The Decoded Podcast

Welcome to The Decoded Podcast

The Decoded Podcast explores the people, policy battles and market forces shaping the future of technology around the world, drawing on POLITICO’s reporting to make sense

What’s behind Trump’s new Tech Force

The Trump administration launched the U.S. Tech Force this week, aiming to recruit 1,000 fellows with backgrounds in AI, cybersecurity and other high-tech fields into fed

Why Trump is fighting states over AI

President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social this week that he will sign an executive order aimed at banning state AI laws. The move will almost certainly appease Sili

Craig Newmark sees an AI bubble. It may not be a bust.

Craig Newmark is best known for shaping our digital past. As the founder of Craigslist, he was  a pioneer in online classified advertising and lived the Silicon Valley do

How AI is driving Trump’s energy agenda

Meeting the rising energy demands of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other emerging technologies is one of the big challenges facing the Trump administrati

Rebroadcast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt on AI, Hollywood and owning your ‘digital self’

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been called a “Luddite” and “anti-tech,” but the actor, filmmaker and entrepreneur insists he’s actually dazzled by artificial intelligence. He j

Why energy bills could be AI’s new political problem

Democrats logged big election wins this week in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City. And in some races, artificial intelligence — and specifically the energy data cent

The business case for governing AI

Tech companies are spending billions of dollars to build out their AI ambitions — with little clarity about how they’ll recoup their investments. Miriam Vogel, the CEO of

Signal’s Meredith Whittaker on AI hype and the end of privacy

Even if you don’t use Signal, you certainly remember Signalgate. That was the scandal in March when senior U.S. officials used a private messaging app to communicate abou

Why the latest U.S.-China tech fight may be the biggest yet

Tensions between the U.S. and China are inflamed yet again — with the tech sector in the crossfire. In the latest move, Beijing has threatened to restrict the trade of ra

Meet Silicon Valley’s AI-obsessed mayor

A growing number of city governments are adopting artificial intelligence — and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan wants to outpace all the rest. The former tech entrepreneur is p

Coming to city near you: AI-powered government

The concept of "smart cities" — local governments that are digitized and automated — has been around for decades, but that bold vision hasn't quite materialized yet. Stil

AI, China, and the fight over free speech: Takeaways from POLITICO’s Tech Summit

POLITICO’s AI & Tech Summit this week tackled major policy debates: the partisan fight over online speech after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, along with Washington’s effo

What Anthropic’s big payout means for AI and copyright

Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors whose pirated books the company used to train its AI model, an eye-popping amount and one of the first big settlements of

Why AI companies are cutting Trump a deal

The federal government is buying artificial intelligence technology at deeply discounted rates — part of an effort to bring agencies into modern times. And for companies

The next president’s AI problem

With mounting concerns about AI leading to job losses, policymakers are grappling with how to prepare workers for major changes ahead — and the disruption that has alread

An exit interview with Trump’s AI policy adviser

As a senior policy adviser in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dean Ball helped write President Donald Trump’s recently released AI Action Plan. This week, Ba

Data will soon be less secure. What can Washington do?

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) was a tech adviser to President Barack Obama back when Washington was first grappling with artificial intelligence. Now, he’s introducing l

Silicon Valley enters the space race

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin may garner lots of attention, but there are a growing number of tech companies now chasing commercial and defense opportuni

Trump’s AI plan is a gift to Silicon Valley — with a catch

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump unveiled his AI Action Plan, which effectively outlines his strategy for keeping the U.S. at the forefront of artificial intelligence