Science, Technology, and Public Policy

David W. Kearn argues that deployment of nuclear weapons cannot rectify a perceived imbalance in conventional forces in the western Pacific.

Bruce Schneier, Kennedy School Adjunct Lecturer and an affiliate of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, appeared on GBH News to discuss the legal questions surrounding Montana's TikTok ban.

Thanks to large language models, a single scammer can run hundreds or thousands of cons in parallel, night and day, in every language under the sun.

Hacking is generally thought of as something done to computer systems, but this conceptualization can be extended to any system of rules. The tax code, financial markets, and any system of laws can be hacked. This essay considers a world where AIs can be hackers. This is a generalization of specification gaming, where vulnerabilities and exploits of our social, economic, and political systems are discovered and exploited at computer speeds and scale.

In an event co-hosted by the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship’s (PETR) and the Asia Center, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, moderated a panel discussion on China’s technological rise and its impact on the US-EU relationship. The panel featured Joel Brenner, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies; Danil Kerimi, Head of Technology Industries Sector, Digital Economy and Global Technology Policy, the World Economic Forum; Meicen Sun, PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Sciences at MIT; and Daniel Weitzner, Founding Director of the Internet Policy Research Initiative. 

The Technology Factsheet Series offers a brief overview of the technical aspects of salient technologies and their policy relevance for Congressional members and their staff.