The Cyberlaw Podcast: AI Leaders Bring Washington a Bag of Promises

In our last episode before the August break, the Cyberlaw Podcast drills down on the AI industry leaders’ trip to Washington, where they dutifully signed up to what Gus Hurwitz calls “a bag of promises.” Gus and I parse the promises, some of which are empty, others of which have substance. Along the way, we examine the EU’s struggling campaign to lobby other countries to adopt its AI regulation framework. Really, guys, if you don’t want to be called regulatory neocolonialists, maybe you shouldn’t go around telling former European colonies to change their laws to match Europe’s.

Jeffery Atik picks up the AI baton, unpacking Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) overhyped set of AI amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and panning authors’ claim that AI models have been “stealing” their works. Also this week, another endless and unjustified claim of high-tech infringement came to a likely close with appellate rejection of the argument that linking to a site violates the site’s copyright. We also cover the industry’s unfortunately well-founded fear of enabling face recognition and Meta’s unusual open-source AI strategy.

Richard Stiennon pulls the podcast back to the National Cybersecurity Implementation Plan, which I praised last episode for its disciplined format. Richard introduces us to an Atlantic Council report allowing several domain experts to mark up the text. This exposes flaws not apparent on first read; it turns out that the implementation plan took a few remarkable dives, even omitting all mention of one of the strategy’s more ambitious goals.  

Gus gives us a regulatory lawyer’s take on the FCC’s new cybersecurity label for IoT devices and the EPA’s beleaguered regulations for water system cybersecurity. He doubts that either program can be grounded in a grant of regulatory jurisdiction. Richard points out that CISA managed to get new cybersecurity concessions from Microsoft without even a pretense of regulatory jurisdiction. 

Gus gives us a quick assessment of the latest DOJ/FTC draft merger review guidelines. He thinks it’s an overreach that will tarnish the prestige and persuasiveness of the guidelines.

In quick hits:

• Richard updates us on the latest U.S. sanctions on European spyware firms. I offer a dissent from the whole campaign.

• Jeffery covers the brain drain in semiconductors from Europe to China, and we ask when it will hit the U.S. 

• Gus covers the latest technopanic and media handwringing over the use of technology to catch serial killers and drug dealers.

• Speaking of technopanics, I question the latest narrative expressing shock that an FBI agent searched the 702 database

Download 469th Episode (mp3)

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