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In this episode, Layal Beyhum and Tiffany Saade examine how artificial intelligence reshapes governance, security and power. They move past hype and focus on risk, responsibility and institutional readiness. The conversation treats AI as a political and security issue rather than a neutral technology.
Tiffany draws on her work in AI security and threat intelligence to explain how governance lags behind deployment. Systems scale before accountability exists, and states adopt tools without defining responsibility. Layal challenges the idea that AI governance is universal by pushing the discussion toward inequality and geopolitical imbalance. Who writes the rules, who benefits from automation, who absorbs harm when systems fail are the spine behind their discussion. The episode makes clear that governance choices embed power whether acknowledged or not.
The conversation grounds theory in context. Tiffany highlights how countries like Lebanon face AI exposure without decision-making power, claiming that exclusion from global governance increases risk. When policy frameworks lag, states outsource power without safeguards.
The episode concludes with the acknowledgement that AI governance must move upstream, security must shape design, and policy must act before deployment.
Tiffany Saade works in AI Security, Threat Intelligence, and Product at Cisco. She holds a Master’s degree in AI Cyberpolicy from Stanford University and serves as an Advisor on AI Policy and Cybersecurity at the Ministry of IT & AI Lebanon. Her work sits at the intersection of emerging technology, security risk, and public policy.
Recommended during the episode, “Atlas of AI” exposes the material, political and human costs behind artificial intelligence. Crawford maps how AI systems rely on extractive labor, data and infrastructure. She shows how power concentrates through technology when governance fails to intervene.
The book reinforces the episode’s argument that AI is not abstract. It is built on resources, people and political choices.
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Layal Beyhum: Hello everyone and welcome to the Nonviolence Now Podcast brought to you by Pace e Bene, where we explore the principles of nonviolence, where it all started, and how it shows up in today’s digital world. In a country where the power cuts every few hours, we somehow have a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence in Lebanon. And that’s where today’s story begins … because my splendid guest, Tiffany Saade, who is a Stanford scholar, cybersecurity fellow, and World Economic Forum global shaper, was summoned by that ministry to join in its first national working group on AI governance. It sounds visionary, but what does responsible AI mean in a place that can’t guarantee clean water, data protection, or political accountability? What does digital transformation mean when the state itself is collapsing offline? Because while the world builds algorithms to make things faster, cheaper, and smarter, we are still trying to make things fair, humane, and accessible. Tiffany, first of all, welcome to Pace e Bene’s Nonviolence Now Podcast.
I’d like to start with a small, simple question before we dive into our deeply important topic. If you had to describe the global shift we’re living through – this rush towards AI and digital power – as a season, what would it be? Is it spring with all its promise, or winter with all its control?
Tiffany Saade: Thank you for having me, Layal. I would say it’s neither spring, nor winter. I would describe it as a fall. I would describe it as fall because it is the beginning and the end of two things.
It’s the end of an era that we used to know from the Third Industrial Revolution, where we had digitization, but not digitization at scale and at the speed and at an innovation that we now know with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And you can see that through the withering of the leaves, that’s how you can represent it with fall. But then, it’s also the beginning of new colors appearing – the orange, the yellow, the hues of fall. And that’s basically the new features of innovation. So, we always had the trees, we always had the leaves, but now they are transforming into a new shape. And this is what we’re seeing today. We’re seeing systems that are being redefined for this new era, this new era that we call the AI Era, where everything’s being redefined from infrastructure to technology, to policy, to security. While traditional baselines are there, we’re building upon them and we’re trying to recreate our ecosystems, our institutions, and even the way we live as a society to kind of match and adapt to that base. So definitely, it’s fall. It’s the season of transitions, and it’s also the season of uncertainties and possibilities. You know, after fall, there’s the winter. It’s usually something you expect to happen, but the fall season within itself is very unpredictable and very asymmetric. So, not a lot of countries in the world get to witness fall. And this is what, I would say, is also the case with the AI: that AI is a season that not a lot of countries and regions around the world get to experience because of what you mentioned. Because of lax governance, because of a lack in socioeconomic resources, because of security concerns, or even peace and stability that are given for a lot of places in the world, but are not there for countries like Lebanon and other countries around the world.
Layal Beyhum: The reason I initially asked you about what season you would imagine, or you would encapsulate it to be, is because of the World Economics Forum’s latest report. It calls this moment a turning point and you picking fall just fits in perfectly. In that report, they say that AI will create 170 million jobs and erase 92 million.
Now, in the report, they call it disruption, but personally, the way I see it from a human perspective, I call it displacement because with every number behind it, we have someone that is being automated out of relevance. So, from where you stand (between Stanford and Beirut right now) how do you read this shift? What are we really gaining and who’s being written out of the equation?
Tiffany Saade: No one is being written out of the equation. And if we are being written out of the equation, it is a choice that we make, not an evidence. And this might be controversial, but let me break it down for you.
I think it’s disruption, yes, in the best and in the worst sense, because it’s a literal disruption. We’re seeing a seismic change in everything we do, in everything we perceive, in the tools we use and rely – and over rely – on. But it’s not a displacement. I would say it is a race, or a challenge, of adaptability. It is kind of testing the ability of humans, of societies, of norms, of values, to adapt to a technology that’s evolving at an exponential rate and to adapt to redefining what is human-centric technology and where is the place of human beings – ‘human beings’ being our cognitive skills, our cognitive autonomy, our critical and analytical skills, and our reasoning, which actually are the core of what makes us human, among other things – where do these fit in the broader equation of AI? Now, it is a choice we make when we want to relay this cognitive autonomy, transform it into a dependency, and over-reliance to the tools, then yes. This is where humans get written out of the equation, on the one hand, in this deliberate choice to give our reasoning away to these machines and automate reasoning. While the role of these machines is to automate processes, not to automate creation, right? So that’s one.
On the second part, I think it is obviously going to create new jobs. I wouldn’t say it would erase a couple of million jobs. I think it would replace these jobs with new functions, with new capabilities, with new skills, and it will force us as workers, as humans, as experts, to kind of rethink the way we want to engage with the world, the way we want to contribute to the workforce. But also, it will teach us a very important lesson that evolution and innovation is not just only about the tool itself evolving from when we used to have, you know, cars to now autonomous driving cars. It’s about how humans get to be a part of that innovation and innovate their own skills, to be able to match or to kind of close the gap between, you know, this amazing speed at which AI is advancing, but also the values and the skills that humans know how to do. So, it’s a bit of like plasticity, you know, like the brain re-adapts after an accident. It’s the same thing I think for us. It’s like, how do we re-adapt and re-align, and not lose our value by capitalizing on what makes us human, which obviously is the reasoning part and our ability to adapt and mold to the new ecosystem.
Layal Beyhum: When we talk about AI readiness while we still file papers by hand in Lebanon and celebrate this ‘digital transformation’ while students in public schools don’t even have wifi and we in our own houses in Lebanon don’t have 24-7 access to electricity and wifi. And I think our audience in the global south can highly relate to this conversation.
In one of your interviews you once said that transforming brain drain into brain gain is just as important as rebuilding physical infrastructure. So, I would really like to take this question, and building on what you’ve been saying previously, how can you imagine a future where young people in tech – and since we’re taking Lebanon’s case study today so be it coders, analysts, designers that can build for their country instead of being absorbed by the first world countries – what would it take to turn digital migration into digital sovereignty?
Tiffany Saade: I think that’s a great question. I would write a book about this because there are so many different moving parts that go into that. You can imagine it as a puzzle, right? They all are interconnected. They all work together.
I think, you know, going back to the quote on transforming brain drain to brain gain being equally as important as physical infrastructure, it’s because we know that AI doesn’t only run, and is not only dependent, on infrastructure. Obviously, it is dependent on computers. It is dependent on data centers. It’s dependent on data itself, right? It’s the fuel. But AI in itself as a tool cannot evolve and integrate and scale and innovate and evolve and evolve without the human component. We need that talent and that leadership so that we preserve that human component and we’re able to shape the way we want innovation to look like when it comes to AI. The way we want it to be customized to our own use cases, to our own country is, especially in countries like Lebanon where … you know, at the ministry, we say it’s a blank page. The perk of a blank page is that you can scribble whatever you want on that blank page, but then it is a blank page so we don’t have the basics.
We don’t have, you know, advanced electricity grids. We don’t have advanced power. We don’t have advanced connectivity. So, yes, if I were to look at this from a third point of view, I’d be like, well, how do we fit AI into all of this? Like, is AI just another layer of decay? No. The way we define it at the ministry is that AI is an ingredient. And let me tell you why. Yes, we don’t have electricity in most places in Lebanon. Yes, connectivity is scarce. And yes, we have a massive humanitarian and financial crisis. We are aware of all of this and we’re living it. But also, we have an opportunity to build among talent that is brilliant, among an education sector that has always been here, but needs to be nourished.
It’s just like you have a piece of land, right? A piece of land that’s fertile but you’re not planting anything in it. So, basically, what we do is we look at the pain points of the Lebanese people. We look at the financial crisis. We look at the economic struggles. We look at the barriers to access to services, to education, you know, even the bureaucracy and the red tape. We take that and we think about how technology can be a multiplier effect for innovation, for efficiency, but also to address these pain points: how AI can be a part of the answer to the implementation and the solution development to deal with all of our pain points that we’re facing today.
Now, not to say that AI is the answer. To say that AI can be the multiplier effect and the technology that can help us either speed through the solution or scale that solution or break down the barriers of entry for populations and for communities that don’t have the access in Lebanon. So, I think it is obviously a very big challenge because we do have a lack of infrastructure. But what the ministry is trying to do is to say that we need to start somewhere. We cannot be on the margins of the AI wave. We cannot be spectators of the AI wave. As His Excellency, Dr. Kamal Chehade always says, we need to leapfrog with the technology. And that’s a very important word because we are at an advantage if you think about it.
Yes, we don’t have AI regulation. Yes, we are late when it comes to cyber security, when it comes to AI strategy. But at the same time, we are sitting there and absorbing and learning and looking at bits and pieces from regulations to AI incidents to AI readiness frameworks around the world. And we’re able to craft our own. So, that kind of puts us at an advantage to have a blank page.
Layal Beyhum: We’re talking about a government that is transitioning, that is trying to be modern, all right? We’re talking about AI governance. We’re talking about things that are big to try to make it to the world at a time where the country is failing on so many levels. We have internally displaced people. We have lack of employment. So, I would like you to tell the world what it means, or what it looks like on a day-to-day, to be part of a ministry as innovative and as weirdly placed in such a circumstantial situation in the country where the country is in debt, where we have children that have missed out on education for over a year and a half because of the war that has been inflicted on the South. Can technological progress exist without political justice?
Tiffany Saade: I think that’s a great question. I always reflect on this because when I left Lebanon in 2020, it was one year after the revolution. I promised myself that if I were to ever go back home in a certain capacity, I would want to serve at the intersection of three elements that we lacked in Lebanon: security, technology, and governance. And five years later, this is exactly what I have the honor to do with an amazing leader with His Excellency Dr. Chehade and the team.
And I would describe the team as a startup. If you come to the office, you’ll see it’s a team that is very flat, very little hierarchy, works together hand in hand, is very close to the people. And what the minister often says is that this is a ministry by the people for the people. So, we started off as volunteers working pro bono for a mission, for one single mission. We know that we have a unique opportunity today with the new government to redefine what it means to make a change and redefine the role of Lebanon when it comes to technology because we are not on the AI map. And we’re trying to position ourselves to come and put our anchor and say, world, we’re ready. We’re ready. We’re taking the first step. We are basically building these building blocks that we do not have that other countries take as a given. We have to build them.
And even though these are small wins, these are moving the needle maybe one or two centimeters forward. Maybe it’s just about digitization. Maybe it’s just helping different public sector entities upscale their AI readiness. Maybe it’s also about defining what responsible AI means for Lebanon. But all of these are building blocks, are foundational, to be able to jumpstart not only technological innovation, but also digital sovereignty – because it goes to the core of what digital sovereignty is.
Digital sovereignty means we have control over the creation, the ideation, and the implementation of digital transformation and digital services within our country as people, as government. We work together and we have a say into how technology affects our lives and into how it affects our services. And this is exactly what we’re trying to do in the ministry because we don’t want to have an AI strategy or AI services or policies or governance that is disconnected from what the people need, what the people want, and what the people expect to see in the next 10 years in Lebanon. So, we are working through the pain points of the people, through the lens of what they need the most. And this is why we always say it’s for the people by the people … because everything we build, everything we think about, everything we want to implement, the demand signal comes from the Lebanese people.
And you were talking about political justice and the digital transformation, the binary. Yes, in a lot of cases, in political science 101, we know that these two things, um, it’s difficult for them to coexist because in order for digital transformation to exist, you need to have a basis of good governance and stability. And the basis of good governance and stability are very weak or non-existent when you don’t have political justice and transitional justice, which we’re lacking in Lebanon.
But I think we’re at a unique vantage point in Lebanon because we’re trying to build the two things at the same time.
But political justice and building good governance, this is going to take years and years and years. The pace of doing that is much slower than digital transformation. Not saying we should speed through political justice or slow down so that we match the paces. There is an inherent difference in pace. They can work together, and the gap between political justice and digital transformation can really be filled by great leadership. And this is what we’re seeing today at the ministry, this is what we’re seeing today in government, trying really to empower young people, to empower technocrats that are empowered today, and empowering their vision of change, their theory of change, by saying that we can have a process of political justice and a process of technological change coexist together at different paces.
Now, will it be perfect? No. Will it be smooth? Definitely not. But we need to start somewhere.
Layal Beyhum: With all of this digital polarization going on, be it through online hate … we see around us that even tech giants, data brokers, and social platforms today hold the kind of power that used to belong to governments. And so we can randomly, while walking on the streets wherever we are around the world, there are things that we can see and things that we cannot see. So, in Lebanon, one measures or security measures set in stone or not, because I can assure you, I personally once encountered on many different attempts while in Lebanon, seeing ads of Israel recruiting agents, Lebanese agents, and I had to report it to Mattel. To me, this is frightening because this is a security threat that is being breached.
Like, is this something the ministry is trying to work on? What can people see and what they cannot see? Is there some sort of global governance framework, for instance, like the UN’s AI ethics principle, for instance, or the EU’s AI Act? Is it actually capable of addressing that? Is there something we can adopt from them?
Tiffany Saade: What I can say is as a woman in AI security online safety, you know, data security, data privacy are very top of mind for me, my work with the ministry, but also for the minister as well. We care about not only building an AI ecosystem that is innovative, that’s adaptable, that’s scalable, but also one that is secure.And what does it mean to have security in an era of AI?
This is the work that I’m doing at Cisco as well, is we’re trying to actually redefine how we implement mitigation strategies to protect, to contain, risks online from and to technologies that people are using on a daily basis. And in parallel, how do you raise awareness for communities, you know, such as elderly or children that might be the most vulnerable, but also less tech savvy and not aware about these different risks.
Now, obviously from a governance and, you know, a policy standpoint, you know, cyber security is very top of mind for the ministry. It’s something we think about a lot. It’s something I’m working on personally, both on a governance side, but also on how to upscale, you know, traditional cyber security best practices for the public sector. And also, of course, how to bring in and leverage the expertise and the data that we have in the private sector in Lebanon, because we don’t talk enough about this, but I think we have an amazing startup ecosystem in Lebanon that just needs this bit of push, this bit of funding to really burgeon and flourish.
So how to leverage that, how to build the bridges, because at the end of the day, I always say security is borderless, you know, it touches everyone, everywhere at any time. And, if you don’t have the right guardrails, especially as a government or as an entity, you know, you will get hit and you will be the weak link in the chain. So, we’re trying to really reinforce all the loops in our chain, but, you know, we cannot do it all, right? So, we have to start somewhere and then it’s up to, you know, the willingness and the ability to cooperate with different bodies in the country and in the region, which, you know, they’ve been very supportive of that in the region, specifically with multilateral organizations, to really drive not only the policy and the governance and the law, but also the implementation and the ROI (return on investment), basically.
Layal Beyhum: Thank you, Tiffany, for highlighting these points and, yes, although there are a lot of uncertainties, it’s good to hear that there’s a solid vision and there’s a solid ambition for what’s yet to come because we could be behind in so many aspects.
I’m gonna transition a bit and move to the topic of women.
We know – and we are well aware of – how gender shapes access visibility and even safety online. Women activists are the most targeted by harassment deepfakes and doxxing … the list goes on. What does it mean to have women, not just protected, but actually in power between coding, negotiating, and deciding in the rooms where these AI policies are being written? And how do we move beyond tokenism – and the panels and hashtags – to build an actual digital sisterhood and solidarity across borders?
Tiffany Saade: That’s a million-dollar question. I think this is a North Star that I carry with me. It’s kind of the reason why I wake up and I continue on the mission.
Let me tell you, as an Arab woman in the space – in the AI, security, and policy space – it’s everything but easy. I think this space was not built with us in mind, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot make a space for us within that place. I always say, if you’re not at the decision-making table, you’re on the menu. And this is why, since the very first day, as a woman and as a champion of women in tech, I refuse to be on the menu. So I just brought my own folding chair, made my space at the table, and made myself, my voice, and the voice of my Lebanese people heard. Even though we weren’t on the AI map, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be on the AI table. Even though we didn’t have the infrastructure to build, we didn’t have the policies in place, or we didn’t have the reach or the glamour that a lot of countries do have, as de facto. We have people, we have representation, and we have values and principles and knowledge that we can bring to the table. And this is what I aim to say, is if the AI movement is global, global means that every single country, regardless of where they stand economically, or where they stand technologically, needs to be at the decision-making table.
And if we’re talking about globally, we’re talking about women and about men and about every single ethnicity and gender represented at the table. This is obviously a best-case scenario. It’s easier said than done, but it is a mission that is parallel to the AI security mission that we work on. The AI security mission is always about how to get behind the hackers, the bad guys, how to kind of close the gap between the defense and the offense of cyber operations to protect our communities. It’s how to win, basically. That’s one mission.
The other mission for women in the space and inclusion is not about how to win. It’s about how to influence.
And usually, when I think about influence in that space and impact, it starts, obviously, with advocacy. It starts with us talking about what does AI ethics, AI policy, AI security mean? What is the role of women? And how can women cooperate between each other, whether it’s regionally or globally, to kind of make that happen? But advocacy is the first step. What happens after advocacy is our ability and our accountability towards ourselves to be able to implement a roadmap that is sustainable and that includes everyone, not only in the leadership, but also in the process. And I think this is where we’re having a bit of difficulty. It sometimes feels like breaking the glass ceiling because it is an uncharted territory, whether it relates to women being prevalent in that space or trying to build for countries that have never witnessed that type of innovation before, but are capable of witnessing it. So, it’s really about believing in the core of the community, but also the core of innovation that can actually make wonders for a country like Lebanon.
Layal Beyhum: If today you are able to reach the young girls that are currently in middle school or high school and that have the ambition to proceed in the STEM field, or let’s say in specific, to anything related to cyber security, AI, ethics and tech, what would you tell them?
Tiffany Saade: I feel like I’m talking to my younger self here. I would tell them: no dream is too big.
I always thought that there are some dreams that I had that are not achievable, that are just too ambitious, too big. Remove the word to jump with both feet. I think it is scary. It is very scary to jump with both feet. But you owe it to your younger self and to the young girl inside of you to take all the chances. Because the opportunities are not going to wait. The dreams are not going to wait. They’re just going to wait for you to make them come true. But then they’re going to be fleeting. It’s either you put yourself out there, you believe in yourself, and you claim you’re seated at the table. Or it’s just going to be a missed opportunity.
The last thing I want to say is: even though the path is not defined, even though it’s an uncharted territory, each one of us, and especially young girls, we have our own pen to draw the path. And my mission, because I know how difficult it is to break into a space that was not built for us, is to try to chart a clearer path for other girls and young girls who are feeling anxious or scared to take that first leap. Because that first leap is not easy. But once you take it, you will realize that you deserve to be here. Hell, you need to be here. We need every single woman on the table, and not just because they’re women, but because they represent communities, because they represent history, they represent different voices, and they represent countries. So, I think it’s the honor of a lifetime for me to be able to say that I’m serving a country that gave me everything, but also that made me understand through the hardships I lived through, that being a woman is so damn special in a space that was not built for us. So, it’s all about resilience. I know we don’t like that word in Lebanon, but it is about resilience, and it is about the plasticity and remodeling what was not once made for us.
Layal Beyhum: It’s super-important for women to be in these spaces because there are considerations and perspectives that are only brought on the table when women are present. And that includes online gender-based violence and its intersection to economic gender-based violence and the different forms of harassment when talking about preventative measures. This is just one of many examples that you could potentially be part of in drafting and shaping on the long term.
This is the importance of having representation all-in-all in general.
So, Tiffany, I just want to share with you and our listeners one last thought – and I’d love to hear your reflections on that. As we talk about all of this, I keep thinking that nonviolence is actually about reclaiming power without reproducing harm. Maybe in this new world, nonviolence means demanding transparency from code, ethics from design, and humanity from systems that pretend to be neutral.
So, Tiffany, if you could leave our listeners with one line, one sentence, what does nonviolence look like in the age of AI?
Tiffany Saade: It doesn’t exist, unfortunately. It doesn’t exist, but we can build mitigations for it and we can contain it. This is the sole reason why we are in AI security.
It’s because human nature is always going to try to leverage tools for the good or for the bad. AI is a very powerful tool. So, you’re always going to have bad actors or malicious actors with malicious intents that would want to target, to destroy, to sabotage. So, nonviolence, I don’t think, is a word in the dictionary, especially when it comes to a powerful tool like AI. But what is a word in the dictionary is reclaiming, and it’s reclaiming the narrative. And this is what we’re trying to do in the space where we are trying to constantly analyze the threats, the threat landscape. And we’re trying to build measures, frameworks, guidelines, awareness, to really shift the behavior from reactive to proactive and reclaim that narrative of security.
But, unfortunately, as we always say in cyber, there is nothing that’s 100% safe. So, unfortunately, I don’t think that nonviolence is something that will 100% exist. It’s something we can build towards, especially in AI.
Layal Beyhum: And to be able to build on that, I think I could pair the resilience that you’ve spoken of, I can add to it intentionality and courage for everything that is part of the field, and the importance of having genuine, hard-working people with consciousness inside that field.
Tiffany Saade: We need more of that.
Layal Beyhum: We need more Tiffany’s in that space. We need more Tiffany’s in that space! Tiffany, I’m gonna leave you to say anything it is that you feel like saying. Maybe a fun fact, maybe an experience that you lived, or something that you’re thinking of, a reflection, a thought, what would it be?
Tiffany Saade: We’re waiting for you. This movement is a global movement and whether you are in the tech space or in policy and history and anthropology, everyone belongs at the AI table. So we’re waiting for you.
Layal Beyhum: If there’s one book you would recommend to girls and women to read on AI and tech, what would it be?
Tiffany Saade: I would recommend The Atlas of AI. It’s the book that got me fascinated by AI and made me understand that AI is not just a technology. It’s about the people and the labor behind it as well, and the good and the bad side.
So, it’s by Kate Crawford. I would definitely recommend this book.
Layal Beyhum: Tiffany, thank you so much for your time and we wish you all the luck and all the courage.
Tiffany Saade: Thank you, Layal.
Layal Beyhum: And to our audience, stay tuned for the upcoming episode. Have a great rest of the day.
Thank you for joining us on the Nonviolence Now Podcast. We hope today’s episode left you feeling inspired. If it did, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with your friends and community. Together, let’s spread the word about the power of nonviolent action.