The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast

Eva Simone Lihotzky

The podcast explores how we build, break, and rebuild trust in a world shaped by accelerating technology and artificial intelligence. Hosted by Eva Simone Lihotzky, AI adoption and ethics expert with 12+ years of experience in tech, the podcast creates in-depth conversations at the intersection of AI, business, ethics, and human connection. Through various lenses - across business, politics, neuroscience, tech and systems thinking in organizations - it hosts expert conversations for you to deep dives into one of the complex topics we need to solve as a society and beyond.

  1. Tech and Trust at the Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub: Innovating for and with the Troops with Sarah Marie Sandmann (EP 30)

    1d ago

    Tech and Trust at the Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub: Innovating for and with the Troops with Sarah Marie Sandmann (EP 30)

    🎙️ Sarah Marie Sandmann, Innovation & Intrapreneurship, Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub AI trust in defence starts where slides end: with a soldier under pressure who needs to understand, rely on, and account for the technology in their hands. Sarah Marie Sandmann works at the Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub in Innovation and Intrapreneurship, the official innovation unit of the German armed forces. Sandmann treats trust in defence technology as a capability criterion, something tested under pressure, not asserted in policy, and the organisations getting this right are rebuilding how innovation works within the institution itself. 📖 Episode overview The Bundeswehr is one of Europe's most structurally complex organisations, built for stability, accountability, and risk minimisation, not speed. Sandmann and her colleagues run innovation projects at 12-month cycles that would take years through standard procurement. This episode explores what that tension looks like in practice: how AI is deployed strictly as decision support rather than decision replacement, how soldiers co-develop the technologies they will eventually trust with their lives, and why a trustworthy defence innovation ecosystem would be measured by capabilities delivered rather than the quality of its presentations. Sandmann also reflects on the post-Ukraine shift she has observed from inside the institution — more civilians wanting to contribute, more startups engaging with defence, and what that change means for civil-military trust. 🔍 Key themes Whether a soldier can understand, rely on, and explain an AI system, and why all three must be true before deploymentThe structural case for why large institutions are slow to innovate, and why the people inside them usually aren't the problemWhat "decision support, not decision replacement" means as a live design constraint for AI in high-stakes environmentsHow trust between military institutions and the startup ecosystem is actually built, and what breaks itWhat a trustworthy defence innovation ecosystem would need to look like in two to three years👤 About the guest Sarah Marie Sandmann works at the Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub in Innovation and Intrapreneurship, the official innovation unit of the German armed forces. She works at the intersection of military capability development, startup collaboration, and responsible technology adoption, collaborating on projects that bring AI, autonomous systems, and emerging technologies into operational use through direct co-development with soldiers. She has been inside the institution through the post-Ukraine shift in civil-military engagement and speaks from that experience with unusual clarity. ⏱ Chapter markers [00:00] What the Cyber Innovation Hub actually does — and why cockroaches are involved[03:18] Trust as an operational requirement in defence technology[08:00] Why innovation resistance is structural, not cultural[13:09] AI as decision support — the bright line and how it holds[21:22] The post-Ukraine shift and what a trustworthy ecosystem would look like🔗 Links Sarah Marie Sandmann on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-sandmann/Eva Simone Lihotzky on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub — https://www.cyberinnovationhub.de/en/SwarmBioTactics and Autobugs project — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4vu5AKTkJkKomand.AI and Smart Lead project — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r45um6txpQSonic AI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9i98jrielwRelated Episode: Why Security Intelligence Fails Before the Attack with Assaf Kipnies - https://open.spotify.com/episode/2D4ODAxGULFbqmXCmgwsfA

    23 min
  2. Anthropic's Model Suspension, Europe 2031, and G7 World Leaders Lunching with Frontier AI Lab & Tech CEOs: The Week in Tech & Trust with Yours Truly (EP 29)

    Jun 19

    Anthropic's Model Suspension, Europe 2031, and G7 World Leaders Lunching with Frontier AI Lab & Tech CEOs: The Week in Tech & Trust with Yours Truly (EP 29)

    🎙️ solo episode with host Eva Simone Lihotzky Anthropic's frontier AI model was pulled offline for every non-American in three days, and suddenly Europe's AI access looked less like something it owns and more like a permission. This is a week where digital trust stopped being abstract: one US export directive, one warning about Europe's compute future, and one lunch table where the people who build AI sat with the people who govern it. For any leader applying AI inside an organisation, it is a week worth understanding in practice, not as headlines. 🧭 In this episode In a single week of June 2026, three events landed that most coverage treated as separate. Eva reads them as one thread. The US Commerce Department forced Anthropic's Fable and Mythos models offline for any foreign national. The Europe 2031 agenda argued that Europe's window to matter in AI is closing faster than its own authors had predicted. And for the first time, Frontier AI lab CEOs sat at the G7 heads-of-state table. The question underneath all three: when access to the most strategic technology of the moment sits on someone else's permission, what does a European organisation actually own? Eva works through what this means for vendor dependency, infrastructure design, and the difference between treating AI sovereignty as a compute problem and treating it as a trust problem. 🔍 Key themes Why "access" to a frontier AI model may be a permission that someone else can withdraw — and what that does to a strategy built on itThe gap between Europe's AI story as a capital problem and the trust assumption sitting underneath itWhat changes for a leader when vendor lock-in stops being a risk slide and becomes a live eventWhether building infrastructure and orchestration across many models is now resilience rather than over-engineeringWhen the builders of AI also shape the rules that govern it, who represents the people using it🎙️ About the host Eva Simone Lihotzky, AI adoption and ethics advisor, formerly MD in one of the largest independent agency groups in Europe and co-author of 10 Moral Questions: How to Design Tech & AI Responsibly. She has spent more than a decade leading AI implementation inside organisations, which is why this episode resists the easy reads — it stays with the gray zone between hypocrisy and conviction, between capital and trust, rather than resolving it. This is a solo reflection: Eva connecting three news events into one question she openly admits is hard to narrow down. ⏱️ Chapters [00:00] Three news items, one thread[02:22] A frontier model offline in three days[08:00] Europe 2031: the window that closed early[11:30] Mistral, and the scale of the gap[18:45] The G7 table: builders meet the people who govern them[25:10] Who represents the ones using the technology🔗 Links Eva Simone Lihotzky on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/Europe 2031 agenda — https://europe2031.ai10 Moral Questions: How to Design Tech & AI Responsibly — https://www.10moralquestions.com/the-bookEva's World Economic Forum reflection, January 2026 — The politics of tech on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1RKtxdJWXcQH8vnpnDtgEP?si=wrln7peeSkKb-gotGHYMRgEva's World Economic Forum reflection, January 2026 — The politics of tech on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-in-between-tech-and-trust-podcast/id1828521905?l=en-GB&i=1000747143762Anthropic statement on the Fable / Mythos suspension — https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access

    22 min
  3. AI and The Cognitive Atrophy Trap: What Happens When We Let Tech Shortcut the Hard Parts of Learning - Tobias Burkhardt (EP 28)

    Jun 11

    AI and The Cognitive Atrophy Trap: What Happens When We Let Tech Shortcut the Hard Parts of Learning - Tobias Burkhardt (EP 28)

    🎙️ Tobias Burkhardt, Founder of The Shift School AI, trust and learning are on a collision course, and the casualty is judgment. Tobias Burkhardt, founder of the Shiftschool, argues that the way individuals and organisations are adopting AI in learning is a cultural problem: the reflex to make learning faster and cheaper is precisely what makes AI dangerous to the people using it. This conversation is for anyone who suspects the upskilling programmes around them are solving for the wrong problem. 💡 Episode overview Tobias Burkhardt has spent years advising organisations on learning and organizational development, and his diagnosis is uncomfortable: cognitive atrophy is real, it is already happening, and it predates AI. The impulse to shortcut understanding — to reach for the tool before doing the thinking — is a cultural pattern that AI accelerates but did not create. In this conversation, he makes the case for treating AI as a relational technology rather than a productivity instrument, and for rebuilding learning around curation, community, and continuity rather than content delivery. He also names something most learning institutions will not: that the ultimate goal of good education is to make oneself obsolete. 🔑 Key themes Why treating AI as a tool rather than a collaborator is ill-advised, and what the alternative requiresThe faster-and-cheaper reflex in organisational learning, and why it compounds the problem it is meant to solveWhat a school without content actually means, and what takes content's placeThe bilateral responsibility in learning, and why self-discipline alone will never be sufficientTrust as an investment: why waiting for certainty before engaging with AI is the wrong posture🎤 About the guest Tobias Burkhardt is the founder of The Shiftschool, a learning institution he built because he loved learning and never liked schools. He advises organisations on learning strategies and has developed a philosophy of education built around what does not change — judgment, curation, social interaction, and continuity — rather than around the tools and content that do. His concept of a school without content is a practical response to the decreasing half-life of knowledge in an AI-native world. ⏱ Chapter markers [00:00] Can we trust ourselves to use AI — not just trust AI itself[04:00] Why the information abundance problem predates AI[08:30] From tool to collaborator to environment — how the relationship with AI evolves[11:00] Cognitive atrophy and the shortcutting reflex[18:30] Lifelong learning as personal obligation — and why institutions cannot wait[22:30] The school without content — what takes knowledge's place[30:00] Redesigning Shift School for an AI-native world 🔗 Links Tobias Burkhardt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetropoly/ Eva Lihotzky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/Visit the Shift School: https://shiftschool.deListen to the related episode with Simon Berkler on organisational AI adoption or trust in digital systems (EP 22): https://open.spotify.com/episode/6y8PMaVUnZVAR1hOAR15DN

    27 min
  4. Tech and Democracy: How Can Both Be Connected to Create Trust? with Nexus Politics (EP 27)

    Jun 4

    Tech and Democracy: How Can Both Be Connected to Create Trust? with Nexus Politics (EP 27)

    🎙️ with Magnus Strobel, Co-Founder and CEO of Nexus Politics Trust in politics has been eroding across Western democracies for over a decade, and Magnus Strobel thinks the failure is in how democracy works, in the process that has stopped feeling participatory. His company, Nexus Politics, is a for-profit platform built to map the distance between what citizens actually think and what politicians actually do - and to make that distance impossible to ignore. 🔍 Episode overview This is a conversation about whether transparency can rebuild participation once the machinery of democracy has stopped feeling participatory. It is also about a quieter problem: how a founder building a trust instrument decides whether anyone actually trusts it. Magnus Strobel and his team create an architecture for a digital democracy platform: how citizen opinion gets routed to the right political actors, how the system maps public sentiment in real time, and where accountability is supposed to live. The harder questions arrive underneath: Why build this as for-profit rather than not-for-profit, and why that choice is the one that makes political neutrality credible. What politicians say they want from such a tool, and why their enthusiasm might mean less compared to how they use it specifically. It is a founder's conversation that keeps circling back to a single uncertainty: you can build the mechanism for trust, but you cannot yet prove the trust is there. ⚖️ Key themes Why the crisis is in how democracy functions, not in democracy itself - and what that distinction changes How a for-profit structure becomes the argument for political neutralityMapping the gap between what voters think and what politicians do What politicians actually want from civic tech, and why positive feedback is the hardest signal to trustTech as a tool that can repair democratic trust or deepen the damage, depending on who uses it and how 🤝 About the guest Magnus Strobel is co-founder of Nexus Politics, a digital democracy platform built to rebuild participation and accountability in representative democracies. His background is in behavioral economics, which surfaces throughout the conversation in his attention to the gap between what a system is designed to do and what people actually do with it. He builds from Munich, embedded in the local startup ecosystem, with a stated ambition modelled partly on Taiwan's experience of using participation tools to lift satisfaction with democracy. 🌍 Chapter markers [00:09] What comes to mind when a democracy founder thinks about trust[02:59] Opening the fragmented machinery of politics - participation, transparency, accountability[05:59] Why for-profit is the route to credible neutrality[16:08] The hardest part is always reality - and what politicians really want[22:49] Can tech rebuild democratic trust, or does it cut both ways[35:48] In-between moments: trust, division, and where a founder sits right now ⛓️‍💥 Links Nexus Politics:  www.nexuspolitics.orgMagnus Strobel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/strobelmagnus/ Audrey Tang / Taiwan digital democracy: https://www.demnext.org/people/audrey-tangRebuild conference, Copenhagen: https://www.rebuild.net Related episode - Rebuilding Trust: Tech, Politics and Entrepreneurial Leadership (EP 06)

    31 min
  5. AI in China and in Europe: Trust, Differences, and Future Implications - Vincent Xiang, Founder China AI Connect (EP 26)

    May 28

    AI in China and in Europe: Trust, Differences, and Future Implications - Vincent Xiang, Founder China AI Connect (EP 26)

    Europe and China are on different AI paths at different speeds. Vincent Xiang has spent years inside that corridor: He has been working as a translator between Chinese AI founders and European investors and corporates, and this conversation dives into his experiences, conversations, and operations on the ground and in-between. 🧭 Episode overview European executives are excited about Chinese AI momentum. But they're also stuck before they act. Chinese founders interpret some of Europe's regulations as inefficiency. Both sides are operating with simplified labels that are accurate enough to feel right and wrong enough to produce bad decisions. Vincent walks through what he actually sees on the ground - why trust in China gets delegated to systems rather than built between strangers, why "AI superpower" and "surveillance dystopia" both miss the territory, why fragmentation is now treated as permanent reality by founders, and what European companies serious about engaging China should do before they book a single meeting. 🔍 Key themes discussed The different first questions Europe and China ask about new technology, and what each one produces downstreamTrust as delegated infrastructure - the Alipay escrow story and why people trust the system rather than the strangers in itWhy both Western labels for Chinese AI are wrong in the same direction, and what gets missed when leaders operate with themThe three-layer coordination of government, platforms, and institutions in China, and what its absence looks like in EuropeFragmentation as the new permanent reality, and why compliance has to be built in as a product feature from day one👤 About the guest Vincent Xiang is the founder of China AI Connect, a research and advisory practice helping European investors and corporates evaluate whether Chinese AI is relevant to their strategy, and helping Chinese founders understand the European market. He lived in Germany for seven years, writes the China AI Connect briefings on Chinese AI and deep-tech policy and players, and organises executive trips that bring European leaders to meet founders and operators on the ground. His vantage point is one of the few that sits genuinely between the two systems. ⏱️ Chapter markers [00:55] The first word that comes to mind: difference [05:00] People trust the system, not the strangers in it [12:01] Why "AI superpower" and "surveillance dystopia" both miss the territory [19:00] Three layers of coordination: government, platforms, institutions [22:30] Fragmentation as permanent reality, and compliance as a product feature [35:00] The robotics inflection and what favourable policy makes possible 🔗 Links Vincent Xiang on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yxiangeclille/ China AI Connect on Substack - https://vincentxiang.substack.com AI 2030 / AI Plus initiative reference - https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyjh/202509/t20250924_11715960.html Related episode - Episode on Trust as Geopolitical Requirement: Eva's WEF 2026 recap - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1RKtxdJWXcQH8vnpnDtgEP?si=u_MfnmOvQ2-AXSPRONX6Gw

    34 min
  6. The Agentic AI Gap: When Tech is Used Before its Architecture is Ready - Anthony Alcaraz, Agentic AI Architect (EP 25)

    May 21

    The Agentic AI Gap: When Tech is Used Before its Architecture is Ready - Anthony Alcaraz, Agentic AI Architect (EP 25)

    Most enterprises have the technology to run agentic AI. They do not yet have the data architecture, identity layer, or empowered workforce to actually trust it. Anthony Alcaraz argues that the bottleneck for agentic AI has shifted from building the agents to building everything around them — and that the organisations most at risk are the ones keeping a human in the loop and calling it transformation. This conversation is for leaders sitting between AI pilots that worked and production systems that have not yet arrived. 💡Episode overview Anthony joins Eva to map what changes when AI shifts from reactive systems to agents that observe, reason, and act. The conversation moves through what enterprises miss in their own data — systems of record that capture what happened but not why — and the new attack surfaces agents introduce, including tool poisoning. Anthony names the empowerment gap inside organisations: business experts who hold the knowledge agents need, with no clear path to building anything themselves. The most provocative moment lands near the end, when Anthony argues that human-in-the-loop adoption can be a way of avoiding actual transformation rather than achieving it. 🔍 Key themes discussed The shift from reactive to agentic systems, and what trust has to carry nowWhy most enterprise data is missing the why behind decisionsTool poisoning and the new attack surface for agentsThe empowerment gap between business knowledge and technical capabilityGraph architecture as the control layer for agentic reasoningWhy human-in-the-loop can be a refusal to transform👤 About the guest Anthony Alcaraz works across three vantage points that rarely sit together: he architects agentic AI systems, invests in early-stage AI startups as an angel, and is the author of Agentic Graph RAG with O'Reilly. He spends most weeks in conversation with founders attempting to enter regulated enterprises, and most evenings building software with the same tools he writes about. His perspective on this episode comes from watching the same gap repeat itself across organisations of very different sizes — the technology is ready, and most of the systems around it are not. 📍 Chapter markers [00:00] What changes when AI moves from reactive to agentic[05:42] Why agents need access — and what enterprises have not built[10:29] The three problems: data, governance, and the people in between[23:13] Graph architecture and the missing why of enterprise data[32:06] The empowerment gap that no one has solved yet[45:17] In-between: where Anthony finds himself now 🔗 Links Anthony Alcaraz LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-alcaraz-b80763155/ Agentic Graph RAG (O'Reilly) — https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/agentic-graphrag/9798341623163/ Foundation Capital context graph thesis — https://foundationcapital.com/ideas/the-case-for-context-graphs Related episode — Trust as an operating system in AI companions https://open.spotify.com/episode/5t4BtgevPOtMWUfB4jThWX?si=oGo2JPHNTeCTxbqkNXDJMwEva Simone Lihotzky's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/

    37 min
  7. Why AI Makes Political Authenticity Harder to Trust – Dr. Michael Cohen (EP 24)

    May 14

    Why AI Makes Political Authenticity Harder to Trust – Dr. Michael Cohen (EP 24)

    AI has collapsed the cost of producing political content. Verifying it is another matter, and Cohen has spent two decades watching that gap widen from inside campaigns and classrooms. He has a three-part test for practitioners navigating it — real, authentic, factual — and this conversation is about why he thinks it has to be taught before anyone reaches the job. 📻 Episode overview Cohen runs Congress in Your Pocket, teaches digital campaign strategy at Johns Hopkins and NYU, and serves as executive director of Fight Hate, which works to reduce anti-Semitism on college campuses. From all of it, his argument is the same: the ethical line gets drawn before practitioners reach the job, or it does not get drawn at all. The conversation moves through what it cost him to hold a non-partisan position when one side of the political spectrum came after him, why he believes hyper-targeting served democracy better than broadcast advertising did, and what his students are starting to find they can no longer reliably spot in AI-generated video. Real, authentic, factual — he gives students that test before they touch the tools, because by the time they are on a campaign, the pressure to cross the line is already there. 🔍 Key themes discussed What changes when AI makes political content production fast and cheapEighteen years of answering every user email personally — and what that reveals about civic trustWhy he teaches the ethical line before students touch the toolsFight Hate and the deliberate choice to stop fighting hate onlineWhat happens when AI-generated video gets good enough to fool the generation that grew up spotting it👤 About the guest Dr. Michael Cohen lectures in political campaigning and digital strategy at Johns Hopkins University and NYU, and wrote Modern Political Campaigns: How Professionalism, Technology, and Speed Have Revolutionized Elections. He founded Congress in Your Pocket in the year of the first iPhone and has run it for eighteen years, answering every user email personally throughout. He is currently executive director of Fight Hate, working to reduce anti-Semitism on college campuses through student-led offline organising. 🕐 Chapter markers [00:01] The iPhone as political infrastructure[06:08] What eighteen years of personal emails taught him about trust[13:36] Why hyper-targeting may be better for democracy than broadcast advertising[19:31] Real, authentic, factual — the line and what it costs[24:35] Fight Hate: using digital tools to get people off them[37:35] The authenticity meter: how far AI video has pushed even digital nativesTimestamps approximate from transcript - adjust after final edit. 🔗 Links Dr. Michael Cohen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldavidcohen/ Congress in Your Pocket - https://www.congressinyourpocket.comFight Hate website - https://fighthate.org/home/Modern Political Campaigns (book) - https://www.modernpoliticalcampaigns.com Blue Square Project by Robert Kraft - https://www.bluesquarealliance.org/bsa-blue-square-alliance-take-over-b/?nab=1Eva is on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/

    35 min
  8. Why Security Intelligence Fails Before the Attack - Assaf Kipnis (EP 23)

    Mar 19

    Why Security Intelligence Fails Before the Attack - Assaf Kipnis (EP 23)

    Most security failures are organisational: This episode is about the gap between threat intelligence that exists and the human systems that never act on it, and what that costs the organisations that keep losing to attacks they already understood. Assaf Kipnis has spent over a decade inside the threat intelligence and trust and safety functions of some of the world's largest platforms. In this conversation, he maps a structural failure that runs across the industry: the team that identifies threats and the team that deploys detection operate in parallel, with no reliable mechanism to connect them. Intelligence gets produced, reports get written, and the knowledge sits unused while the same attacks return. Assaf describes what it actually took to stop a sophisticated actor group ahead of the 2020 US elections - a rare case where structure and resources aligned - and explains why that outcome is the exception rather than the rule. He also walks through the design decisions behind Catalyst Labs, the company he is now building to close the gap, and why he made provenance non-negotiable even at the cost of speed. 🎙 Key themes discussed Why security teams are structurally rewarded for fighting fires rather than preventing themThe organisational gap between threat intelligence and detection - and why it persists even in well-resourced teamsWhat data provenance means in practice, and why it matters more than speed when using AI in securityHow attackers learn your defences faster than you can adapt - and what the military analogy revealsWhy trust online currently feels, in Assaf's words, like a pipe dream 👤 About the guest Assaf Kipnis is the founder of Catalyst Labs, with over 12 years working across threat intelligence, information security, and trust and safety at LinkedIn, Google, Meta, and ElevenLabs. He brings the perspective of someone who has spent his career making threats legible to organisations - and watching those organisations lack the structure to act on what they could now see. 🕐 Chapter markers [00:18] Why the industry keeps fighting the same fires [08:04] What it actually took to stop an actor group - the 2020 elections case [12:36] How AI is widening an asymmetry that already existed [15:31] Catalyst Labs: the provenance problem and why speed comes second [20:35] What to build first if you're starting a threat intelligence team 🔗 Links Assaf Kipnis https://www.linkedin.com/in/assafkipnis/ KTLYST Labs https://www.ktlystlabs.com Background information on MGM / FBI reports: https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/fbi-struggled-disrupt-dangerous-casino-hacking-gang-cyber-responders-say-2023-11-14/ Related episode: organisational trust and AI implementation with Simon Berkler https://open.spotify.com/episode/6y8PMaVUnZVAR1hOAR15DN Related episode: accountability and invisible infrastructure with Sergiu Petean https://open.spotify.com/episode/4KcsZBDgFzkSuwQVihjNR5

    31 min
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About

The podcast explores how we build, break, and rebuild trust in a world shaped by accelerating technology and artificial intelligence. Hosted by Eva Simone Lihotzky, AI adoption and ethics expert with 12+ years of experience in tech, the podcast creates in-depth conversations at the intersection of AI, business, ethics, and human connection. Through various lenses - across business, politics, neuroscience, tech and systems thinking in organizations - it hosts expert conversations for you to deep dives into one of the complex topics we need to solve as a society and beyond.

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