ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a “security guru” by The Economist. He is the New York Times best-selling author of 14 books -- including A Hacker’s Mind -- as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter “Crypto-Gram” and blog “Schneier on Security” are read by over 250,000 people. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a faculty affiliate at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS, a fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and AccessNow, and an advisory board member of EPIC and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc.

BOOK DESCRIPTION

It’s not just computers—hacking is everywhere.

Legendary cybersecurity expert and New York Times best-selling author Bruce Schneier reveals how using a hacker’s mindset can change how you think about your life and the world.

A hack is any means of subverting a system’s rules in unintended ways. The tax code isn’t computer code, but a series of complex formulas. It has vulnerabilities; we call them “loopholes.” We call exploits “tax avoidance strategies.” And there is an entire industry of “black hat” hackers intent on finding exploitable loopholes in the tax code. We call them accountants and tax attorneys.

In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

Once you learn how to notice hacks, you’ll start seeing them everywhere—and you’ll never look at the world the same way again. Almost all systems have loopholes, and this is by design. Because if you can take advantage of them, the rules no longer apply to you.

Unchecked, these hacks threaten to upend our financial markets, weaken our democracy, and even affect the way we think. And when artificial intelligence starts thinking like a hacker—at inhuman speed and scale—the results could be catastrophic.

But for those who would don the “white hat,” we can understand the hacking mindset and rebuild our economic, political, and legal systems to counter those who would exploit our society. And we can harness artificial intelligence to improve existing systems, predict and defend against hacks, and realize a more equitable world.

Behind the Book is brought to you by HKS Library & Research Services, in collaboration with the Office of Communications & Public Affairs. If you have any requests, comments or suggestions, please contact us.

Alessandra Seiter (narration): When you think of a hacker, what do you see? A pale face illuminated only by a computer screen. Do you hear the clacking of a keyboard or surely the echoes of an illicit cyber activity? Or do you picture a team of well-compensated lawyers scouring their way through the tax code at the behest of an investment bank, finding loopholes for lobbyists to champion in Congress? Bruce Schneier, adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a leading expert in cybersecurity, thinks the second picture is more accurate. 

 

Bruce Schneier: We think of hacking as something like, you know, a teenager in a hoodie does against computer systems. But even that’s not true. The NSA are the world's best hackers and other countries governments are the world's best hackers. And hacking is linked to power that if you are rich and powerful, you are going to comb the tax code of financial regulations looking for loopholes.  

 

Seiter (narration): Economic systems, social systems, systems of a democratic society; all of these systems, according to Schneier, can be hacked and are being hacked by powerful interests in the name of gaining more power. Meanwhile, the rest of us are scraping by, doomscrolling on social media and either glued to, or altogether avoiding, political news coverage. The solution? According to Schneier, the rest of us need to get good at hacking to. On this episode of Behind the Book, we speak with Bruce Schneier about his latest book, A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back.  

 

Seiter (narration): Let’s back up. What even is a hack?  

 

Seiter (interview): You argue that a hack is something a lot more basic and widespread that’s been happening throughout all of human history, essentially. So what is hacking in the “Bruce Schneier” sense of the word? 

 

Schneier: I think of a hack as something that follows the rules but breaks its intent. So a tax loophole: not something illegal, but a loophole, a mistake in the law. If I go to a restaurant and I go to the buffet and I take more food than I can eat, I’m not breaking the rules. But, you know, I’m kind of not doing what’s expected of me. So hacking is something we think about it in computers. But to me, any set of rules will have loopholes, will have things the designers haven’t thought of, and people will want to take advantage of it.  

 

Seiter (narration): Consider ridesharing companies. Schneier calls their services a hack of the taxi industry. He says that because ridesharing companies define themselves as Internet platforms that connect drivers with people who want to be driven, they try to absolve themselves of responsibility for their drivers or their cars. If they don’t technically have employees or assets, then they can’t be bound by labor or safety regulations. 

 

Schneier: So I think hacking is an important way to understand what’s going on, right? As long as there are people or organizations that are looking for some advantage in a political economy, in a market economy. They are going to hack. And this has been true throughout history. They’re going to look for ways to get an advantage at the expense of everybody else. 

 

Seiter (narration): One system Schneier thinks this longstanding history of hacking can help us understand is the rise of artificial intelligence. Far from seeing AI and its popularity as novel, he thinks it’s yet another example of powerful people exploiting the vulnerabilities of our social structures. 

 

Seiter (interview): Often when you describe the ways that are already hacking us, you’re really describing the ways that tech corporations are hacking us with AI.

 

Schneier: I’m less concerned about AI is going off the rails and doing things its designers didn’t intend because I’m worried about things that designers did intent. So I don’t need the AI to like, break free from its constraints. The need of humans to find hacks is already great, and the rich and powerful are going to use these systems to increase their power. So it’s the existing power dynamics. The problem that how these AI systems will exacerbate that, they’re going to make the powerful more powerful. 

 

Seiter (narration): Schneier’s framework encourages us to start seeing the world in terms of its loopholes, to get better at understanding where our systems could and already are breaking. Scaling up this skill, he says, is critical to creating a robust system of government regulations that can close loopholes before they become catastrophic. 

 

Schneier: No industry wants deregulated, but I’m sorry. Too frickin’ bad. 

 

Seiter (interview): Right, move fast and break things can’t work at a human scale. 

 

Schneier: Because breaking things actually breaks things. Right? And if you break things no one cares about, sure. Move fast and break things. When you’re breaking life and property and democracy, then, you know, we might want to slow you down. 

 

Seiter (narration): The book is A Hackers Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules and How to Bend Them Back, written by Bruce Schneier, adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School. It’s published by W.W. Norton and Company. This has been Behind the Book, a production of Library & Research Services at Harvard Kennedy School. Find past and future episodes of Behind the Book by subscribing to Harvard Kennedy School on YouTube, subscribing to our newsletter, and visiting our website.