P@DC Policy @ DEF CON

DEF CON 34 • Agency

Policy @ DEF CON

Hacker policy that focuses on practical safety, public-interest research, and people-first design.

Join the newsletter Meet the community Official Policy @ DEF CON page
Theme
Agency
Dates
August 6-9, 2026
Location
Las Vegas Convention Center
Official status
Policy Village and CFP listed on DEF CON

Why this exists

Policy and engineering need each other in the same room.

Policy @ DEF CON helps technical people and public-interest stakeholders bring realistic system understanding into policy conversations.

01

Make outcomes understandable

Translate real-world security, infrastructure, and platform tradeoffs into clear decisions people can act on.

02

Test ideas with practitioners

Compare policy language against how systems fail under pressure, then adjust before harm scales.

03

Preserve choice and safety

Prioritize privacy, fairness, and user control when technical safeguards and governance rules meet.

Agency in practice

How we bring hacker reality into policy.

These are the recurring formats and methods used at DEF CON for practical, grounded policy exchange.

01

Roundtables

Small group conversations that focus on concrete policy dilemmas and practical recommendations.

02

Evidence briefings

Technical findings are framed in plain language with clear trade-offs and assumptions.

03

Public interest tooling

Discussion around user control, open standards, and safer defaults in platform design and infrastructure.

04

Cross-sector bridges

Research teams, policy teams, and practitioners identify overlap and keep the conversation useful.

DEF CON 34 program

Policy @ DEF CON, on the clock.

The current program includes Policy Village sessions and related Creator Stage talks. Schedules change at DEF CON; use Hacker Tracker for live updates.

Friday, August 7

Friday program

  1. Not Your Parents' Schoolhouse Rock: Getting Tech Policy Done in a Non-Functioning Congress

    Jeff Rothblum, Michael Flynn

    Policy Village

  2. Sovereign by Design, Vulnerable by Default

    Devin Lynch, Haley Ring

    Creator Stage 1

  3. Morbidity and Mortality: Hackers, HIPAA, and a New Prescription for Healthcare Cyber Policy

    Christian Dameff, Jeff "r3plicant" Tully

    Policy Village

  4. Election Security in the Age of AI: Governance, Trust, and the Systems Behind Democracy

    Lester Godsey, William Gates, Tim Harper

    Policy Village

  5. The Cyber Crystal Ball: The Annual Policy @ DEF CON Contingencies Survey

    Matthew Wein, Bruce Schneier, Chris Painter, Heather West

    Policy Village

  6. Connectivity as Control in the European High North

    Szymon Skalski, Patricia Vargas Leon, Jorge Acevedo Canabal

    Creator Stage 1

  7. The Liability Stack: When Code Becomes Conduct

    Carole House

    Creator Stage 1

  8. Strengthening the CVE Ecosystem

    John Banghart, Elizabeth Eigner, Lisa Olsen, Lindsey Cerkovnik

    Policy Village · limited to 50 participants

  9. When AI Finds Everything: Vulnerability Policy for the Coming Discovery Surge

    Alec Summers, Lindsey Cerkovnik, Madison Ficorelli

    Policy Village

  10. Privacy's Defender: How Hackers Protected the Internet Before and Can Do It Again

    Cindy Cohn

    Creator Stage 1

  11. Building a Statewide VDP: Lessons from Maryland's First Year in the Trenches

    01dbae

    Creator Stage 5

  12. Legally Hacked: How Countries Decide When Security Research Is Allowed

    Katharina "Kat S" Sommer

    Creator Stage 1

  13. Filibuffer Overflow: Hackers Stage a Congressional Hearing

    Katherine Pratt, Jeff Rothblum, Maurice Turner, Ayan Islam, Beau Woods

    Policy Village

Saturday, August 8

Saturday program

  1. Journey to Create an All-State Cybersecurity Plan for Oklahoma

    Craig "jafo" Buchanan

    Policy Village

  2. Whose Agent Is It Anyway? Agency, Authorization, and Accountability in the Year of the AI Agent

    Andreas Kaltsounis, Jacob Wall

    Creator Stage 1

  3. From Policy to Prod: How a Frontier AI Lab Enforces Its Cyber Rules

    Grant Versfeld, David "0xdf" Forsythe

    Policy Village

  4. Europe's Expanding Role in Global Vulnerability Management

    Nuno Rodrigues Carvalho, Razvan Gavrila

    Policy Village

  5. Privacy You Inherit: How Cultural History Writes the Source Code for AI Surveillance Policy

    Tati

    Creator Stage 1

  6. Surprise Session

    Details to be confirmed in Hacker Tracker.

    Policy Village

  7. The Subverted Hacker

    Robert "zizkill" Shala

    Creator Stage 1

  8. The Best of Three Bad Ideas? Ransomware Taxes in Lieu of Bans or Doing Nothing

    Joe Uchill

    Policy Village

  9. From Disclosure to Defense: Rebuilding Vulnerability Management for the AI Era

    Lindsey Cerkovnik, John Banghart, Ben Flatgard, Elizabeth Eigner

    Policy Village

  10. Assume Breach, But For Real: Rewriting Infrastructure Policy for the Adversaries Who Never Left

    Travis Berent, Adam Hickey

    Policy Village

  11. Securing the Safety Net: Why Healthcare Cybersecurity Policy Keeps Failing Patients

    Sahan Fernando, James Bowie, Nancy Brainerd, Phil Englert

    Policy Village

  12. AI Safety Theater: What the RAISE Act Regulates - and What It Does Not

    Joshua Marpet

    Creator Stage 1

  13. The Closing Window: Governing Agentic AI Security in a Post-Mythos World

    Taylor Roberts, Mitch Herckis, Katie Trimble-Noble, Razvan Gavrila

    Policy Village

Sunday, August 9

Sunday program

  1. Strategic Resistance: How a Global Network Is Fighting the Spyware Industry

    Michael Brennan, Nadine Farid Johnson, Rebekah Brown

    Policy Village

  2. Inference in the Infrastructure: Developing NIST AI RMF Resources for Resilient AI in Critical Systems

    Raymond Sheh, Martin Stanley

    Policy Village

  3. Tactical Advocacy: Panel & Peer Sessions with EFF

    Thorin Klosowski, Cooper "Cybertiger" Quintin, Alexis Hancock, Cindy Cohn, Rory Mir

    Policy Village

All times are PDT. Policy Village is in LVCCW Level 2, W210-211. Creator Stage room assignments are shown in Hacker Tracker.

Check Hacker Tracker for live changes

Policy signal lab

Pick a signal, then shift it into policy.

A short, tactile way to map technical observation into a practical next step.

Signal: Agency

Start from the person with the least control.

Name the system pressure, identify who is exposed, and propose the policy adjustment that restores meaningful options.

  • Map who can opt out and what it costs.
  • Check default settings that quietly push risk forward.
  • Keep the safer option visible, simple, and cheap.

Connect

Follow what we share.

Primary community channels and official points of contact.

Defcon.Social Community updates and links BlueSky Announcements and event notes LinkedIn Longer-form program notes DEF CON Forums Function and forum history Official page Canonical DEF CON policy landing