Grim

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/11/71226.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71226

It’s been a month since Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship was published. From what we know, sales are good.

Some of the book’s forty-three chapters are available online: chapters 2, 12, 28, 34, 38, and 41.

We need more reviews—six on Amazon is not enough, and no one has yet posted a viral TikTok review. One review was published in Nature and another on the RSA Conference website, but more would be better. If you’ve read the book, please leave a review somewhere.

My coauthor and I have been doing all sort of book events, both online and in person. This book event, with Danielle Allen at the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center, is particularly good. We also have been doing a ton of podcasts, both separately and together. They’re all on the book’s homepage.

There are two live book events in December. If you’re in Boston, come see us at the MIT Museum on 12/1. If you’re in Toronto, you can see me at the Munk School at the University of Toronto on 12/2.

I’m also doing a live AMA on the book on the RSA Conference website on 12/16. Register here.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/11/71226.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71226

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/11/ai-as-cyberattacker.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71202

From Anthropic:

In mid-September 2025, we detected suspicious activity that later investigation determined to be a highly sophisticated espionage campaign. The attackers used AI’s “agentic” capabilities to an unprecedented degree­—using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyberattacks themselves.

The threat actor—­whom we assess with high confidence was a Chinese state-sponsored group—­manipulated our Claude Code tool into attempting infiltration into roughly thirty global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases. The operation targeted large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.

[…]

The attack relied on several features of AI models that did not exist, or were in much more nascent form, just a year ago:

1. Intelligence. Models’ general levels of capability have increased to the point that they can follow complex instructions and understand context in ways that make very sophisticated tasks possible. Not only that, but several of their well-developed specific skills—in particular, software coding­—lend themselves to being used in cyberattacks.
2. Agency. Models can act as agents—­that is, they can run in loops where they take autonomous actions, chain together tasks, and make decisions with only minimal, occasional human input.
3. Tools. Models have access to a wide array of software tools (often via the open standard Model Context Protocol). They can now search the web, retrieve data, and perform many other actions that were previously the sole domain of human operators. In the case of cyberattacks, the tools might include password crackers, network scanners, and other security-related software.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/11/ai-as-cyberattacker.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71202