DEF CON 33 opened with a call to democratize the internet and defend open source.

“ DEF CON is a hacker conference, not a cybersecurity conference. People wonder about the difference. When we started over 30 years ago, there was no such thing as 'cybersecurity,' so we had to be a hacker conference. We're here because we're excited about discovery, breaking things, fixing things, and, above all, understanding what technology can really do.”

This is how Jeff Moss, founder of the world's most famous hacker conference, opened DEF CON 33 this Friday in Las Vegas. "What we see here over these two days is what's happening online. We're about 26,000 people. If you don't like something, change it, " he added, recalling the spirit of the conference.

Each year, DEF CON has a specific theme. This year, the idea of "universal access" ( Access everywhere ) means that the digital services we all use must be "accessible to everyone, from anywhere, without violating the privacy or security" of users.

Following the opening, Moss introduced Paul Nakasone , former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) who also headed the country's cyber command. Invited for the second consecutive year, the appearance of a retired government official marks a departure from DEF CON's origins, when contests were held to identify undercover federal agents (" spot the fed ").

As he did at Black Hat , Moss kicked off his talk with Nakasone by proposing “the end of neutrality in the tech world.” “ You can’t think of technology as a natural space, and among the teams out there to choose from, I choose open source,” he said. The philosophy of open source , a software model based on collaboration and access to source code so anyone can use and modify it (as opposed to the proprietary model of giants like Microsoft or Apple),

“The exercise I'm doing is asking myself, can I use an open source program? If I'm going to spend the same amount of money, I'd rather spend it on the community. That's also why I started moving away from centralized platforms and trying to use decentralized ones, because I'm very stressed about the chaos of the situation,” Moss added, referring to the number of platforms.

One of the central topics of the talk was the race for artificial intelligence, where the United States and China play a central role.

The former federal government official is currently a member of the board of directors of OpenAI, one of the most important tech companies currently developing ChatGPT. He mentioned that just this week, an open-source model was launched, something the Chinese company developing the DeepSeek chatbot has done from the outset. " It's incredibly important that an open-source option be launched in terms of how we think about the relevance of these models today," he stated.

The discussion touched on other topics, including greater transparency from the NSA in identifying vulnerabilities and even the role of academia in conducting research. Nakasone emphasized that using open information and sharing it is "what helps identify threats," especially in the context of "manipulation of narratives by Chinese companies."

The closing topic revolved around misinformation , where they highlighted the importance of critical thinking in the world of hackers and the importance of institutions like journalism and Wikipedia in conveying "a" truth.

The gem of the conversation: Before starting, as is tradition for the debut of speakers, Moss gave Nakasone a drink on stage. The detail: this is the second time the former federal officer has spoken at DEF CON.

"Let's imagine we're building digital heritage from scratch: How can we make it a freer, healthier place?" the organizers ask in 2025. Each year, the conference presents a different, though related, theme.

Over the past year, the focus of DEF CON 32 has been the “Enshittification” of the internet, a concept introduced by thinker and writer Cory Doctorow that refers to the process by which digital platforms are deliberately made worse in order to squeeze users and providers for their own benefit. The slogan was “Get involved” ; at DEF CON 33, there is a call to build on this collective idea, a space “protected from the worst parts of the current system.”

To understand this theme, we must keep in mind the social critique of current technology that DEF CON has maintained almost since its inception. Today, this vision challenges Big Tech (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta (Facebook)) from controlling the main tools we use in our daily lives.

The 2025 convention proposes that the technology we use every day should be universal (not excluding devices for being "old," for example), accessible to all, private, and secure. This last point is one of the community's constant demands: services should be socially responsible. " If you can't guarantee it's safe, don't use it ," they repeat.

There's also a call to ditch the algorithm . "You can ditch the algorithm, choose platforms that are 'human-sized' and focus on one-on-one communication, look for apps that care about moderation and prioritize showing you posts from people you follow," they say.

In some ways, the idea of universal access wants to think of the internet more as a public square, albeit a digital one, rather than a shopping mall .

DEF CON is one of the largest hacker conferences in the world. It started in 1993 with just 100 people , when Jeff Moss was 18 years old. As it grew, it led the hacking community to create other conferences, such as BSides Las Vegas (which started with the DEF CON holdouts) and Black Hat , which is more corporate-oriented but has a strong technical component.

The three conferences take place in early August and make up what is known as the Hacker Summer Camp .

Year after year, nearly 25,000 hackers from around the world gather in Las Vegas, Nevada, to present their research on how to breach everyday systems, applications, and programs. Technology companies often take action and fix these security issues.

Hackers are a community of technology enthusiasts who explore how systems, whether programs or physical devices, work, disassembling or breaking them to understand and modify or improve them.

DEF CON features talks, hacking competitions, lockpicking (techniques for opening locks), and around 30 "villages," which are spaces dedicated to hacking cars (every year a Tesla is found to have vulnerabilities ), military radios, and even satellites. Others are more software-specific, but geared toward different sectors, from digital payments to red team exercises (attacking networks or systems), data duplication, and password theft.

As has been the case over the past two years, artificial intelligence is often featured in many talks and competitions, such as the one held by DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense agency tasked with developing new technologies for military use, where participants are invited to hack AI models or find vulnerabilities— like the one an Argentine found this year at Black Hat —for a financial reward.

The foundation of DEF CON is to share knowledge about hacking, but above all, to strengthen the community. " Do criminals attend the convention? Yes, they also attend school, work, and are in government," the organization answers on its FAQ page.