The Tech Policy Press Podcast

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California Becomes Frontline in Battle Over AI Companions Sep 26, 2025

Show notes

With two new bills headed to the desk of Governor Governor Gavin Newsom (D), California could soon pass the most significant guardrails for AI companions in the nation, sparking a lobbying brawl between consumer advocates and tech industry groups.

In a recent report for Tech Policy Press, associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong detailed how groups are pouring tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars into the lobbying fight, which has gained steam amid mounting scrutiny of the products.

Tech Policy Press CEO and Editor Justin Hendrix spoke to Cristiano about the findings, and what the state's legislative battle could mean for AI regulation in the United States.

This reporting was supported by a grant from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

Setting a 'Tech Agenda' for Climate Week Sep 21, 2025

Show notes

From September 21–28, New York City will host Climate Week. Leaders from business, politics, academia, and civil society will gather to share ideas and develop strategies to address the climate crisis.

The tech industry intersects with climate concerns in a number of ways, not least of which is through its own growing demand for natural resources and energy, particularly to power data centers. What should a “tech agenda” for Climate Week include? What are the most important issues that need attention, and how should challenges and opportunities be framed?

Last week, Tech Policy Press hosted a live recording of The Tech Policy Press Podcast to get at these questions and more. Justin Hendrix was joined by three expert guests:

Alix Dunn, founder and CEO of The Maybe
Tamara Kneese, director of Data & Society's Climate, Technology, and Justice Program
Holly Alpine, co-Founder of the Enabled Emissions Campaign

Assessing Tech Platform Responses Following the Assassination of Charlie Kirk Sep 14, 2025

Show notes

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA, died Wednesday after he was shot at an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s assassination was instantly broadcast to the world from multiple perspectives on social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X. But in the hours and days that have followed, the video and various derivative versions of it have proliferated alongside an increasingly divisive debate over Kirk’s legacy, the possible motives of the assassin, and the political implications.

It is clear that, in some cases, the tech platforms are struggling to enforce their own content moderation rules, raising questions about their policies and investments in trust and safety, even as AI generated material plays a more significant role in the information ecosystem.

To learn more about these phenomena, Justin Hendrix spoke to Wired senior correspondent Lauren Goode, who is covering this story.

Across the US, Activists Are Organizing to Oppose Data Centers Sep 14, 2025

Show notes

Demand for computing power is fueling a massive surge in investment in data centers worldwide. McKinsey estimates spending will hit $6.7 trillion by 2030, with more than $1 trillion expected in the U.S. alone over the next five years. As this boom accelerates, public scrutiny is intensifying. Communities across the country are raising questions about environmental impacts, energy demands, and the broader social and economic consequences of this rapid buildout.

To learn more about these debates—and the efforts to shape the industry’s future—Justin Hendrix spoke with two activists: one working at the national level, and another organizing locally in their own community.

Vivek Bharathan isa member of the No Desert Data Center Coalition in Tucson, Arizona.
Steven Renderos is executive director of MediaJustice, an advocacy organization that just released a report titled The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South.

Through to Thriving: Centering Young People with Vaishnavi J Sep 07, 2025

Show notes

For the latest episode in her series of podcast discussions, Through to Thriving, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli spoke to Vaishnavi J, founder and principal of Vyanams Strategies (VYS), a trust and safety advisory firm focusing on youth safety, and a former safety leader at Meta, Twitter, and Google. Anika and Vaishnavi discussed a range of issues on the theme of how to center the views and needs of young people in trust and safety and tech policy development. They considered the importance of protecting the human rights of children, the debates around recent age assurance and age verification regulations, the trade-offs between safety and privacy, and the implications of what Vaishnavi called an “asymmetry” of knowledge across the tech policy community.

Seeing Like a Platform Aug 31, 2025

Show notes

Today’s guest is Petter Törnberg, who with Justus Uitermark is one of the authors of a new book, titled Seeing Like a Platform: An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity, that sets out to address the “entanglement of epistemology, technology, and politics in digital modernity,” and what studying that entanglement can tell us about the workings of power. The book is part of a part of a series of research monographs that intend to encourage social scientists to embrace a “complex systems approach to studying the social world.”

Inside the Lobbying Blitz Over Colorado's AI Law Aug 29, 2025

Show notes

Last year, Colorado signed a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence measure into law. The Colorado AI Act would require developers of high-risk AI systems to take reasonable steps to prevent harms to consumers, such as algorithmic discrimination, including by conducting impact assessments on their tools.

But last week, the state kicked off a special session where lawmakers held frenzied negotiations over whether to expand or dilute its protections. The chapter unfolded amid fierce lobbying by industry groups and consumer advocates. Ultimately, the state legislature punted on amending the law but agreed to delay its implementation from February to June of next year. The move likely tees up another round of contentious talks over one of the nation’s most sprawling AI statues.

This week, Tech Policy Press associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to two local reporters who have been closely tracking the saga for the Colorado Sun: political reporter and editor Jesse Paul and politics and policy reporter Taylor Dolven.

New Insights on Tech and the Crisis of Democracy Aug 24, 2025

Show notes

On this podcast, we’ve come back again and again to questions around mis- and disinformation, propaganda, rumors, and the role that digital platforms play in anti-democratic phenomena. In a new book published this summer by Oxford University Press called Connective Action and the Rise of the Far-Right: Platforms, Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy, a group of scholars from varied research traditions set out to find new ways to marry more traditional political science with computational social science approaches to understand the phenomenon of democratic backsliding and to bring some clarity to the present moment, particularly in the United States.

Justin Hendrix had the chance to speak to two of the volume’s editors and two of its authors:

Steven Livingston, a professor and founding director of the Institute for Data Democracy and Politics at the George Washington University;
Michael Miller, managing director of the Moynihan Center at the City College of New York;
Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public; and
Josephine Lukito, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and senior faculty research associate at the Center for Media Engagement.

Through to Thriving: Pursuing The Truth with Dr. Jasmine McNealy and Naomi Nix Aug 17, 2025

Show notes

In the latest installment in her series of podcasts called Through to Thriving, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navoroli speaks with Dr. Jasmine McNealy, an attorney, critical public interest technologist, and professor in the Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology at the University of Florida;, and Naomi Nix, a staff writer for The Washington Post, where she reports on technology and social media companies.

They discuss how they found themselves on the path through journalism and into a focus on tech and tech policy, the distinctions between truth and facts and whether there has ever been such a thing as a singular truth, how communities of color have historically seen and filled the gaps in mainstream media coverage, the rise of news influencers, and how journalists can regain the trust of the public.

Technology and Democracy in the New India Aug 17, 2025

Show notes

Today’s guest, journalist Rahul Bhatia, has written a book that is part journalistic account, part history, and part memoir titled The New India: The Unmaking of the World's Largest Democracy.

Reviewing the book in The Guardian, Salil Tripathi writes that “Bhatia’s remarkable book is an absorbing account of India’s transformation from the world’s largest democracy to something more like the world’s most populous country that regularly holds elections.”

Bhatia considers the role of technology, including taking a close look at Aadhaar—India’s national biometric identification program—in order to consider the role it plays in the modern state and what the motivations behind it reveal.

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