The rise of the tech oligarchy threatens democracy in the United States and abroad. In his new book, United States of Oligarchy, Casey Michel—author, journalist, and director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program with the Human Rights Foundation—tells the story of how a small set of extremely wealthy individuals claimed the commanding heights of American government and is making the world safe for authoritarians, and what will be necessary to break their grip.

The United Kingdom has a new prime minister, and he has already moved to put his mark on tech policy—scrapping a scheme for digital ID, shuttering the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), shifting the Government Digital Service (GDS) to the Department of Culture, Media, and Sports, and reshuffling responsibility for AI policy.

To learn more about how the table is being set under Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Justin Hendrix spoke to three individuals who are following these matters closely:

• James Ball, a journalist and fellow at Tech Policy Press;
• Gavin Freeguard, the founder director of a new think tank called State of the Future; and
• Rachel Coldicutt, the founder and executive director of Careful Industries.

From Tamagochis to AI companions, generations of machines have been designed to push on our “evolutionary buttons”—ones that ask us to respond to their needs. In this episode, audio reporter Laura Karpas speaks to researchers including the Center for Democracy and Technology's Michal Luria and Harvard Business School's Julian De Freitas to explore the dark patterns in AI companions, and what happens when users go to say “goodbye.”

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.

Access to affordable, reliable high-speed internet is a prerequisite for nearly every part of modern life, from finding work and finishing schoolwork to seeing a doctor or staying in touch with family. Yet millions of American households remain stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide.

That's the starting point for "The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation," a report released in May from Public Knowledge, UnidosUS, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. Rather than beginning in Washington policy circles, this report centers the lived experiences of low- and moderate-income households to find out what's actually standing in their way and what should be done about it. Justin Hendrix had the chance to dig into the findings with the report’s authors: Alisa Valentin, broadband policy director at Public Knowledge, and Claudia Ruiz, senior civil rights policy advisor at UnidosUS.

In this second of three episodes on xAI's data center buildout in Memphis, Tennessee and Southaven, Mississippi, Justin Hendrix speaks with Amanda Garcia, senior attorney and data center project leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), about the fight over Colossus and Colossus 2 and what it means for disputes over the AI infrastructure boom across the country.