WarRoom Battleground EP 910： The Rise Of Christian Nationalism And AI’s Potential To Destabilise Democracy
Episode Stats
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Summary
Will Pope Leo the 14th stand up to Christian nationalism? Professor Alejandro Reyes and I discuss the possibility that Pope Leo might be a bulwark against the Christian nationalist agenda of the far-right Christian nationalist movement.
Transcript
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this is the primal scream of a dying regime pray for our enemies because we're going to
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medieval on these people here's not got a free shot all these networks lying about the people
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the people have had a belly full of it I know you don't like hearing that I know you try to
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do everything the world to stop that but you're not gonna stop it it's going to happen and where
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to people like that go to share the big line mega media I wish in my soul I wish that any of these
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people had a conscience ask yourself what is my task and what is my purpose if that answer is to
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save my country this country will be saved war room here's your host Stephen K. Band
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Friday 12th of December Hanwell here at the helm Steve Bannon's war room we've made it folks to
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the end of the week um I saw as you know I read about 750 800 850 articles every day as part of my job
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and I saw a very very interesting article this week uh by Professor Alejandro Reyes who is the
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adjunct professor and senior fellow at the center on contemporary China and the world at the
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University of Hong Kong and this article was in a magazine which I do peruse constantly foreign policy
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I think Steve Bannon says it's one of the most important foreign affairs um magazines news
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magazines in the business foreign policy foreign affairs they are two very well respected and
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established news portals it really sort of lets you know how the globalist elites are thinking you're
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listening into that interior conversation and the article that we're discussing today is will
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Pope Leo stand up to Christian nationalism um professor Reyes thank you very much indeed
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for coming on the show today somewhat very brave and courageous of you to step
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your article um opened in fact with a reference to Steve Bannon
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uh and an early interview he'd given to the economist where he said that Donald Trump was a vehicle of
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divine providence and an instrument of divine will and that's really the the starting point
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for your excursion here um now you you you put together some interesting arguments and I wanted to
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talk to you because often you know perhaps we're two sides and talking amongst ourselves
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dive in a little bit about what you're saying because your your thesis in this article is that
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a point of opposition to the Christian nationalist agenda
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let's start off with something that you say in your article and go from there
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uh because you say that Steve was articulating a political theology and a claim
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that a leader if chosen by God stands above human law and temporal limits
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and that that idea wants and still is the claim of monarchs and that it's re-entered
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modern politics um that's a very interesting way of looking I don't know if Steve has ever
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quite put it in those words um but you go on to say that the movements that we that we follow
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very much on this show uh differ in creed and converge in disposition which is an interesting
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way of putting it because a lot of these populist nationalist iterations do have conflicts between
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them but sort of can unite around a border position what I want to start off with asking you is this
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because you say that they sacralize exclusion distrust pluralism and cast political opposition as moral decay
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what what do you mean um because you obviously not really you know there's no problem with that but
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you're not clearly not part of the Christian nationalist movement what what does it mean for someone who
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opposes the Christian nationalist movement to suggest that what we're doing is sacralizing exclusion
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right um thank you for um having me here I'm sorry it's uh first of all it's two in the morning in
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Hong Kong where I am and my voice is somewhat hoarse from having a cold and from it being the time it is
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um to your question you know I I I think um uh Christians have always believed God sort of works
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through history but you know never the leaders above uh are above judgment so I I I think when when
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I talk about sacralizing exclusion uh the idea that um uh you know the uh Christianity the political
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Catholic theology theology of exception you know that there's some um that there is some kind of
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exemption and that's exactly what the church has resisted this idea of ex um uh accepting certain
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people from uh responsibility from judgment but also excluding uh uh people the stranger the stranger is a
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an important um figure in uh Catholic theology in particular um and and how one must look after and care even for
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the foreigner um and consider the foreigner as indeed your neighbor
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so this is the um so you think from your perspective that what we're doing here is othering
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to use the contemporary verb where we're othering um people who aren't part of the movement
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for political motivation well that within the politics of uh Christian nationalism there clearly is
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especially with regard to the issue of immigration that there is a sense that a key part of of of that
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politics the Christian nationalism politics has to do with excluding immigrants excluding particularly
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um um um people possibly of different faiths uh people who are outside that kind of Christian
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community uh that um Christian nationalists seek to uh promote and preserve and maintain as kind of the core
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of uh culture uh uh particularly the western civilizational culture
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when i hear you talking professor reyes um i get a thought an idea which i'd never it's never occurred to me
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before um and i need to think about this some more but the oh you know the old in Catholic theology
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there was this old principle of extra ecclesia nulla salus right there's no salvation outside the church
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what you're suggesting is that sort of that theological idea has been transposed if you will
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within the Christian nationalist movement um as as part of its core philosophy is is that really what
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you're suggesting you know i'm suggesting you know i'm suggesting you know i'm not a theologian
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i'm not a theology major i'm just the observer political observer and indeed uh part of the reason
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i wrote this piece is because it's not it's not within actually my uh general expertise which is on
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um asia pacific indo-pacific politics uh geopolitics but because i have observed and written about the um
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the catholic church before uh i felt inspired uh to to to write this um this piece of analysis
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um i i think i'm merely saying that within the agenda it would seem at least from uh what i have
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observed is uh that in the um christian nationalist agenda there is a immigration plays a significant role
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uh uh is a significant issue and um the idea is that you know um christian nationalism or the christian
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communities are somehow um under threat by um the advent of uh immigration of migrants of different
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particularly of different faiths and in certain communities of of of of different um races now uh you
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know i i wrote a piece after you know this all started because i am in reacting to the assassination
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of uh uh charlie kirk the very you know tragic and horrific assassination of charlie kirk um i wrote a
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piece also in foreign policy uh reflecting on the global aspect of charlie kirk because uh folks might
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might might not actually know that just before he was assassinated he had been to korea and to japan
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and um uh had spoken at events organized by right-wing political parties in those countries and his
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message had really resonated and was interesting to me the phenomenon of a kind of a white christian
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nationalist uh figure of such prominence that particularly when after he was assassinated that
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his uh there was a significant amount of mourning in this part of the world in and where he had been
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in korea and japan and indeed even in india why did that message i think you know uh resonate with uh
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non-whites uh in in majoritarians uh in in in this part of the world and i think part of it it goes down
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just to the basics of uh of immigration the idea that even in a sort of a majoritarian society
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uh your culture your identity can be at risk if uh given uh immigration or given cultural threats from
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wherever and that uh that message of of um um you know that there might there needs to be reflection
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on whether uh to uh preserve or strengthen your culture your community there has to be some kind
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of exclusion or at least vetting or um security concerns that this message has resonated around the
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world and that's in different communities not necessarily even just christian communities and
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and and and so um i was fascinated by that and i wrote about that and that's kind of the stepping
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stone from where i approached uh this article about pope lio did you um see just just i'll take this um
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this point now did you see in hong kong any particular response to charlie kirk's killing
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um yes indeed uh i i i do uh know that there were certain uh communities here i mean we have a
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significant christian community here uh that um certainly expressed their um grief uh um on on
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his killing and um and and you know but it was not as much as in some places like in korea for
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example there were you know particularly among uh the communities that hosted him uh there was
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significant expression of grief japan and as i mentioned in india too um i didn't really uh and
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i know in the philippines as well because i do have um uh i'm originally from the philippines
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i did have a lot a number of um i do have a number of relatives that i'm connected to and i know that
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there was there were expressions of grief and uh shock and grief uh at at the assassination uh on their
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social media so yes i think uh you know charlie kirk's message did resonate in uh around the world and
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in this part of the world including in communities that you know that are um uh local communities
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rather than uh necessarily communities of americans that was an interesting and digression i wasn't
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nine eight nine eight now let's get back to professor reyes well i wasn't expecting to ask you um about your
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personal uh experience in hong kong on uh of what you witnessed on the the global outpouring of grief
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about charlie kirk you did mention however in your article something interesting which i picked up on
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and then i did want to dig down on on the the pope leo thesis but staying on the subject of charlie you
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said that martyrdom has given christian nationalism what it had lacked a canonized story of sacrifice
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usable by movements in the united states and beyond um well i read that and that struck me as being true
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um in and of itself but i also think that you could equally make the same suggestion i'd exactly i'm not
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taking that as a criticism or even as an accusation of cynicism on behalf of the christian nationalist
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movement just it's a simple empirical observation but isn't there a parallel do you think between
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what you say there about the martyrdom of charlie kirk and the uh public assassination of martin luther king
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in the 60s i don't feel qualified to really talk much about um martin luther king i mean i'm i'm not that old
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yet to you know i wasn't uh really uh thinking and analyzing the situation at that time um i would
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say yes i mean you know i think that uh in in any kind of movement and and and i think the christian
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nationalist movement is certainly a a global one um one need only think about um what we see in
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in hungary what we see in other parts of europe uh in italy um and then of course you can go to um latin
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america and um argentina and um other places to to to uh to accept that that this christian nationalist
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movement well it does seem to be coalescing into a global movement um that that it is it has that
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kind of scale now um should i compare should we compare uh the martyrdom of charlie kirk to uh the
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martyrdom of uh um martin luther king i think maybe uh time will tell in terms of how how how much
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the the the the assassination of uh charlie kirk will indeed resonate and the impact kind of um
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multiply or mount if you will um i mean clearly um martin luther king's uh the the the impact of that
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is still uh being felt today now um i i i i think time time time we we need time to see well what is the
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real full impact of the significance of charlie kirk's uh assassination okay um the part of your
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article we have like a seven or so minutes left of this interview the part of the article i i do want
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to push back on now is the idea that leo pope leo the 14th can be um a unifying point in opposition to
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christian nationalism and the reason why i want to push back on that argument and you talk about
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his uh the fact that he has moral authority and his appeals to conscience the reason why i want to
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push back on that professor reyes is because i don't think he has the credibility that would take
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with people who are in the christian nationalist movement in order to talk them out of their positions
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because if you yeah the christian nationalist movement is largely numerically evangelical rather
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than catholic so they're going to start off with evangelicals are going to start off with a negative
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view of the pope and of itself they'll think you know basically he's just a communist agitator and
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arguably not even christian um and when he's pushing the position here that you mention in your article
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about the inhuman treatment of of immigrants and what have you in the the the juxtaposition
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between pro-life uh that that leo made but uh and the death penalty and what have you all that's going
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to do is cement people who aren't disposed to him to being even less deposed uh disposed to him and i would
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suggest that the consequence of that is going to be he will in fact he will act as a unifying
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figure he will act as a unifying figure for people who are against him and it will solidify them in in
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the christian nationalist movement i wanted to get your reading on that right i i think where i'm coming
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from um and maybe i'm mainly influenced because i'm approaching it as a practicing catholic and
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you know coming with the catholic perspective um big and and frankly this this this the genesis the
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article um it doesn't it goes even further back then um uh charlie kirk's assassination but it goes back
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to just a selection of pope leo as uh the holy father as the pontiff um because of course we were all
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surprised that um an american was chosen and i i you know the words of bishop baron at a um when he
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um um was asked the question before the conclave about um you know would could an american become pope
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um i vague i i remembered that bishop baron and and and and i i i don't want to say i'm quoting him
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exactly but he he dismissed the idea that there could be an american pope because of course he
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he said that well typically uh the cardinals didn't want to have um you know the most powerful uh temporal
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leader in the world to be um an american and and and then the a very powerful uh religious leader to
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also be american but and then bishop baron said well but perhaps when america's position in the world
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is diminished right or something to that effect then they might decide to choose an american then
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lo and behold a day or two later we have an american pope and that set me going i said well
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what what what was the thinking of the cardinals uh behind the choice of robert prevost and you know
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one can say well it's the holy spirit at work right and that's but but but surely there must have been
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some kind of geopolitical and and we've talked about the trump effect in in elections um well i think this
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was in some ways and and and no different that uh uh when the cardinals came together uh i think they
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you know we were all expecting another cardinal a cardinal from the global south would come because
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that's where the church is growing that's where they need to get a pontiff to to become a big role
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model and a leader from the global south but instead we got an american and i think that the choice was
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very much geopolitical this idea that um you could have a a pope who was steeped in the vocabulary of
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the global south but also coming right from um the midwest of the united states right from the the heart
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to some extent of that christian nationalism uh movement um a cradle of it and and um i think that
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the uh at least um the thinking was well can we counter the um uh growing um christian nationalist
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movement within the catholic church right and not necessarily the whole of it but i think there was
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an important sense in um the cardinals choosing if they were stressed if they were really strategizing
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that it it would be important to um you know you understand that the uh um converts or the
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the communities in of catholics in the united states are actually increasing but these tend to be very
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young people who are indeed within the christian nationalist strain and um uh sorry if i can use that word
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but um i think that the cardinals were concerned that they wanted to be sure that
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catholics were joining in the united states not just because of the attractions of catholicism
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for christian nationalists but for attractions uh to catholicism because of the moral qualities the
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moral theology the uh what the pope stands for and what the pope has kind of been trying to express
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that's okay professor reyes um that thanks for for encapsulating where you're coming from there
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i you know we'll get your the link and i suggest people to read the article it's very interesting
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article very well written article um you know i am a christian nationalist i'm catholic as well
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um and i i i would point my my my point of starting is is the beginning paragraph when you quote steve uh
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steve bannon uh articulating the the point that um that a political leader may be a vehicle of uh divine
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providence and even an instrument of divine will um the the reason what i really wanted to to chew over
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with you is this idea is whether pope leo might be a unifying point against christian nationalism
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and i sort of think basically what you were just saying is that most people inside of the maga
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movement most people inside of the christian nationalist movement will look at pope leo and they won't see
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him they don't see him as an american and i think that's why the conclave might have made a misstep
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on that if they thought he was going to be able to neuter donald trump they see him as a latin american
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and i mean he has peruvian citizenship um and his thought is more typically i would suggest latin
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american than than north american professor reyes grateful for you coming on the show to to explain
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your thesis to us come back in the in the meantime where do people go on social media to keep up
00:26:25.780
with your research and your writings and they can go to linkedin and look for me and another reyes
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and i'm the only one and i think in hong kong on linkedin well okay alejandro reyes professor at
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hong kong university very grateful for you coming on the show and for staying up in the early hours of
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2 a.m in the morning get some sleep relax this weekend and thank you very much for joining us
00:26:53.780
on the show god bless for now folks we'll be back in two short minutes after this break
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schneier thanks for coming on the show let's kick off straight away you you make the claim that ai will
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change democracy the only question is how um just give me like two minutes as an introduction off the
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the question is is it going to concentrate power or distribute power is it going to help democracy or hurt
00:33:19.860
democracy that's what we want to write about um i'm going to talk about your insights when it comes to
00:33:26.740
justice later on in this interview but let's start off with the beginning okay um i'm not really on
00:33:35.300
the twitter platform i'm on getter um but i can't help but notice whenever i'm just perusing
00:33:41.620
twitter i i would make the claim that the single phrase that has been asked most in 2025 is grok is this real
00:33:52.500
um because if you're if you're scanning through to do your twitter feed again and again and again you
00:33:59.140
see something and you have literally no idea now whether it's real whether it's a genuine something
00:34:05.860
that someone caught with their phone or whether it's manufactured and there's always go you go to the
00:34:11.220
comments to find out and someone's top comment is always grok at grok is this real um and i would
00:34:19.620
suggest that really does it's created it it's created an um epistemological doubt really now
00:34:27.300
fundamental you have no idea anymore what whether what you're seeing is real or not and there is a
00:34:35.940
question that you know you you starting off from that reflection there is a question as to how viable
00:34:41.700
democracy is after that because democracy is all about looking at the world around you and making a
00:34:48.740
judgment if you no longer and i know you said this isn't that you know this is only like the starting
00:34:54.100
point of your thesis because you actually go into this sort of in a lot more detail but i think the
00:34:59.140
point it's important to make the point that if you no longer have any um solid confidence
00:35:08.100
that most 99 of your source of information is actually true beyond an ai video generator how on earth
00:35:20.660
can you make the calculations necessary in order to form political um judgments yeah i think this is a
00:35:30.660
real interesting question it's not new right you know uh doctor for doctored photographs as old as
00:35:36.500
photography photoshop's been around since the 1980s what's different is it's now easier to fabricate
00:35:43.700
images and voices and and videos i think about it if like if we are ever going to argue about what to
00:35:51.380
do i mean the the actual business of politics we have to agree on what the world is if we can't agree
00:35:59.460
on that then the arguments about what the tax rate should be or the immigration policy or anything
00:36:04.180
make no sense because we're not starting from the same reality this is the problem of propaganda
00:36:09.380
i mean this is as old as the 1960s uh so i think we're going through a new phase of it but i think
00:36:15.620
we're going to default on to trusted sources now how do you know how did you know an image was true
00:36:22.180
20 years ago if you were in a courtroom the court demanded that uh you produce evidence of how it was
00:36:29.780
created it didn't just take photographs as prima facie evidence because it could be doctored back
00:36:34.580
then i know and my guess is we will eventually all be more savvy right this this this transition
00:36:41.140
period is really difficult and you're right i think the the answer is people are going to believe nothing
00:36:45.860
unless they come from a trusted source make a newspaper they trust a publication they trust
00:36:51.540
a website they trust kind of just as they've always done but i mean you you're right in this
00:36:58.420
larger point that if we can't agree on the state of the world we can't have a serious discussion about
00:37:04.500
what to do next and i and i do worry about democracy under those circumstances that i don't
00:37:10.420
think it's an ai problem actually that's a social media problem which is and hence you know
00:37:15.460
a surveillance capitalism problem but that is definitely a problem well we've had social media
00:37:21.060
i guess and social media in and of itself has fundamentally changed the landscape of politics
00:37:25.780
it's difficult to think that we would have had the phenomenon um of donald trump the donald trump
00:37:31.540
insurgency um if social media hadn't existed so we had let's say we had a run-in of about 20 years
00:37:38.900
15 20 years of social media without ai and now we have the the ai component to it you meant you
00:37:45.220
mentioned the images point and the starling point that's you know in in your book you point out that
00:37:49.220
starling in in the 50s airbrushed people out of photographs once they'd become uh uh enemies
00:37:57.700
to the regime or they've just fallen out of favor with the regime but even so we all have the empirical
00:38:04.180
our own empirical life experience of life before ai if you saw a photo um unless it was perhaps a ufo
00:38:12.580
themed photo if you saw a photo you basically had the confidence that that was real and could act
00:38:18.980
with a reasonable degree of security on the assumption that it was real and it's not just
00:38:23.380
images of course it's videos and i think one of the reasons why um democracy though it's going to
00:38:29.700
be interesting to see how democracy plays out i sort of think we're in end-stage democracy anyway
00:38:36.180
as it is even without the existence of ai but if you know if you're looking on social media where
00:38:41.620
most people get their news now and you're seeing a video let's say donald trump or let's say i i don't
00:38:47.540
know um hillary clinton anybody you have literally it could be you know anybody right um but you have to
00:38:56.580
you know just about you can just about tell a bit um whether it's a or not but that technology
00:39:03.300
within a couple of years will go and you won't be able to tell um so you'll see you'll see a video
00:39:08.500
you'll hear a political discourse and you won't know whether it's real i but but you don't see those
00:39:13.620
in isolation so i mean i know some of the companies are working on tools that people can use to check if
00:39:20.900
a video or an image is real now they're going to have to want to do that right you know and most
00:39:26.580
people are watching these platforms not to get new opinions but to have their world be validated
00:39:35.220
i think of it as politics of sports you know my team good your team bad anything that happens for my
00:39:41.300
team is positive this is very much the polarization of the algorithm now these are ai algorithms the
00:39:48.180
algorithm that determines your feed on facebook or tiktok or or twitter slash x those are all done
00:39:54.180
by ai and they're done not to inform you right they're done to keep you on the platform because
00:40:01.220
that's how these platforms make money based on engagement they show you ads that are personalized
00:40:06.020
to manipulate you and then is this business model much more than the images i mean you think about uh
00:40:12.180
you know all the talk about uh russian propaganda i mean a lot of the a lot of the images are not
00:40:19.220
they're not they're not fake pictures they're just memes they're my team good your team bad the problem is
00:40:25.460
in the images the problem is the algorithm magnifies them and shows them to people so whatever our teams
00:40:32.580
are we're seeing different images right that are microly targeted so the thing that outrages us or makes us
00:40:39.380
passionate that keeps us on these algorithms i worry about that much more than the ability to create
00:40:46.020
a realistic video of you saying something you would never say in real life
00:40:53.060
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00:41:59.700
i sort of think that that point about the algorithms is you know they're on a port they're on a par um
00:42:06.820
in in terms of the danger uh with ai because into this what you already have is like a feedback loop a
00:42:14.500
negative feedback loop you now have ai coming in as the amplificator it what it what was already
00:42:22.580
something that was destabilized because of the the feedback um i don't i don't see how ai can help us
00:42:30.180
out of that particular uh that particular problem that we have so so the the issue isn't the tech it's how
00:42:38.260
we choose to use the tech ai can help us out of that if we choose that i mean right now there are
00:42:45.460
a handful of tech monopolies controlling the controlling that tech and how how it's being
00:42:50.900
made it doesn't have to be made the way it is so we actually do have choices problem is we've
00:42:56.980
abdicated the choice and give them i think to a bunch of of unelected companies and i worry a lot
00:43:01.860
about that i mean we can use this technology to allow for more collaboration uh more consensus
00:43:10.340
building and there are examples from countries around the world that are trying these tools
00:43:15.860
from municipalities in the united states we see nothing at the national level of course gonna
00:43:20.340
be hard we're a big country very divided country but you know i worry a lot more about the tech
00:43:26.340
monopolies who are controlling this than the tech itself there are other ways to
00:43:31.620
do it can you um well we'll you know it's can you um can you tell me just because i know we have
00:43:40.900
like sort of six minutes left of this interview could you tell me a bit about your thoughts on justice
00:43:47.940
because you mentioned something in your book about how ai might be employed to help judges form their
00:43:55.940
sentences or even effectively substitute that that role which i had which is an application i
00:44:01.460
hadn't actually considered because of its notional impart impartiality impartiality could you just
00:44:06.980
explain a little bit how that might work in practice all right so this is very controversial
00:44:10.900
i'm not saying i agree with this but it's things we have to think about we're already seeing judges use
00:44:16.020
ai uh you know to write decisions i think that's bad but being used to query like what is the plain
00:44:22.500
meaning of a term the judge needs to know what a term means because it's in a contract he has to
00:44:27.060
interpret it so he asks an ai what the term means it's an interesting use probably a good use of the uh
00:44:32.500
the technology because the ai synthesizes what we all write and think and and produces an answer
00:44:39.540
but ai has the potential to interpret what a statute means and that could be used by a judge to uh you
00:44:47.940
know take the text of a law and depending on our politics it could take the text and then the the
00:44:53.380
debate by the legislators information about the world or it could just take the text i mean we
00:44:58.740
would decide politically you know what is in you know what should be in the purview of what the ai
00:45:04.340
considers you can imagine a legislature encoding a law in ai one of the problems we have with
00:45:11.620
legislation is that it's not specific enough and then the courts start interpreting the legislation
00:45:18.340
and you know if they interpret the way we like we're happy into what we don't like we're not happy
00:45:22.100
but you know whose job is it it should be the legislature's job so maybe the legislator encodes
00:45:28.660
its thinking in a model and the idea is that the courts query that model to ask so there's a
00:45:35.220
was a case in in massachusetts a few years ago which hinged on the question whether a burrito is a
00:45:40.980
sandwich the law was written like in the 1950s when they're like people didn't know about burritos in
00:45:46.420
massachusetts and here we are in the 2000s a judge has to figure out whether a 1950s legislator would
00:45:53.940
think a burrito is a sandwich kind of a you know a bit a very bizarre situation but that kind of thing
00:46:00.580
happens all the time and ai could help with that we we might not like that you know because we have
00:46:07.860
different opinions on what how much leeway judges should have but you know someone's got to figure out
00:46:13.780
if a burrito is a sandwich because there's a case and there are two restaurants the zoning laws
00:46:19.540
how do we do that ai could conceivably help i agree with on this point and anyone who's been
00:46:26.980
through legal cases as i have has been a defendant in criminal cases as i have um or anyone who's
00:46:34.500
actually been a victim of a miscarriage of justice as i have will be intrigued by the possibility
00:46:41.060
that the ai might actually be um potentially a dispenser of justice because of its impartiality
00:46:52.020
we might sorry we might say that the ai will make mistakes but you know human judges make mistakes
00:46:56.900
all the time and in all these situations very important to ask compared to what
00:47:02.580
i mean we think about ai's driving cars compared to what compared to humans who get drunk driving cars
00:47:08.260
and when it's ai's you know making judicial decisions i mean sure they they might be
00:47:13.700
racist or biased but you know so are so are humans
00:47:20.580
so humans um well yeah as i say i've i've i've lived through that myself um
00:47:27.140
back to the to the democracy thing you mentioned uh in the book that uh one of the most important
00:47:34.340
information flows in democracy is legitimacy um as i said before i think democracy is in late stage
00:47:42.020
positive art in a terminal stage um and i i was i thought that anyway before the advent of ai ai i
00:47:48.660
think will acts an accelerant towards that that process that that's already taking place but could you just
00:47:55.780
um say a bit more what you mean about the legitimacy aspect with regards to the the role ai might have
00:48:06.020
in uh in democracy some people are imagining that ai take over the decision-making process like instead
00:48:11.700
of arguing about interest rates we'll program an ai and let it figure it out you know and whatever it says
00:48:17.860
we do it democracy is more than getting the right answer democracy is the process of getting the answer
00:48:25.940
and we can't just have a system that produces the answer it won't be legitimate it won't be
00:48:31.540
recognized we have to go through the messy democratic process i actually agree with you that democracy is is
00:48:39.060
is in trouble largely because it was invented in the mid-1700s for mid-1700s technology in the mid-1700s
00:48:45.700
world and it's just not suited for the information age i mean i want what comes after to be
00:48:50.740
more democracy more democratic but i think it's going to look very different than mid-1700s technology
00:49:00.740
so i mean i mean the optimistic view which i which i don't subscribe to because when it comes to ai i am
00:49:06.500
a pessimist but the optimistic view which you outline in your book is that ai has a role to play might have
00:49:12.820
a role to play in sort of the technocratic process of merging all of the all of all of the voters
00:49:21.300
intentions together in a way that democracy just fails to do uh substantially in practice right
00:49:30.420
well i mean that's i'm not sure that's a utopia or a dystopia but the notion of an ai i mean i can
00:49:36.100
tell you i mean i'm not proud of it but the way i vote in local elections is the day before
00:49:39.380
day before i go online i find a voting guide i read about the local candidates and i decide who
00:49:44.420
to vote for right you can imagine an ai advising me and and germany is experimenting with a conversational
00:49:51.460
ai that helps people figure out which of the many german political parties they should support
00:49:58.180
and it's one step more where the ai just votes for me now i'm not sure that's a good idea but i think we
00:50:05.540
are headed in that direction and it's worth thinking about what the ramifications of that is you know
00:50:12.500
i'm neither and i guess i'm more an optimist about democracy i think there's gonna be a lot of
00:50:17.620
challenges i agree that that you know a lot of things are not working today but i think we as humans
00:50:23.860
you know get it right eventually even though we get it wrong along the way so i think we will figure out
00:50:30.500
how to incorporate these technologies into a democratic system but right now with the old
00:50:36.020
system new technologies i think you're seeing this this bad mismatch as lots of powerful people
00:50:43.140
are really good at what i think of as hacking democracy you know but before we leave i'm going
00:50:48.420
to want to know from you is a burrito a sandwich
00:50:50.740
i'll tell you what the court said but i don't know what you think i need to ask chat gpt
00:51:01.780
all right so the massachusetts court said no but an indiana court a few years later said yes
00:51:09.460
so i'm hoping the supreme court eventually has to rule on whether burrito is a sandwich
00:51:13.220
yeah i i think that's about the level that i would trust them to to decide on and not hire
00:51:21.460
professor professor schneier bruce schneier thanks very much for coming on the show very quickly where
00:51:26.420
do people go on social media or on amazon for example to get your book or to keep up with your
00:51:31.540
writings all right so everything i do is on schneier.com that's my last name dot com super hard to spell but
00:51:37.860
you can find it you spell it wrong and uh google will correct it and uh that's where i am and on
00:51:44.740
social media uh i don't do social media you're kidding makes me a freak but i'm highly productive
00:51:52.420
professor schneier thanks very much indeed come on uh the show again um uh and expound these thoughts
00:51:58.180
in more detail at a future many thanks indeed for joining us thank you god bless for now the end of
00:52:03.300
the show folks thanks to cameron wallace our producer will and his crack team in denver and
00:52:09.700
victorio franco who put this show together god bless for now see you next week do you owe back taxes or
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