Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier, "Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship" (MIT Press, 2025)

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Oct 23, 2025

Nathan E. Sanders, a data scientist and Berkman Klein Center affiliate, teams up with renowned security technologist Bruce Schneier to explore the transformative power of AI on democracy. They discuss how AI is reshaping government operations and citizen engagement, like improving access to legislative info through civic projects. The duo dives into the biases in AI that can impact political persuasion and highlights the contrasting approaches of the EU and US in AI policy. They emphasize the importance of steering AI development to enhance democratic values and avoid centralizing power.

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ANECDOTE

Massachusetts' Maple Makes Bills Understandable

Nathan describes Maple, an open-source platform that uses AI to summarize thousands of Massachusetts bills into plain language for residents.
The tool scales civic access to legislative information that no human could feasibly provide alone.

INSIGHT

AI Could Amplify Individual Representation

AI could enable frequent, personalized citizen representation by translating preferences into positions on many ballot questions.
That raises deep ethical, technical, and democratic questions about how well AI can represent individual opinions.

INSIGHT

AI Assistants Carry Ideological Fingerprints

Models reflect developers' values and can be intentionally tuned toward political positions, so AI outputs carry ideological fingerprints.
Choosing an AI assistant parallels choosing a human clerk: assistants influence outcomes through their embedded values.

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AI is changing democracy. We still get to decide how.
AI’s impact on democracy will go far beyond headline-grabbing political deepfakes and automated misinformation. Everywhere it will be used, it will create risks and opportunities to shake up long-standing power structures.
In this highly readable and advisedly optimistic book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship (MIT Press, 2025), security technologist Bruce Schneier and data scientist Nathan Sanders cut through the AI hype and examine the myriad ways that AI is transforming every aspect of democracy—for both good and ill.
The authors describe how the sophistication of AI will fulfill demands from lawmakers for more complex legislation, reducing deference to the executive branch and altering the balance of power between lawmakers and administrators. They show how the scale and scope of AI is enhancing civil servants’ ability to shape private-sector behavior, automating either the enforcement or neglect of industry regulations. They also explain how both lawyers and judges will leverage the speed of AI, upending how we think about law enforcement, litigation, and dispute resolution.
Whether these outcomes enhance or degrade democracy depends on how we shape the development and use of AI technologies. Powerful players in private industry and public life are already using AI to increase their influence, and AIs built by corporations don’t deliver the fairness and trust required by democratic governance. But, steered in the right direction, AI’s broad capabilities can augment democratic processes and help citizens build consensus, express their voice, and shake up long-standing power structures.
Democracy is facing new challenges worldwide, and AI has become a part of that. It can inform, empower, and engage citizens. It can also disinform, disempower, and disengage them. The choice is up to us. Schneier and Sanders blaze the path forward, showing us how we can use AI to make democracy stronger and more participatory.

Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist focused on making policymaking more participatory. His research spans machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. He has served in fellowships at the Massachusetts legislature and the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.