Rewiring Democracy, co-authored with nathan-sanders and published by MIT Press in October 2025, is Schneier's most recent book and represents the fullest articulation of a new phase in his intellectual arc: the intersection of artificial intelligence with democratic governance. Where a-hackers-mind analyzed how powerful actors exploit rule systems, Rewiring Democracy asks what happens to those dynamics when AI becomes a tool for both exploitation and defense.
The Argument
The book argues that AI is not merely a new technology to be regulated but a force that will reshape the fundamental mechanisms of democratic participation, governmental administration, and political contestation. Schneier and Sanders examine how AI affects each layer of democratic life: how citizens form opinions and access information, how campaigns target and persuade, how legislatures and agencies process information and make decisions, and how governments surveil and respond to their populations.
The analysis draws directly on the trust-framework that Schneier developed in liars-and-outliers: democracy functions through layers of trust mechanisms — social norms, legal institutions, market incentives, technical systems — and AI disrupts all of these layers simultaneously. His earlier essay ai-and-trust laid out the foundational argument: AI systems create a distinctive trust problem because they are opaque, controlled by a small number of actors, and capable of operating at a scale and speed that overwhelms conventional accountability mechanisms. Rewiring Democracy extends this into a full account of democratic implications, building on the policy engagement Schneier had developed in testimony-ai-federal-government and related congressional testimony. AI enables the fabrication of evidence that undermines shared epistemic ground, the micro-targeting of political manipulation at scale, the automation of regulatory capture, and the surveillance of political activity with new comprehensiveness. At the same time, AI can strengthen democratic institutions by enabling better policy analysis, improving governmental responsiveness, and expanding citizens' capacity to engage with complex issues.
The AI-and-Democracy Phase
Rewiring Democracy marks a clear new phase in Schneier's intellectual biography. His work through a-hackers-mind analyzed how existing powerful actors exploit existing systems. Rewiring Democracy asks how a qualitatively new technology changes the power dynamics. The collaboration with nathan-sanders, a data scientist with expertise in AI governance, reflects Schneier's characteristic pattern of finding technical collaborators — as he did with niels-ferguson on cryptography engineering and with tadayoshi-kohno on later cryptography work — to ground his broader arguments in technical specificity.
Relationship to hacking-as-systems-subversion
The book's deepest intellectual connection is to the extended hacking concept of a-hackers-mind. If hacking is the exploitation of gaps in rule systems, AI represents a qualitative expansion of the hacking toolkit available to powerful actors. The same exploitation dynamics Schneier identified — asymmetric access to specialist knowledge, capture of regulatory processes, constitutional hardball — now operate with automated speed and scale. Rewiring Democracy asks whether democratic systems can be redesigned to be more resistant to AI-enabled hacking, or whether the technology inherently advantages those who already control the most resources.
Connection to harvard-kennedy-school
The book reflects Schneier's long affiliation with harvard-kennedy-school, where policy-relevant analysis bridging technical and governance domains is the expected mode of engagement. Its publication by MIT Press rather than a trade house signals its dual positioning: accessible enough for general readers, rigorous enough for policy and academic audiences.