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Technology Policy, Ethics & Society podcasts

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Top 10 Technology Policy, Ethics & Society Podcasts of 2026

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The Lawfare Podcast1 hr 2 min

Lawfare Daily: Emily Benson on What Economic Security Is, and How We Should Think About It

Emily Benson is the Head of Strategy at Minerva Technology Futures, a strategic consulting firm that advises companies on how geopolitics impacts their business. She has also spent time at CSIS and at the Department of Commerce, and has spent more time thinking about economic statecraft than most of us. Emily joins Lawfare Contributing Editor and host of the Security Economics podcast Peter Harrell to discuss what economic security actually is and how we should think about it. She recently moved to Europe, and that gives her an interesting perspective on the issue, including whether Europe needs to diversify away from U.S. technology because of U.S.-related economic security risks. They also discuss China and how the U.S. and China are wielding economic security tools against each other. This episode is part of the Security Economics podcast series, in which Peter Harrell and guests explore the intersection of economics and national security, how countries manage their economies to support national security, and how they deploy economic tools in support of geopolitical objectives.

Tech Life26 min

Gauging China's AI strength

How far has China come in developing AI technology? And what challenges does it face? An expert helps us understand the thinking in Beijing. Also this week: what can fifty thousand autonomous machines tell us about the future of robotics? And cutting edge tech helps cricket reach new audiences. Presenter: Chris Vallance Producer: Tom Quinn (Image: An illustration of the Chinese flag over electronic circuitry. Credit: Getty Images)

TechTank38 min

Weighing the existential risks of AI and the proposals to prevent them

Recent warnings about the possible existential threats some say AI may pose to humanity have led to heightened debates about how we should address these concerns. Policymakers are now more seriously weighing what actions from both government and business are needed to reassure a nervous public that AI is safe, reliable, and helpful. In this episode, Darrell West is joined by fellow Brookings colleagues Tom Wheele and Bill Galston to discuss potential paths forward and what they mean for both safety and competition.

Tech Policy Press Podcast45 min

Matthias J. Becker on the Launch of Digital Hate Review

The study of how hate is expressed in digital media and its relationship to offline harassment and violence is a growing field that touches public policy, content moderation and platform policy, AI governance, and a variety of other topics at the intersection of technology and public discourse. This week, a new journal called the Digital Hate Review launched to give a new home to research and discourse on these issues. Becker , who has spent 15 years tracking how hate speech evolves online.

The Technically Human Podcast1 hr 6 min

Who Controls the Open Web? — with Shane Evans, CEO of Zyte

What does it mean for the web to be open—and open to whom? For most of the web’s history, we’ve operated on a fairly simple assumption: if you put something on a public website, people could find it, search engines could index it, and information could move relatively freely across the internet. But as AI systems increasingly crawl, extract, learn from, and act on information from the web, that bargain is beginning to change. My guest today is Shane Evans , co-founder and CEO of Zyte , a company that builds technology for extracting data from the public web for use in AI, analytics, and other applications. Shane has been working on the web since the late 1990s. Today, we’re talking about Zyte’s new research suggesting that the Open Web is increasingly becoming a “Controlled Web”—and what that means for publishers, AI companies, web users, and the future of access to information online.

Your Undivided Attention21 min

The Most Hopeful (And Concerning) Moment Yet in AI

It’s been a whirlwind week in AI news. Weeks after a series of hacking incidents by rogue agents at OpenAI and Anthropic, we’ve seen a cascade of top AI researchers blow the whistle on what they call the catastrophic and even existential risks posed by the current pace of development. Then, over the weekend, Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI research — a call that was echoed by his competitors Sam Altman and Elon Musk. If you’re feeling both concerned and hopeful at this moment, you’re not alone. Real threats are opening the door for real change. Tristan and Aza are going out into the world, talking to the media, technologists, and policymakers to turn this momentum into action. Today on the show, Tristan shares how he’s feeling in this critical moment, breaks down the headlines from an insider's perspective, and points to tangible steps we can take right now to avoid the worst-case scenario. You probably have questions about what’s happening. Good news: Tristan and Aza are gearing up for their annual Ask Us Anything episode. CORRECTIONS The quote from Ajeya Cotra that Tristan cites is from her personal Substack, not the official METR report. She is also one of three contributors to the report, not the sole author. Tristan incorrectly referred to Dario Amodei’s warning that an AI swarm could “take down” the internet. His actual phrasing was “take over” the internet. President Trump’s call-in to the All In Summit occurred on Monday, 9/14, not Sunday, 9/13. RECOMMENDED MEDIA Watch “The AI Doc” on Netflix Sign The Pro-Human AI Declaration METR’s investigation of the Hugging Face incident Dario Amodei’s call to “Pace the Frontier” The Pacing the Frontier Open Letter “On the Loose” by Dean Ball "An Alien Mind" by Jakub Pachoki "AI May Become the Third Superpower" by Paul Tudor Jones RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES “Rogue AI” Used to be a Science Fiction Trope. Not Anymore. The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive Daniel Kokotajlo Forecasts the End of Human Dominance Former OpenAI Engineer William Saunders on Silence, Safety, and the Right to Warn Mustafa Suleyman Says We Need to Contain AI. How Do We Do It?

Tech Won’t Save Us34 min

Data Vampires Redux: Sacrificing for AI (Episode 3)

Paris’ new book Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires is coming out in October. To celebrate, we’re revisiting the series that planted the seeds for his deep dive into hyperscale data centers, the communities they’re affecting, and the future Silicon Valley is trying to build. This is episode 3 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us. The show is hosted by Paris Marx. Original production on Data Vampires was by Eric Wickham. Current production is by Kyla Hewson. Sustainable AI Group cofounder Sasha Luccioni, Associate Professor in Economics Cecilia Rikap, former head of the Center for Applied Data Ethics Ali Alkhatib, Goldsmiths University lecturer Dan McQuillan, and Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute Alex Hanna were interviewed for this episode. Interviews with Sam Altman and Brad Smith were cited.

The AI Policy Podcast48 min

AI Safety Goes Mainstream

An Anthropic researcher's viral resignation post last week set off a maelstrom of fear around extreme AI risks. Aalok and Nicole discuss the resulting vibe shift and how frontier labs are responding. They also unpack OpenAI solving one of the most difficult open problems in mathematics and reports of more rogue agent activity on the open internet.

Tech Talks by the Center for Democracy & Technology28 min

Talking Tech with Roy Austin & Alex Givens on The Future of AI Governance

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how we work, communicate, and make decisions, but its impact is not just a question of technological innovation. It also raises critical questions about fairness, accountability, civil rights, and how we ensure these systems serve everyone. As policymakers, researchers, and communities grapple with these challenges, leaders across sectors are working to shape the future of AI in ways that reflect our values and protect the public interest. In this episode, we're exploring some of the biggest questions facing AI today — from responsible development and governance to ensuring that communities historically impacted by technology are included in shaping its future. Joining us for this conversation is Roy L. Austin, Jr. the Inaugural Director of Howard University School of Law’s almost 1 year old AI initiative and Alex Givens, President and CEO for the Center for Democracy & Technology.

The Future of You9 min

Who Gets to Interpret You? | The Machine-Readable Self

What happens when identity stops being something we declare and becomes something machines infer? In this specially assembled edition of The Future of You , Tracey Follows returns to four conversations that reveal how the self is becoming machine-readable. Artist and AI pioneer Holly Herndon explains why anything captured in media can become training data. Journalist Kashmir Hill traces the rise of searchable facial recognition and the danger of infrastructure built for security being used for exclusion. Biometrics entrepreneur Andrew Bud explains why the face is becoming the root of trust in the digital economy. Investigative journalist Byron Tau reveals the expanding world of data brokers and the invisible digital exhaust emitted by our devices. Together, these conversations show how identity is becoming an ambient layer assembled from faces, voices, gestures, locations, transactions, relationships and inference. The machine-readable self is not a future scenario. It is already here. Tracey also connects these conversations to her work on the Database Self and the Database Brand, exploring how people and organisations are increasingly interpreted by systems. The question is no longer simply: who are you? It is: who, or what, gets to interpret you?