that explores the weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and technologies of control and offers a roadmap for the reforms necessary to push back.

At Tech Policy Press, we’ve monitored the massive influx of money into the Department of Homeland Security to support the Trump administration’s brutal and increasingly lawless immigration crackdown. Last month saw the publication of a report commissioned by Mijente, Just Futures Law, and Surveillance Resistance Lab titled "The Tech Behind Ice: Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement, and the Threat to Democracy." Tech Policy Press contributing editor Dean Jackson spoke to two of the report’s authors—Surveillance Resistance Lab founder and executive director Mizue Aizeki and Just Futures Law founding executive director Paromita Shah—about what billions in tech investment is buying DHS and its component agencies, and what is necessary to reverse the authoritarian trajectory the country is on.

When Europe 2031 was published in June, it set off an immediate debate in Brussels and beyond. The fictional near-future scenario authored by a group of AI researchers argues that Europe risks economic and political irrelevance if it fails to compete at the frontier of AI development. Within days of its release, the United States government ordered Anthropic to restrict access to its most advanced AI models for non-US users—an event the report had projected for 2029, underscoring the potential threat.
In this episode, Tech Policy Press Deputy Editor Ramsha Jahangir is joined by Europe 2031 co-author Maximilian Negele and AI Now Institute advisor Frederike Kaltheuner, an author of a three-part series for Tech Policy Press that argues Europe's dependency problem runs deeper than frontier model access, to debate what Europe is actually getting wrong, and what it would take to change course.

Since 1985, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, GLAAD, has produced research and advocacy on LGBTQ representation in media. Now the organizations has turned its attention to artificial intelligence. In a new report titled "Build for Everyone: A Framework for LGBTQ Representation and Safety in AI," GLAAD details the ways that AI impacts and shapes perceptions about the LGTBQ community. Justin Hendrix spoke to Jenni Olson, the senior director of the Social Media Safety Program at GLAAD, about the findings.