Safe Mode Podcast

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, it was immediately apparent that the conflict would in part be waged in cyberspace. As Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Russian forces also launched a cyberattack against satellite modems that impacted the Ukrainian military’s ability to communicate. Since then, Russian cyberattacks have been a regular feature of the conflict — but on the other si...

At last August’s DEF CON computer security conference, more than 2,000 people tried their hands at breaking some of the world’s most advanced AI models. That event was the largest-ever public red-teaming event of large language models, and since then policymakers are continuing to look to red-teaming as a key tool in responsibly deploying AI systems. The data scientist Rumman Chowdhury was one of...

Amid the endless hype about AI — how it will either revolutionize the world or end it as we know it — Sayash Kapoor is a rare voice of reason. A PhD candidate at Princeton University and a researcher at the Center for Information Technology and Policy, he is also the author of the newsletter AI Snake Oil, an essential resource to understand AI, its risks, and what to do about them. On this episode...

In order to deliver major improvement in the security of the digital systems we all rely on, the Biden administration has embarked on a major initiative known as secure by design. That initiative aims to build more secure hardware and software by prioritizing security in the design process and asks developers to rethink how they approach building products. So can it be done? On this episode of Saf...

Journalist Byron Tau sits down with host Elias Groll to discuss his eye-opening book about commercially available data. CyberScoop reporter Derek B. Johnson joins the show to discuss recent indictments and sanctions targeting Chinese hackers accused of surveilling politicians and dissidents.

When ChatGPT debuted in the fall of 2022, it set the internet ablaze and opened many people’s eyes to the capabilities of a new generation of machine learning technology. It also caught the attention of some of the world’s most sophisticated hackers. For the companies developing leading edge AI models, preventing hackers from misusing them now represents a key challenge. Sherrod DeGrippo is the di...

Kiersten Todt has worked on just about every hot-button cybersecurity issue you can imagine. Currently the CEO of Liberty Group Ventures, her most recent role in government was as the chief of staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. As a Senate staffer, she drafted key parts of the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security, and during the Obama years, she...

Every day, AI models are being deployed in new places, and that is creating demand for a new industry: companies that secure AI systems. Whether it’s preventing models from being used to write malicious code or creating spearphishing emails or keeping safe the data that companies are using to train AI systems, large language models raise a host of new security challenges. David Haber is the CEO of...

In recent months, U.S. security officials have issued a series of dire warnings about the hacking threat to American critical infrastructure. According to a chorus of intelligence officials, Chinese hacking groups have infiltrated U.S. critical infrastructure entities like ports and power grids, prepositioning themselves in the event of a conflict. But Chinese hackers are just one part of the thre...

When Hamas fighters crossed into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping hundreds more, it marked a new era of the conflict between Israel and an array of militant groups. Most of that conflict has played out in the form of brutal, bloody fighting, but it has also taken place online in the form of cyber operations. Adam Meyers, Crowdstrike’s head of counter adversary operation...

Whether you call it hacking or legitimate security research, getting computers to do things that they shouldn’t is an activity that exists in a legal gray area. Sometimes, hackers acting in good faith will find themselves on the other end of a cease-and-desist letter, a lawsuit, or even a prosecution. A new initiative called the Security Research Legal Defense Fund is trying to make sure that whit...

Everyone seems to agree that AI is going to revolutionize warfare, but exactly how is very much up for debate. Jack Shanahan has worked at the center of the U.S. military’s attempt to integrate AI into how wars are fought. In 2020, he retired as a Lieutenant General from the U.S. Air Force after a 36-year career. He was the inaugural director of the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelli...

Founded in 1995, Craigslist helped shape the modern web as we know it today, reshaping online economies and how people bought and sold goods. Today, its founder Craig Newmark is perhaps better known for his philanthropy than the classifieds site he founded. Newmark’s philanthropy spans issues of cybersecurity, technology and journalism, and he joins Safe Mode to discuss the evolution of the modern...

In the year 2024, elections will take place around the world affecting some 4 billion people — an election year unlike any other. Besides the United States, voters will go to the polls in the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, Mexico and Indonesia, just to name a few. The next time we’ll see this many elections in one year will be in 2048. On Safe Mode this week, host Elias Groll sits down...

The upcoming year will feature an unprecedented number of democratic elections. In addition to the United States’s pivotal federal elections, countries that collectively make up more than half of the world’s populations will head to the polls. These elections are taking place against the backdrop of pervasive security vulnerabilities and come on the heels of a series of elections that have feature...

In our first episode of the year, we begin by looking back at 2023. The NSA’s Rob Joyce and Morgan Adamski sit down with host Elias Groll to examine the major cybersecurity trends of the year, the evolution of Russian hacking operations, how China is targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and how AI is changing the cybersecurity business. FedScoop reporter Nihal Krishan also joins the show to disc...

In our final episode of the year, host Elias Groll sits down with reporters from CyberScoop, FedScoop and Defense Scoop to discuss the biggest stories of the year. Christian Vasquez and AJ Vicens join the show to talk through the biggest breaches of the year and how the cybersecurity landscape changed in 2023. Madison Alder and Rebecca Heilweil come on to discuss how the federal government respond...

It was WikiLeaks that pioneered the publishing and hosting of sensitive information, and while Julian Assange’s whistleblowing project has withered away, groups like Distributed Denial of Secrets are carrying on the work of trying to make public interest material more widely available — and to do so more responsibly. Emma Best is the founder of DDOS and she sits down with CyberScoop reporter AJ Vi...

To be a person in the world today is to have your data collected. Whether it’s your internet browsing history, your location history as you walk around with your phone in your pocket, or the purchases you make online, there’s few human activities today that aren’t in one way or another tracked. So what happens with all that data once it’s collected? Increasingly, it’s bundled with other data and s...

A growing industry exists today that provides governments with highly advanced tools to surveil their opponents. While this industry has become personified by Israel’s NSO Group, it in fact goes far beyond this one firm. The commercial spyware industry is growing rapidly, posing major human rights concerns and exposing dissidents, journalists and members of civil society to highly intrusive survei...

Just as behavioral psychology revolutionized economics by integrating human behavior into the study of financial decisions — creating the field of behavioral economics — the study of cyberpsychology tries to put the human being at the center of conversations about cybersecurity. Dr. Mary Aiken is one of its foremost practitioners and also happens to be the inspiration for Patricia Arquette’s chara...

Russia’s cyberattacks against Ukraine’s electrical grid occupy a canonical place in the history of cyber warfare. By turning out the lights in Ukraine in 2016 and 2017, Russia demonstrated the reach of digital weapons. Now researchers have revealed that Moscow’s hackers struck the Ukrainian grid in 2022. CyberScoop reporters AJ Vicens and Christian Vasquez join the show to discuss the implications...

President Joe Biden’s sprawling executive order on artificial intelligence has finally arrived. The sprawling document contains a long list of new requirements. Leading AI companies have to report training runs and the results of red team tests. A slew of agencies are tasked with developing new standards and rules to address AI risks. And a long list of reports have been commissioned. FedScoop rep...

Over the past 15 years, Twitter — now X — has become pivotal to how we understand crises. From the Arab Spring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, now, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, X is the first platform to which many people turn to understand and report on rapidly unfolding events. Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform has fundamentally changed it, and anyone relying on X to underst...

Distributed denial of service attacks are one of the great nuisances of online life today, but they can also have more serious impact on the internet, disrupting access to crucial services and information at critical moments. FBI Special Agent Elliott Peterson is one of the bureau’s most seasoned investigators of the networks responsible for launching the DDOS attacks and joins the show to discuss...