The Tech Policy Press Podcast

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300

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Oct 2026

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Tech Policy Press is a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. You can find us at https://techpolicy.press/, where you can join the newsletter.

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October 11, 202651 min

Natasha Singer Details Tech’s Grip on Public Schools

In the daily surge of news and headlines about technology, it can be hard for any journalist to fully contextualize the individual events they are reporting on and trace the underlying patterns, structures, and ideas that are producing them. Today’s guest excels at just that, covering one of the most complicated beats in technology journalism. Natasha Singer is a technology reporter for The New York Times, where she has spent more than a decade investigating how tech shapes schools. Her new book is Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools , published by W.W. Norton.

October 11, 202644 min

Steve Feldstein on Bytes, Bullets, Blood and Borders

It’s a cliché to say that technology is changing war. But today, the pace of change is severe, not only because of advances in fields such as artificial intelligence, but also because of a range of trends and phenomena at the intersection of tech and geopolitics that are changing what it means for nations to compete, and to fight and defend themselves. Today’s guest is Steve Feldstein , a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Big Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare , published by St. Martin’s Press.

October 11, 202635 min

A Data Science Playbook for Social Justice

How can you tell if an algorithm is any good? For University of Michigan assistant professor of information and public policy Ben Green , the answer lies less in accuracy scores, fairness metrics or any other technical measure than in what the system actually does once it’s out in the world. In his new book, Algorithmic Realism: Data Science Practices to Promote Social Justice (MIT Press), he offers data scientists a method for scoping, building and evaluating algorithms in the service of social justice.

October 4, 202651 min

Pennsylvania is a Swing-State Case Study for Data Center Politics

Pennsylvania offers a particular case study in which to consider the political battle over data centers that is playing out across the United States and beyond. A new report from Data & Society, "The AI Factory: Data Centers, Power, and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania," draws on a year and a half of fieldwork across the state. It examines how boosters sell data centers by invoking Pennsylvania's industrial past, and why so many communities aren't buying the promises made by industry and politicians. Justin Hendrix spoke with Data & Society’s Maia Woluchem and Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes and People’s Tech Project’s Hannah Sassaman about its findings.

October 4, 202634 min

Why Social Media Platforms Should Adopt a 'Militant Democracy' Framework

What should social media platforms do when the state itself becomes a threat to democracy? In a new paper published in the journal Information, Communication & Society, Daniel Kreiss and Lorcan Neill , both at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media and the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, borrow from "militant democracy," a framework scholars developed in the 1930s as fascists exploited democratic freedoms to seize power. They offer a framework for wedding platform policies to democratic principles. With midterm elections just weeks away in the United States and elections playing out in Brazil and beyond, Justin Hendrix caught up with them about what the framework suggests, and what trust and safety executives can do even in a context where the interests of platform owners are fused with those of autocratic leaders.

September 27, 20261 hr 6 min

Gil Durán Maps the Rise of the 'Nerd Reich'

On September 23, Tech Policy Press hosted an event at Betaworks in New York City with Gil Durán , the author of The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy , the New York Times bestselling book published by Simon & Schuster. Alice Marwick , research director at Data & Society, joined the discussion with Justin Hendrix .

September 27, 202652 min

The 'Jenga Politics' Threatening the US Census

In the United States, the census touches tech policy at more points than you might realize. It's a massive data collection operation and a piece of democratic infrastructure all at once. danah boyd is the author of Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census , a new book from the University of Chicago Press that tells the story of the people who make the census, recounting how the 2020 census came together amid fractured politics and a raging pandemic. It’s a complicated story, and it has implications for the next census, which is already in planning, and is already a source of controversy and concern.

September 20, 202645 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. To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to its editor-in-chief, Matthias J. Becker , who has spent 15 years tracking how hate speech evolves online.

September 13, 20261 hr 19 min

AI Governance Reaches Crisis Point Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit

Amid a frenzy of headlines about AI safety and just two weeks out from a planned meeting of US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping, Justin Hendrix moderated a discussion around the question, what does AI governance actually demand right now? Convened by the the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., the discussion included Amba Kak from the AI Now Institute, Kat Duffy from the Council on Foreign Relations, Miro Plueckebaum from the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, and Jack Shanahan from SAIS ACF and the Center for a New American Security.

September 8, 202621 min

Across the US, School Districts Wrestle With Classroom AI Policy

Just ahead of the start of the new school year, districts across the United States are issuing new policies on the use of artificial intelligence applications in classrooms. Last Wednesday, New York City effectively banned most student facing AI in all K-8th grade classes while allowing a limited set of approved tools to be used for high schoolers for the upcoming school year. And on the same day, Los Angeles school officials announced the district was placing a one-year moratorium on generative AI for all of its estimated 378,000 students. To learn more about these announcements and the politics driving them, Justin Hendrix spoke to two individuals who covered these matters for Tech Policy Press this summer: Tech Policy Press fellow Chris Mills Rodrigo and audio reporter Laura Karpas, who interned at Tech Policy Press this summer and is currently a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

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