Episode Details

Shane Tews — Non-Resident Senior Fellow at AEI and the person who explained the internet to Capitol Hill

No Password Required Season 7: Episode 7 – Shane Tews

Shane Tews is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on cybersecurity, privacy, artificial intelligence, and internet governance. She is also President of Logan Circle Strategies, a strategic advisory firm working at the intersection of technology and policy. Before her think tank work, Shane helped introduce modems to the George H.W. Bush White House, walked the halls of Capitol Hill explaining the internet to blank-staring legislators, and spent years at VeriSign helping shape the foundational frameworks of how the internet would be governed.

In this episode, Shane traces her unlikely path from the Bush administration to becoming one of Washington's most trusted voices on tech policy. She breaks down why regulating outcomes rather than inputs is the only sensible approach to technology governance, why the US and EU are operating from fundamentally different innovation philosophies, and why a national privacy bill is long overdue. She also explains why most organizations and individuals are far less protected than they think and why nobody knows who to call when something goes wrong.

Jack Clabby and co-host Kayley Melton talk with Shane about legacy system vulnerabilities, the cybersecurity implications of agentic AI, and what policymakers absolutely must get right over the next decade. She also reflects on what the CISA reauthorization limbo means for companies that don't even know they've lost liability protection.

In the Lifestyle Polygraph, Shane reveals she has 20,000 emails across eight accounts, admits she fakes laughs at bad jokes out of Midwestern politeness, shares her obsession with The Bear and Peaky Blinders, and tells us about her children's book project using Google Omni called "Shane on a Train."

Follow Shane on LinkedIn and on X at @ShaneTews. Find her work at AEI.org and TechPolicyDaily.com.

No Password Required is presented by ThreatLocker

In this episode:

• Shane's path from the George H.W. Bush White House to becoming Capitol Hill's go-to internet explainer (00:34 - 02:22)
• Why the Clinton-era multi-stakeholder model got internet governance right and what that means for policy today (04:40 - 06:13)
• The case for a national privacy bill and why 50 state standards aren't working (07:24 - 09:27)
• What AEI covers and how Shane thinks about riding the top of the wave across the entire tech policy stack (09:35 - 11:23)
• Legacy systems, vendor debt, and why outdated software is the easiest entry point for bad actors (11:30 - 13:34)
• The gap between how protected people think they are and how exposed they actually are, including a generational perspective on MFA (14:07 - 16:25)
• The biggest disconnect between everyday cyber reality and the policy world (16:59 - 20:35)
• Government readiness for a major cyber attack and why most people don't have a plan (20:54 - 22:32)
• How the US and EU innovation philosophies differ and why Europe's banking system is the real tech problem (22:41 - 25:38)
• The DeepSeek false narrative and where the US is leading vs. reacting on AI (25:45 - 29:21)
• The shift from AI features to AI coordination and what agentic AI means for cybersecurity permissions (29:28 - 32:16)
• What policymakers must get right on AI over the next 10 years (32:25 - 34:11)
• The Lifestyle Polygraph: inbox chaos, fake laughs, The Bear, and Shane on a Train (00:04 - 12:48)

Timestamp Highlights:

• (00:34) Shane's origin story: modems at the White House and blank stares on the Hill
• (04:40) Why the internet got policy right early on and what we can learn f