Miles Taylor is a national security expert, New York Times best-selling author, and renowned technologist. Miles served in a variety of government posts, including as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he oversaw operations of the government’s third largest department, including 250,000 employees and a $60 billion budget. Miles also served as an aide on Capitol Hill, in the White House during the George W. Bush administration, and at the Pentagon. In the private sector, he was the Head of Advanced Technology and Security Strategy at Google, driving policy on issues ranging from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. Today, Miles works with some of the most innovative startups in the United States focused on frontier technology and U.S. national interests. He is a senior advisor to companies leading in AGI, advanced manufacturing, autonomous systems, defense tech, robotics, space systems, and beyond. Miles co-founded one of the top tech consultancies in Washington, D.C. and is a founding board member of STATION DC — the center of gravity for innovators and policymakers in the nation’s capital. Miles is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, A Warning (2019) and Blowback (2023); the host of the iHeartRadio podcast The Whistleblowers; and a special contributor for Americast by BBC News. He is a regular commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and BBC on issues related to global security and technology policy, and he has published articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Economist, and more. Miles serves on the advisory board of an array of civic groups and co-founded a technology-focused high school in the nation’s capital called Washington Leadership Academy, which was named one of America’s top 10 “Super Schools.” He has taught public policy at the University of Pennsylvania, received his M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, and attended Indiana University as a Truman Scholar. Miles still dreams of becoming a Ghostbuster.
Miles Taylor is a national security expert, New York Times best-selling author, and renowned technologist. Miles served in a variety of government posts, including as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he oversaw operations of the government’s third largest department, including 250,000 employees and a $60 billion budget. Miles also served as an aide on Capitol Hill, in the White House during the George W. Bush administration, and at the Pentagon. In the private sector, he was the Head of Advanced Technology and Security Strategy at Google, driving policy on issues ranging from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. Today, Miles works with some of the most innovative startups in the United States focused on frontier technology and U.S. national interests. He is a senior advisor to companies leading in AGI, advanced manufacturing, autonomous systems, defense tech, robotics, space systems, and beyond. Miles co-founded one of the top tech consultancies in Washington, D.C. and is a founding board member of STATION DC — the center of gravity for innovators and policymakers in the nation’s capital. Miles is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, A Warning (2019) and Blowback (2023); the host of the iHeartRadio podcast The Whistleblowers; and a special contributor for Americast by BBC News. He is a regular commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and BBC on issues related to global security and technology policy, and he has published articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Economist, and more. Miles serves on the advisory board of an array of civic groups and co-founded a technology-focused high school in the nation’s capital called Washington Leadership Academy, which was named one of America’s top 10 “Super Schools.” He has taught public policy at the University of Pennsylvania, received his M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, and attended Indiana University as a Truman Scholar. Miles still dreams of becoming a Ghostbuster.
In Episode 480 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Miles Taylor, former Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration and later head of advanced technology and security strategy at Google, about the existential stakes of AI development, the erosion of centralized state power, and the domestic security threats that may define the years ahead.
The first hour establishes the nature and scope of the threat Miles believes AI poses—not merely to individuals and nation states, but to modern civilization itself—arguing that it is an order of magnitude more consequential than anything the national security community has previously confronted, and that the institutions responsible for protecting us are failing to grasp it. From there, the conversation turns to what this means for governance: how the extraordinary empowerment of the individual is eroding the foundations on which centralized states were built, whether democracy as currently constructed can survive that pressure, and whether new, more decentralized modes of organization will emerge in response to the failure of federal institutions to protect and provide for their citizens.
The second hour examines the growing concentration of private power in the hands of a small number of AI titans and tech oligarchs, what history tells us about where that leads, and why Miles believes the more immediate security threat in the years ahead is not great-power conflict but waves of domestic unrest—punctuated by outbreaks of violence targeting data centers, undersea cables, and the technological infrastructure of the physical economy—by those displaced or left behind by the AI revolution. They then turn to synthetic media and how it is accelerating the breakdown of consensus reality and the epistemic collapse already underway, making enlightened self-governance ever more difficult.
The conversation closes on a note of guarded optimism, drawing on the history of the nuclear age to argue that humanity has navigated transformative and potentially civilization-ending technologies before, and that we retain both the agency and the obligation to do so again.
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Miles Taylor is a national security expert, New York Times best-selling author, and renowned technologist. Miles served in a variety of government posts, including as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he oversaw operations of the government’s third largest department, including 250,000 employees and a $60 billion budget. Miles also served as an aide on Capitol Hill, in the White House during the George W. Bush administration, and at the Pentagon. In the private sector, he was the Head of Advanced Technology and Security Strategy at Google, driving policy on issues ranging from artificial intelligence to quantum computing.
Today, Miles works with some of the most innovative startups in the United States focused on frontier technology and U.S. national interests. He is a senior advisor to companies leading in AGI, advanced manufacturing, autonomous systems, defense tech, robotics, space systems, and beyond. Miles co-founded one of the top tech consultancies in Washington, D.C. and is a founding board member of STATION DC — the center of gravity for innovators and policymakers in the nation’s capital.
Miles is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, A Warning (2019) and Blowback (2023); the host of the iHeartRadio podcast The Whistleblowers; and a special contributor for Americast by BBC News. He is a regular commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and BBC on issues related to global security and technology policy, and he has published articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Economist, and more.
Miles serves on the advisory board of an array of civic groups and co-founded a technology-focused high school in the nation’s capital called Washington Leadership Academy, which was named one of America’s top 10 “Super Schools.” He has taught public policy at the University of Pennsylvania, received his M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, and attended Indiana University as a Truman Scholar. Miles still dreams of becoming a Ghostbuster.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
