Explain to Shane

Bluesky Social is a social media app that was originally launched in 2019 on Twitter, before becoming an independent company in 2021. Bluesky’s mission is to offer a decentralized experience for users—where algorithms are not imposed on them, but they can choose their content preferences. The platform also highlights the importance of portability, enabling users to carry their social media ecosystems across different platforms. But what are the technical and social challenges to making true platform portability a reality? To explore this, Shane Tews interviews Matt Reeder, head of legal at Bluesky. Formerly, Matt served as chief legal and operations officer at OnlyFans and as a trial attorney with the US Marine Corps. His extensive experience in creating transparent, user-focused terms and conditions, combined with his passion for expanding opportunities, makes for an engaging conversation.

Email was created over 50 years ago—so why isn’t it secure? Sixty-eight percent of IT teams report [https://arcticwolf.com/resources/press-releases/arctic-wolf-2025-human-risk-report-reveals-escalating-breaches-overconfidence-in-phishing-defenses-and-risky-ai-behavior/] a data breach in their organization caused by phishing in the last year. Even experts trained to spot the telltale signs can be fooled: Nearly 66 percent of IT leaders admit to clicking malicious links, and more than half of employees have done the same. Shane interviews Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, cofounders of AegisAI. Together, they bring over a decade of experience at Google. In this discussion, they provide both a technical and practical lens to cybersecurity. They discuss why email is the frontline of cybersecurity, describe the anatomy of a phishing email, explain how individuals and organizations can protect their inboxes, and more.

As governments around the world expand their surveillance capabilities, strong encryption remains a cornerstone for protecting personal privacy, securing business data, and preserving digital rights. For consumers, it guards against identity theft and intrusive monitoring; for businesses, it protects intellectual property and builds trust across global markets. Yet, as governmental pressure to weaken encryption intensifies, critical questions arise: How do we preserve strong encryption standards while addressing legitimate security concerns? Can privacy, innovation, and human rights truly coexist with national security imperatives? And how do we resist the false choice between security and privacy that authoritarian regimes often present? At the Technology Policy Institute’s 2025 Aspen Forum, Shane Tews moderated a panel titled Privacy and Governmental Surveillance with Jeff Greene, Jim Kohlenberger, and Jennifer Huddleston as panelists. Together, they discussed how artificial intelligence is highlighting cybersecurity and privacy concerns and raising tough questions about governmental surveillance.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is changing the app economy—and not for the better. This law aims to promote competition for European companies by restricting large online platforms’ dominance, which are mostly American. But how is this working in practice? What are the main DMA-related challenges app developers should be aware of? And does the DMA create more problems than it solves? To answer these questions, Shane interviews Graham Dufault, general counsel of the App Association. In this role, he represents small and medium-sized mobile software developers and connected device companies within the app economy. His practical experience with the DMA’s consequences is crucial for unpacking all this and more.

The Domain Name System (DNS)—the system that turns numerical IP addresses into easy-to-read website names—has become highly competitive at the registrar level, with potentially harmful consequences when it comes to leasing domain names for criminal activities. Today, the DNS infrastructure is increasingly exploited for cybercrimes, such as phishing and scams. Why is ignoring the identity of the parties behind the crime more than just a technical DNS infrastructure abuse issue? In this episode, Shane is joined by Karen Rose. Rose was an early architect of internet policy and has had a substantial impact on global web infrastructure as one of the primary Department of Commerce authors of the policy white paper that created the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and a senior executive at the Internet Society. Today, she consults on technology issues focused on securing the next generation of communications infrastructure.