New York Governor Kathy Hochul isn’t shy about where she stands on tech policy, and in an election year, that means taking swings at everything from AI safety to 3D-printed guns. On the latest episode of Decoder, Hochul made her position on artificial intelligence blunt: it should be ‘less evil.’ That comment came alongside a wide-ranging conversation covering Meta’s recent settlement with dozens of states over teen protections on Instagram, New York’s ghost gun restrictions, and the state’s one-year moratorium on data center construction signed in July.
The Meta settlement is particularly interesting because it restricts teen usage in specific ways, but Hochul wants to go further. The catch, as Decoder host Nilay Patel pointed out, is that widespread age verification would force adults to show ID just to browse the internet — effectively ending anonymous online access. Patel pressed Hochul on whether Meta’s decision to settle signals the company believes such speech restrictions wouldn’t survive First Amendment scrutiny if imposed as law. It’s a legitimate tension: protecting kids online sounds uncontroversial until you realize the infrastructure required to do it touches everyone.
Hochul also found herself in a direct standoff with Cody Wilson, the activist who runs the largest database of 3D-printable gun files. Wilson has been altering those files in a process he calls ‘Hochulization’ to demonstrate that New York’s ghost gun ban is technically unenforceable. The governor didn’t back down, challenging Wilson directly during the interview.
On data centers, Hochul defended the moratorium she signed, saying she’s evaluating what conditions would make future construction viable when the pause expires. She also touched on Flock surveillance cameras and New York City mayoral politics, including a mention of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. For a governor who describes herself as a ‘fairly quick decision-maker,’ the challenge will be whether those decisions hold up under legal and technical scrutiny — Wilson’s Hochulization campaign suggests at least one of them may not.
