Meredith Whittaker, head of the Signal Foundation, says warnings that artificial intelligence will turn against humanity are a fear “not anchored in science”, arguing the real and immediate danger is careless use of the technology.
“The risk is very real,” Whittaker, whose foundation runs the encrypted messaging app Signal, told BBC Global Women. “But it’s not the shiny ghost stories the wild-eyed boys are talking about.”
She cites an alleged incident reported by CNN, in which a chatbot used by US intelligence reportedly invented information about a Chinese vessel carrying nuclear material, leading the US to prepare a military response.
“We almost went to war with China,” she said. “A system that produces faulty intelligence and almost gets us into a war with China should not be considered super-intelligent by any standards.”
From Google walkout to global forums
Signal has an estimated 40 to 70 million users, far below WhatsApp’s billions, but has built a reputation for protecting privacy by hiding who sends a message from its own servers, limiting data available to outside observers or hackers.
Time magazine named Whittaker one of the most powerful people in AI. She moves through the rooms where its future is debated, from Silicon Valley boardrooms to Downing Street, Davos and the Vatican.
She studied literature at university and joined Google in 2006 as an entry-level temp without a computer science degree.
In late 2017 she made her name after a colleague told her about Project Maven, a secret Google contract with the US Department of Defense to build AI for drone targeting.
She understood what it meant to “compress the kill chain”: shrinking the time between a machine flagging a target and someone deciding to fire, reducing deliberation. Together with thousands of colleagues, she pushed back.
“This is going to launder bad intelligence and bad data,” she remembers arguing publicly.
The following year, Whittaker helped organise a walkout in which some 20,000 staff protested Google’s handling of several issues, including what they saw as a rushed introduction of new technology. Google dropped the contract and Palantir took it over.
Drawn line to Iran strike
Whittaker draws a direct line from Maven to a US missile attack on a school in Iran this year, which she says relied on the system and on outdated intelligence that identified the school as a military target.
“This is exactly what we were warning about in 2017,” she said.
Palantir told Global Women there was “no evidence that Palantir’s software was at fault in this terrible tragedy” and that “Palantir is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies”.
Earlier this year, the company’s UK and Europe boss, Louis Mosley, told the BBC that “there’s always a human in the loop, so there is always a human that makes the ultimate decision”.
The US military has not yet released findings of its investigation into the Minab strike, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said it would “never target civilian targets”.
Encryption and governments
Governments, including the UK’s, argue for greater access to conversations on messaging apps, saying this is needed to protect women and children.
At London Tech Week 2026, then Prime Minister Keir Starmer said technology companies would be expected to detect and block nude images on children’s devices or face legislation.
Whittaker argues children would be able to circumvent such measures, calling the government’s approach “an unprecedented regime of communication and information controls”. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology told the BBC it is preparing legislation.
Asked whether Signal would leave any country, the UK included, that forced it to weaken encryption, Whittaker was emphatic.
“Yes! My God, I have a backbone,” she said. “It doesn’t change based on mood. It doesn’t change based on consultants.”
Exposing people “who rely on us, sometimes in the context of life or death, to surveillance that could be weaponised against them” would mean the app leaves the market, she said. Signal is fully or partially blocked in Russia, China and Iran.
Child safety concerns
Rani Govender, Head of Child Safety Online at the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, told the BBC the organisation hears from children who have been groomed and moved on to end-to-end encrypted platforms, where they are coerced into creating child sexual abuse material.
“Tech companies are responsible for the design choices they make, and they cannot ignore the risks those choices can create for children,” Govender said.
Signal does have support from some women’s groups, often those from the Global South that use the app themselves.
“In a time of state surveillance and cyber-attacks, Signal is a tool for survival,” said Hera Hussain, founder of the gender abuse charity Chayn, which is active throughout South Asia. “With any platform, it can be used by bad actors too, and we have to hold that truth too.”
Privacy for everyone
Whittaker was asked about a case from Canada, where police officers shared racist and misogynistic messages in a Signal group that leaked only when one of them passed it on to the media. A lawyer for one officer said the men believed Signal was as private and safe as their own home.
“If they had that conversation in the kitchen and their bro snitched, would it be: ‘What are we doing about kitchens?'” she asked. “It has to work for everyone or it works for no-one. This is the principle of fundamental rights. They apply even to assholes.”
She points to a US woman jailed after Meta handed over messages showing she helped her daughter access abortion in a state where it had been criminalised.
Private communication, she says, protects people from many kinds of harm — “an abusive spouse, a misogynist law enforcement officer with access to a database, or an authoritarian government that doesn’t think women should get educated”.
Advice to women entering tech
Asked what she would say to a woman wanting to enter the tech field who is intimidated by the profession’s gendered character, Whittaker responded with questions of her own.
“Do you sit down at a terminal and feel a rush of energy? Do you enjoy playing with and defining AI systems?”
She paused, then added: “Are you able to navigate interesting and gnarly environments where not everyone is going to be chill? Because there’s nothing more dangerous than being a coward in front of a bully.”
Asked whether those environments are full of bullies, her colleague said: “I think that’s 2pm” — the time agreed to end the interview.
Whittaker smiled. “I’d say don’t be a simp,” she said, using a term for someone who shows extreme deference to authority figures. “It’s not going to help you. Don’t laugh at the joke if you don’t think it’s funny.”
The interview is part of the Global Women series from the BBC World Service, which shares untold and important stories from around the globe.
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