Automatic transcription, it can contain errors:
Alessandro Oppo: Welcome on another episode of Democracy Innovator Podcast and our guest of today is Bruce... Bruce Schneier. And thank you for your time.
Bruce Schneier: Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. This is... it's gonna be interesting.
Alessandro Oppo: You're an expert about cryptography, right?
Bruce Schneier: You know what, I started doing cryptography, right? So if you look behind me, you'll see a bunch of my books, right? That's sort of that shelf over there. There are no cryptography books on that shelf because I wrote my last cryptography book a couple of decades ago. So I really write about cybersecurity, I write about privacy, I write about safety. I've written about hacking social systems—right, that's that book over there, A Hacker's Mind—and I just wrote a book on AI and democracy. So I'm really thinking more broadly. So I started out in cryptography, but I have generalized since then.
Alessandro Oppo: And how did you started? Like...
Bruce Schneier: You know, I never have a good origin story. I mean, it's... it's funny, I get asked that all the time. So I just should just make something up, some really fun, exciting story of how I started. I don't have an answer. I just started and, you know, it's... it's... it's what I do. And really, I've always been interested in in general the... the meta-meta-meta idea, which is really why, you know, my thinking and writing has expanded from cryptography to these more general topics.
Alessandro Oppo: And I mean, I'm thinking about this: that cryptography is widely used in... also in our society. I mean, because we use computers and we communicate via smartphones and so on. And so cryptography is the technology that makes it safe to exchange information. I wonder, what are the... can it be considered safe when we exchange messages? Because if it is just, I mean, nowadays we are just using chats, but it could be that, I don't know, with AI then maybe we delegate more power to machines. And so I wonder like, is it safe to do this?
Bruce Schneier: Well, it... it... it asks a very hard question. Like, what does safe mean, right? You know, I could slip and fold tomorrow on the ice, so that's not safe. But as I think doing cryptography is just a tool. Think of cryptography as the inner workings of the lock of your front door of your house. Is your house safe? Well, I don't know, right? I mean all I know is that the inner workings of the lock of the front door you know are... you know, someone could break in through the windows, there could be a fire, there could be a flood, all sorts of things could happen, right? Cryptography is a minor tool. It's not right to say that cryptography is what keeps us safe on the internet. Cryptography is one of the many, many things that might possibly, potentially—if they're used properly—keep us safe on the internet.
So I mean, you ask about messages. Signal is a messaging program. It uses cryptography. It uses cryptography very well and it is a secure messaging platform, right? But that has nothing to do with whether, you know, someone looks over your shoulder when you are typing your message, or someone takes your phone and threatens to hurt you unless you unlock it and then they read your archives, right? Or if you're on a group chat and one of the people on the group chat works through the police and it's like, you know, telling them everything. Cryptography is a tool and all these security technologies are tools. Don't need AI here. I don't need to delegate. Alright, I'm delegating already. Alright? You know, when I use this object [holds up phone], I'm trusting—in this case it's Apple and all the apps—to be secure. I'm delegating everything to this object. And you know, that's the way it works. You know we are now on Zoom where you have to be using my account and I've configured it to be end-to-end encrypted and that means this conversation is encrypted from eavesdropping. But you're recording it, right? You could do whatever you want with it. So how much is that encryption protecting us? I'm trusting you. Well, a couple of things, right? We know this is gonna be made public. And really I'm trusting you, and that's a social thing. So, you know, security is... is harder than just some math. And this is really what I write about and why I've written, you know, so many books and not just cryptography math books, because making it work in real life is... is a lot harder than the math.
Alessandro Oppo: Sure, I totally understand. Like the... that is... that there isn't just one point of failure, and right...
Bruce Schneier: I mean, and... and think of your house again. Same thing. It's not just one point of failure, right? It's the doors, it's the windows, it's did you lose your key? Who else has a key? I remember there was a group of criminals that was stealing art by cutting holes in people's walls, right? Yeah, it's a sort of crazy attack, but the art was valuable. Didn't matter how good the doors and windows were. Then even if the doors and windows were alarmed, if there weren't motion sensors in the house, then the criminals would get... get... get away with it. Or I guess if they were fast enough. If you think about the criminals in France who... who stole jewels in the Louvre, right? There were... there were very secure windows, there were alarms, there were guards in... still got away with it because they took seven minutes in and out.
Alessandro Oppo: And thinking about, I don't know, electronic votes. That this is also something our society is in some way moving toward. This... which other kind of point of failure do you see? I mean, there could be many I can imagine. Do you see something that is... that is specifically dangerous or like people should point their attention to?
Bruce Schneier: Yeah, a lot of us write about electronic voting, whether it's electronic voting machines or voting on the internet. And pretty much all computer security people say: don't ever do this. And the real problem is a lot of... of problems... and... and... and you... you sort of said there's all sorts of things we can talk about. But the real problem—the reason this is a hard security problem—is that voting is anonymous. That I bank online all the time. Alright? I go on my app and I move money around and I pay bills and I, you know, the deposit checks. I do all of that. And you could ask, why is that secure? It's secure for a couple of reasons. The... the apps are pretty good, the phones are pretty good, and it is all audited. If I try to cheat, it's discovered in an audit and then they roll back the transaction, right? If I... if I deposit... if I like go on Photoshop and create a check and then deposit it, they'll eventually take the money away from me, right? They won't let me get away with it.
The problem with voting, unlike all these other applications, is it's anonymous. That there isn't a connection between you and your vote in the same way there's connection between you and your bank deposit. And that additional requirement makes security much, much harder. We cannot—period—secure an election that is online, right? Because it can be hacked in ways that are undetectable because of that anonymity requirement. That mean... the easy way to solve it is make votes public, right? If you eliminate the secret ballot, I can do this easily. But if you don't, I can't. And right now in our... in... you know, in our... in our century, in... in our lives, the... the secret ballot's important. It wasn't always important. You go back hundred fifty years ago in most places in Europe that were voting, they're voting, you know, by public acclimation in the town square, right? The voting... that your vote is public. But if you need a secret ballot, I cannot secure it if you're voting online. I just can't. I know it's annoying, right? We all wanna be able to vote online because it would be so good, right? It'd be so easy. If turnout would be great, we could vote, you know, once a month. You just get just so many things you can do. But I can't do it securely.
Alessandro Oppo: I'm thinking maybe there could be a sort of hybrid between secret vote and non-secret vote. I'm thinking in the future, because I think that...
Bruce Schneier: Because the problem with a non-secret vote is coercion, right? If I pay you money to vote my way, I can make sure you did it. And the thing about a secret ballot is I can bribe you, but I don't know how you actually vote. And that's real important. So, you know, you really have to really think through hybrid because hybrid just means you get the worst of both, not the best of both. But you know... and... and people are thinking about this. This is... this is... know, I mean... people... a lot of people... more... a lot more people do this kind of electronic voting theory than I do. The organization, if you're interested, is verifiedvoting.org. They're American and they mostly work with American elections, but the work they've done on these types of systems in general is phenomenal. And that is where I would send people who want to learn more about... about voting security.
Alessandro Oppo: And thinking about how in some way... I mean electronic voting is... I mean exercised in some countries nowadays. I'm thinking, is this related to some ignorance from politicians that don't know the technical details? If you...
Bruce Schneier: Guys don't anyway. Because Estonia does electronic voting. And... and you wonder like, what are they thinking? And I don't know. You know, I mean, I think there is an optimism in there. There's some thought in that the... the ease of voting and the... the turnout increase might be worth the risk. I don't think we should ever do the United States. I think that'd be crazy. I mean, the election is just too important, too much money is spent on the election and... and it would be subverted. I mean I just... I just can't imagine it not being subverted. Maybe Estonia is politically more neutral and more safe from that, but I don't know that. I don't know the thinking. I've not spoken to Estonia elected officials and ask them—or any place else where there is that kind of electronic voting—but I do know, like as a security person, it is freaking not safe.
Alessandro Oppo: And I mean, with talking about the safety in systems, it also bring something that I think it's quite interesting: trust in the system. And I also had some thoughts about how it is in some way the same trust that people in the past had in relation to other things. There could be religion or like ideologies. And I wonder if this can be probably... a list that can be done about having trust in... in a technological system and having trust in a ideology or like in a... in religion.
Bruce Schneier: Don't know if there's... I mean it's certainly related. Trust is a really complicated concept. I mean it is a really, really complicated concept and, you know, how it plays out is subtle and... gonna say "weird," this other word I'm looking for, but it... it... it's not simple. And your intuition's right that it's... that it's social, right? You know, I mean if I... if I'm trusting you or trusting a technology, I mean it's not because I've... I've analyzed the technology, right? I mean I'm... I... I said it earlier that I trust Signal. Now I am not looked at the code. I know a couple of the engineers, but I... I'm trusting a process, I'm trusting people, I'm trusting a company, I'm trusting Meredith Whittaker who runs the Signal Foundation. So I mean there's a lot of trust in systems. I did write a book and everything... I did write a book on this. I'm gonna get it right... so this is Liars and Outliers. I wrote this in 2012 I think. And it really is about trust and security. And I spent a lot of pages trying to understand how trust works, how it is engendered, how things are come to be trustworthy. And not people; I'm thinking about systems. Like why is it when I go to a foreign country, I stick my card into an ATM machine and I get currency which is not foreign? I don't know what's happening. I'm trusting this weird interbank transfer system that I know nothing about to like... to do that without too many ridiculous charges. And... and that's an example of... of this sort of... of what we do all the time. I get an airplane, I trust all sorts of things. I eat food. You know, when you and I are using Zoom, I have a Windows machine, I have an Apple phone... I mean all of these things, I'm... I'm... I'm trusting all sorts of things.
Alessandro Oppo: And I'm thinking like in the past... I mean money was... what do you say like... it... it was the king that basically the state that was releasing money.
Bruce Schneier: And some of that is right. You know, I mean you... you often trust the powerful, some as because you have no choice. May sometimes you trust something because you're intimately familiar with it. Some as you trust it because others trust it. You know, I go to a doctor, I trust what the doctor says, right? You know, I... I don't... I don't know anything about medicine. I trust what the doctor says. I trust that the doctor's done their research and they know what they're doing and they're not trying to kill me secretly. And society works. And this is what I tried to, you know, figure out in... in... in the book Liars and Outliers: why does this all work? It seems kinda weird, but it does.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah. And then it has to be like trust at a collective level. Because I'm thinking all the people, I mean, recognize the king to be the king and so they trust that the demonic can be assessed.
Bruce Schneier: And you probably, of course, never met the king. But you're just trusting that the king exists. You don't know, you have no firsthand knowledge. You just been told there's a king, he lives in that building over there, you can't go in, there's a lot of guards, right? You know, I know trust is super interesting. And it's not just humans, but other species trust or not.
Alessandro Oppo: And can we say that because in some way we say that... that we trust the authority, so the authority in some ways changing from a key to the technique?
Bruce Schneier: Yeah, I... I think there's some of that. I mean it... there's a lot going on. I sort of... I sort of sort of urge you not to... I'm gonna say "jump to conclusions," but not think you figured it out. This is hard. I mean... I mean... I mean... I mean a lot of things I don't understand.
Alessandro Oppo: And thinking about democracy. What it is democracy for you? And how can we use the... let's say how not to trust democracy or to trust democracy?
Bruce Schneier: So I... it's a question. I mean, and "what is democracy?" is actually a surprisingly complex question. And... and you know, when in writing this book I had to come up with a definition of democracy. And some people define it as a way of... of changing who's in charge. And democracy is a system by which the winner assumes power and the loser cedes power, which turns out to be, you know, a... a weird, rare thing for our society. Usually that happens with violence, and democracy [is a] way to have that happen peacefully. When in our conception of democracy—which really lends itself more to think about it technologically—is that it's a system of figuring out what to do, right? It is a fair system where everyone to collectively decides what we do. So it's a system that solves problems. You know, what should the tax rate be? What should the unemployment policy be? You know, right? Well, how should we thought... how should we regulate airplanes? I mean all of these questions... it's a mechanism by which we figure it out. And... and so in that way of thinking, democracy is an information system, right? It... it's a way of... of solving problems.
Alessandro Oppo: And if...
Bruce Schneier: You answer the question like, why should we trust it? You know, that's another really good question. And, you know, that goes up and down. You know right now at least in the US, we're in a very low, you know, a very sort of a nadir of trust. There's a lot of non-trusting that's going on. People aren't trusting these, you know, these systems that they are fair, that they are... are... are giving us the right answer. So, you know, maybe we shouldn't trust it. You know, but that's... that... that's bad. You know what if that kind of trust fails, then a lot of things fail. So, you know, I... I don't have a good answer of how do you trust it, but it turns out we do largely. And I guess "letting largely" is because it works. But... but these are... these are subtle questions. These are not easy, obvious questions.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah, and also the answers are very hard. Like I don't know if these and...
Bruce Schneier: They're hard and they move around and they're dependent and all sorts of things. Yes. But I mean, I think these are the interesting questions. These are the kinds of things I like to write about.
Alessandro Oppo: It's... it's very interesting to talk about this because they... they can in some ways influence the... the future. And I'm thinking like if we said that democracy is a sort of system where it's... it is possible in a peaceful way to change it... who has power and and also to decide about things. So what do we have to do like, I don't know, in our town? And I'm thinking, how would it be possible to discuss about let's say what to do in our town or in our country using technology? Or there is the same problem we say about voting?
Bruce Schneier: No, so... so there's a lot of work being done in using technology to enable people to discuss and debate and reach agreement. A lot of AI technology is being used here and it's super interesting 'cause there's some really good examples of AI being an enabling technology that allows for large, you know, community discussions and deliberations. There's a, you know, DemocracyNext does a lot of work in citizen assemblies and... and you know, they are often facilitated using technology collective intelligence problem. Alright where did you... where'd... where'd you lose me? You there still? I can't hear you. Now you're on mute. You're still on mute.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah, sorry for the... I... I was disconnected. I hope that you were...
Bruce Schneier: So wait, wait, do you want me to start again? How do you wanna...
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah, because I... I think I lost you at the beginning.
Bruce Schneier: Alright, so why don't you ask questions again and we'll... we'll... we'll do it again.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah.
Bruce Schneier: Oh no.
Alessandro Oppo: No no no no no. You were... you were... you were... you were talking about sixes and assemblies. [Note: Likely "Citizen Assemblies"]
Bruce Schneier: Sorry, we're talking... alright go start again.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah I was saying, if you think that it could be possible using technologies to decide things let's say in a collective way. Before you mention citizen assemblies and as an example of this. Because we say that voting is not safe, so I wonder if other kind of... if technology can be used in a safe way to do something to decide about what to do, let's say in our city, in our state.
Bruce Schneier: Well Michelle, two things. That are two possibilities there. One is technology decides, which you know like is ruled by machine. Or technology will help the humans decide. So let's talk about the latter. So I think that's a better one to think about. There are a lot of technology, a lot of work in using technology—AI in particular, but also communication technologies—to help people discuss, debate, and reach consensus. And the country that is, I think, most ahead on this is Taiwan. That has any number of systems. A "Polis" is I think the main one, where citizens can interact directly with the legislators and... and give feedback and discuss things and policy positions to get modified. Are there other examples around the world? So this is, I mean, I have a really interesting application of AI. It's not doing something that humans can't do, I think it's interesting, right? Humans can also be these kind of moderators, but we don't have enough humans, right? Humans don't scale. So technology fills in where there aren't enough humans to do the job. So and there's a lot of good work here. I'm excited by it. I... I like seeing it. I think it's a... it represents a way of making democracy more responsive to people instead of less. But of course it requires the p... the... the legislators to want it, right? I mean technology can't solve the problem if a legislator like doesn't wanna hear from their constituents. Like that's not a tech problem, that's a democracy problem. But there's a lot of cool things tech can do.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah and nowadays technology, yeah, as... as you said, it's political problem so it means that it's very hard to solve. And I wonder like, do you think that in the future we could see like a sort of democracy where citizen assembly... everyone participating in a citizen assembly with AI system that maybe can record, translate...
Bruce Schneier: Maybe not ever. The point of the citizen assembly is it's not everyone, right? That it's a representative sample. It's sort of an interesting way of doing democracy. The... the... the example that exists mostly in the present days with jury. If you think about what a jury is, we... we... we pick, you know, some number of people to basically act as everybody. They, you know, they sit... the... the people sit in the room, they hear the evidence, and they make the decision for us. Citizens assembly is... is... is similar, right? You know, there's a policy issue. We might convene a 100 people to sit in a room and to get, you know, to get information and to hear testimony and to learn about the issue and eventually decide. And we'd... and we as a group, as in a jury, we say okay, whatever those people decide, we will do. And it's a different way of doing democracy. Instead of everybody voting a little bit, a few people do a much more deeper and intense and... and complex dive into the issue and produce a much more nuanced answer instead of just, you know, yes or no. I think they're... they're... they're growing in popularity. I think they're really interesting and I would like governments to use them more. We'll see what happens, right? I mean right now they are largely a niche. They are often just advisable, they're not binding, which kinda makes them not real. But you know, things are changing. We need to figure out democracy in this century. It's unlikely gonna be, know, it was invented in the mid-seventeen hundreds and France and the UK and then the, you know, newly formed United States. It's likely to be something different. I don't know what it'll include but the... these are all exciting ideas to think about.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah I'm thinking about I mean basically casual extraction of people that can discuss about the problem and...
Bruce Schneier: Then you can imagine, you know, AI being used in these systems, right? I mean either as... as mediators, as moderators, as information providers. Or... they're assuming the AI is trusted—it's a big if—but assuming we can build a trusted AI, right? There... there's a lot of ways it can facilitate us humans reaching a collective decision.
Alessandro Oppo: And I'm also thinking that if we say that the voting is not safe on using the...
Bruce Schneier: Voting is safe. Online voting is not safe.
Alessandro Oppo: Oh yeah.
Bruce Schneier: Oh actually no, we don't know. Mean there are places where voting is very dangerous, you can get yourself killed. Like... but normally the act of voting is not. It's complicated, there are lots of ways to vote in election and no matter how you vote they're always waiting for an election. Online voting is very unsafe.
Alessandro Oppo: Okay, so you would exclude the let's say direct democracy in the future as something that could be possible?
Bruce Schneier: I would not. I think direct democracy is really thing and... and... and something to think about. Be careful, all of these questions are complex and nuanced. There's no single quick answer.
Alessandro Oppo: Unfortunately.
Bruce Schneier: I know, right? If it was easy we would just solve it.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah, and just a clarification because you said online voting is not safe. So like a voting system where the people goes and there is a sort of machine provided by institutions also... that could be considered as an online vote? Yeah?
Bruce Schneier: So again, it's complicated. I recommend verifyvoting.org there. But basically the two things you need for a secure voting system is a voter verifiable paper ballot—one. And there are different ways you can get that, there are ways you can do that with... with machines and a lot on accounting. Generally the... the... the gold standard is optical scan. You get a paper ballot with a bunch of ovals, you fill in the ovals, you feed it into a machine. So you have a paper ballot which goes into a box for a recounts and you have the quick count. That's the first thing. The second thing you need is something called a risk limiting audit, which is a complex math thing, but basically you audit the results in proportion to the margin of victory, right? So if it is a large margin of victory, they only have to do a small audit. If it is a small margin of victory, you have to do a larger audit. Those two things are what we believe are necessary for secure voting. Now that doesn't solve gerrymandering, right? That doesn't solve voter intimidation. That doesn't solve the government who arrests the opposing party's candidate. But the process of voting, that is what is needed to be secure.
Alessandro Oppo: And which other ways to express their volunteer no they're desires we can see the so...
Bruce Schneier: We have lots of ways express our desires. We can protest, right? That is a way to express your desire. We can testify, right? We can write to our legislator. We can advocate for an issue, right? Democracy is not just voting. There are all these different ways that society provides input into the system about what it wants. And here again, you know, tech can do good things. So I live in Massachusetts, the United States. There's a platform called MAPLE—Massachusetts something platform for legislative engagement, I think I got that right. And this is a platform that allows people to submit legislative testimony. Makes it easier. Now if you were wealthy, if you had time, you could always do that. But if you didn't, you had more trouble. And this platform makes it easier. And it uses AI. It uses AI to summarize legislation—there are thousands of bills in Massachusetts every year. It uses AI to help people compose their thoughts and to create their comments. So it's not an AI system, it's a system of, you know, feedback to legislators, but it uses AI. But notice what it doesn't do. Doesn't... it can't force the legislator to read the comments. It can't force a legislator to take them seriously, right? All it can do is, you know, produce those comments and hope that the legislator is, you know, responsive to their constituents, right? That's all it can do. But this... it's a... that's a really good platform for helping people participate in democracy in ways other than voting.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah I... I've seen several platforms that are very interesting that yeah...
Bruce Schneier: It's a bunch, you know. Other... other governments have similar problems. I think Polis is similar in... in... in... in... in Taiwan. Just know Massachusetts because I live here.
Alessandro Oppo: Sorry I'm thinking like we can say that the point of failure is between like... I mean basically it's that politicians don't have to follow what has been discussed.
Bruce Schneier: There are many points of failure, right? Mean money in politics the United States is a major point of failure, okay? Gerrymandering, the ability to really manipulate districts and then we without forceful representation is an enormous point of failure. Oh yeah, I mean point of... points of failure are throughout democracy and you know, unfortunately they're being exploited. They're increasingly being exploited by people who wanna take advantage of... of democracy I...
Alessandro Oppo: I'm thinking that the... the division of power, I mean executive, legislation... [legislative]... like judicial power, like in some way they are built to be balanced between each other. And in some way each one has a sort of point of failure that give advantage to the other two.
Bruce Schneier: Right. And what you want is those points of failure to be different, then they support each other, right? That at least like countering them support each other. And that's the idea when these scissors are set up, they are strained. I mean they're not right now. The United States is not working, you know. We do not have those three points of power and they're all watching each other. We don't. Alright, the courts are deferring to Trump. The legislator completely doesn't do anything anymore. So we largely have an authoritarian government even though on paper we have all these checks and balances. They're not working. And... and we've seen this before, right? You know, like Soviet Union had a phenomenally good constitution, it just... it just never actually worked. So you know, we have lots of its examples of the difference between the way it looks on paper and the way it looks in real life.
Alessandro Oppo: And I'm thinking you mentioned before like hacking such as systems. So once that we have a sort of political system that centralized power in the way you described, then the system should be hacked again to have the division of power.
Bruce Schneier: So this is the... yes. I mean this is hard, right? So this is another book I wrote. I'm gonna get it... and so this is in my previous book. It's called The Hacker's Mind. And in it I... I try to... I try to answer that question. Like how do we deal with a world where the systems of power are being hacked so effectively that they no longer work? And yes, I mean your intuition is correct. We need to like update systems, but that's hard to do in the... in... you know, right now in the United States the system to update the system no longer works. So we have an amendment process. We can amend the constitution, pretty much all constitutions have an amendment process. But in the United States at the federal level, it's not done and it hasn't been done for decades. And you can go to other countries, the countries are amended all the time because things change, right? You have to update the rules by which you live under. At the United States, the state constitutions are updated all the time. Federal level, it is broken. So now we have a problem that the system is broken, the system to fix the system is broken, and we don't have a system to fix the system to fix the system. Like we never thought we need that and now we do.
Alessandro Oppo: And what we do?
Bruce Schneier: Right. You know, if I had the answer to that and be doing different things.
Alessandro Oppo: And would you like to share something about... I mean your professional and academic background is public but maybe something about your personal background you...
Bruce Schneier: Know I'm a security and privacy person. I don't talk about personal background basically.
Alessandro Oppo: It's a good reply.
Bruce Schneier: I know, I know. Sorry again like what you... the first question you asked, I should just make some stuff up right? I have... I have three dogs and I take them for walks and I fly model airplanes and I you know spin plates on... on sticks. None of that's true.
Alessandro Oppo: And I have a couple of other questions that many times talking about let's say the future of governance. There is this term that is a blockchain that came out. I also when I studied this I did my thesis I was very interested by the topic so I did the thesis about that thinking about social and political system could change but then I also identified some point of failure I will say because blockchain they said they should basically decentralize money and power but then it is not the media...
Bruce Schneier: Should just talk before you go further.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah.
Bruce Schneier: I don't know if you... I don't know if you've re... I don't know if you googled "Bruce Schneier blockchain." I'm on record as saying it's the stupidest thing in the history of ever. It has no value. It has no use. It is not distributed. It is not secure. It is not anonymous. It is not a good idea. It just... just don't do it. Any system that uses blockchain can be made better by removing the blockchain, pretty much always, right? Its value is it enables ransomware and buying and selling illegal activities online. It has no value. Zero. Now it's here, we're stuck with it, right? It has monetary value but it is... it is a horrible thing for society in every possible way.
Alessandro Oppo: And yeah, yeah, I know that. I was interested in your opinion. That's why I asked.
Bruce Schneier: Right. Well that's what it is. And then... and you know, and I have written about it. If you Google my name and blockchain you can see my essays about it. It's... it's... I... I know there's no need to rant again now.
Alessandro Oppo: Okay. And maybe this is different question like: do you think that will be possible using technology to decentralize power?
Bruce Schneier: You know... so I mean, no. Right? Because power decentralization is not a technological issue, it's a social issue. I think if we decide to centralize power we can use technologies to help make that happen, but the technologies can't do it unless the humans want us to do it. Now that's a generalization. Some technologies are naturally decentralizing and some are naturally centralizing. Like email is naturally decentralizing, right? Anybody can have an email server, anybody can have a domain, anybody can have an email address. Facebook Messenger is naturally centralizing. You have to be a Facebook user to use it. But the idea of you know communications, right? You couldn't design it either way. So technology helps but doesn't push neither direction.
Alright, so I'm now gonna contradict that AI might. So AI in different applications might be naturally centralizing or naturally decentralized. So I'll give an example that when we talk about in our book notion of AI assisting attorneys. It's a lot of... of money right now in startups to help attorneys using AI, all sorts of things because there's huge amount of money in litigation especially the United States. So here's a question to ask we don't know the answer: will these technologies largely make the best attorneys better or will they largely make the average attorney better? If they make the best better that further centralized power, right? The rich get richer. If it largely makes the average attorney better, that it raises the average attorney's capability and more people have access to justice. Now I don't know which one it's gonna be and you know way to get a C over the next few years. So there's an example where the technology could, you know, decentralized power. Now it doesn't have to, you can imagine all sorts of rules and laws that humans could put on these systems that would remove the decentralization or remove the centralization. So it really is what the people want.
Alessandro Oppo: I'm thinking that I mean usually actually I don't know if people want decentralization or decentralization...
Bruce Schneier: I know right. And what we're gonna see...
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah because maybe not really they... yeah I mean if we see at the pastor mainly you know like the strong men that then became the dictator and so on, a lot of time it was supported by people right?
Bruce Schneier: And you know... and this is like not my area. You know we're seeing United States right now. I mean I... I... I... I don't know how to... I don't really know how to think about this.
Alessandro Oppo: Yeah it... it's a... but it's very interesting how like my question that were related to some technical things how you underline that they are social problems. And and it's up to the people to and also what you said about AI that can be used also to decentralize power based on who is going to help if the average guy or like the one that he's already at the top of the let's say hierarchy.
Bruce Schneier: And right now you know AI is being built to benefit the existing tech monopolies. I mean the re... my real fear of AI is not the technology but it's... it's the economics behind it. It's the fact that the... the... the gains are... are accruing to these very small set of you know basically white male tech billionaires US companies Silicon Valley companies. And that's very dangerous.
Alessandro Oppo: And maybe that's the last question like what could be done to let's say to fix this issue so that they are owned by big tech basically.
Bruce Schneier: I mean that's easy. Antitrust. You know, breaking up the tech monopolies would be probably the single best thing we can do. So it's not hard, it's just politically hard.
Alessandro Oppo: So very hard.
Bruce Schneier: So very hard, right exactly. It's not hard but it's also impossible.
Alessandro Oppo: Thank you a lot... to relieve for... and if you have maybe a message for the other people that are working on maybe on the tools that you described for citizen assembly or maybe that are researching about new ways for governance if you have a message for them.
Bruce Schneier: You know, I don't have... I don't know if I have a message. Or I... I mean I... well the message of this book really is there's a lot of cool things that are happening with AI and democracy. It's really easy to be a doomsayer. It's really easy to say it's all bad, it's all stolen material and it hallucinate make stuff up, it's not good for anything. Turns out not to be true. There are some really interesting use cases for AI and democracy right now and around the world there are governments, there are citizens, there are watchdog groups that are experimenting with really interesting and innovative waste for... to make use of AI in a democracy. And... and while it's important to resist the... the bad uses we all... we can't ignore the good uses. Let's use the technology where it makes sense. Doesn't make sense everywhere. Lots of... of details about how to design all of these uses but there are some really cool uses out there. So that's my message.
Alessandro Oppo: Thank you again.
Bruce Schneier: Thank you really.