The former U.S. ambassador to Kenya is now the head of Global Elections Integrity Ops at Facebook. She spent a few years living in Kenya from 2004 to 2006 and was responsible for counterterrorism work there. "How can I spend real time talking to and getting to know people in communities that could be really vulnerable to being exploited?" she says.
Aza sits down with Yael Eisenstat, a former CIA officer and a former advisor at the White House. When Yael noticed that Americans were having a harder and harder time finding common ground, she shifted her work from counter-extremism abroad to advising technology companies in the U.S. She believed as danger at home increased, her public sector experience could help fill a gap in Silicon Valley’s talent pool and chip away at the ways tech was contributing to polarization and election hacking. But when she joined Facebook in June 2018, things didn’t go as planned. Yael shares the lessons she learned and her perspective on government’s role in regulating tech, and Aza and Tristan raise questions about our relationships with these companies and the balance of power.