📕 Ending big tech companies’ capture of government

Hugh Pope interviews Marietje Schaake about her new book 'The Tech Coup'

Marietje Schaake. Photo credit: Stanford University

Big tech's “capture of democratic government … must be stopped.” There's no doubting the message of The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, the book published in September by Marietje Schaake. A member of DemocracyNext's International Advisory Council, Schaake brings to this urgent topic a wealth of experience including her roles as International Policy Director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, as a former Member of the European Parliament, and as a columnist for the Financial Times.

The Tech Coup spells out how governments have failed to put in proper guardrails to the deployment of digital tools – the way we'd expect them to for food or pharmaceutical safety, for instance – and shows just how dangerous the resulting “privatized governance" has become, even in core domains like monetary policy, personal rights and national security.

Fellow Advisory Council member Hugh Pope caught up with Schaake to hear more about the book, especially as it relates to deliberative democracy. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. We embrace different points of view within DemocracyNext, and some perspectives in this interview may not represent those of the organisation as a whole.

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Hugh Pope: Your new book The Tech Coup gives a devastatingly clear analysis of how elected governments have dropped the ball in terms of regulating the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. Could a citizens’ assembly ever be an option for governing the digital universe?

Marietje Schaake: Citizens’ assemblies can do a lot to improve democratic governance and it would be great to involve citizens’ assemblies somewhere down the line. But I don't think they can be the solution to the tech sector’s outsize power.

I also get asked almost every day what individual users can do to defend themselves. While I believe in empowering the individual and that they can make more conscious choices as consumers of tech, the power asymmetry between the individual internet user and these big tech companies is just so great that we can't expect individuals to solve this problem either. The challenge is simply at a different level.

Tech companies have outsize power to impact people's lives. Policy responses should happen at the state or multilateral level. It involves infrastructure, national security, the protection of civil liberties and the environment. Even for big players like the US or the EU, there is already a challenge from the tech giants. A citizens’ assembly doesn't have the muscle and the reach to provide the countervailing force that is necessary.

Tech companies have made some use of random selection among their users, the same idea of drawing lots from a community that drives membership of citizens’ assemblies. Do you think this has any chance of improving tech governance?

I've seen opportunistic ways of finding out what the users want, for instance when Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has put things to a vote on the platform. Several companies I mention in The Tech Coup are setting up advisory boards and expert groups. These are external people, but they aren't chosen by random selection. It's just an opportunistic use of the argument of democratising. It's not systemic, it's not very principled, it's very ad hoc and it's an effort to make companies look more democratic rather than actually prioritising democracy throughout.

Does artificial intelligence itself have the potential to be helpful for deliberative democracy, do you think?

We should welcome all democratising efforts that actually lead to more defense of the public interest, more engagement of citizens, more independent scrutiny of the big tech companies. The question is then who makes the AI and what trust can be placed in these applications. Often, the use of AI ends up unintentionally or unexpectedly discriminating, or leading to false outcomes. I am sure there can be positive use cases, once the testing for unintended harms has been fulfilled, and when it's clear whose interests are served by the models, who is represented in the training data and who benefits from the use of these applications.

You dismiss cryptocurrencies as far too open to abuse by rogue states and criminal actors. But is the underlying blockchain technology itself a potentially useful tool for new democrats?

There are some examples of how documentation through blockchain helps. But the very high hopes and big promises of what blockchain would bring to democratisation and empowering people have not materialised. It hasn't seen the uptake, it hasn't really produced use cases that have convinced me. I'm still open to seeing uses, but so far they haven't shown up the way people expected.

Ironically, I would just note that the way we talk about AI now is pretty much the way people talked about blockchain seven-ten years ago.

You call for more state governance but there is one state with an iron grip on digital governance: China. Has the rest of the world got something to learn from that?

If you purely look at who controls the technology, the Chinese state has mastered that. But it's obviously at the expense of protecting human rights, of having freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and minority rights and well-being. All these core values that are integral to democratic societies are not respected there.

Still, it's good to learn from everyone. What I write in The Tech Coup is that what we should learn from China is that the state can be very powerful, if it chooses to assert itself. The problem is the failure of democratic states to develop such a comprehensive democratic governance model. It also doesn't help them stand up more effectively to China. My analysis and recommendations are focused on what democratic governments have not done well and how they should regain the primacy of governance. That is the core cross-cutting policy issue that is at stake here.

In The Tech Coup, you write of your desire to see "citizens in power again" and that "so much must be changed” as part of fixing the regulatory failure that you so clearly identify. If citizens’ assemblies don't yet have the power or mandate to make a difference, how do you see citizens getting back control?

Through the democratic system of representation, citizens are represented, they are heard. Political parties and democratic governments should cater to their needs and the tradeoffs between those needs. Of course, the whole process of more deliberative democracy like citizens’ assemblies is to engage people more directly, to trust them more. That's a very positive development. It's just that I have yet to see that as a scalable solution to the challenges that I'm describing in the book.

On the other hand, if you look at the fragmentation and diversification of the political landscape, then there are so many ways that people can be represented. I've definitely seen representation work in practice. I was an MEP for ten years and I've seen a large number of colleagues making that happen in the most serious, dedicated and professional way. There are big differences between political parties – there are representatives who may use their seats with less transparency and checking in with constituents – but by and large representative democracy is something to be fortified and cherished, not to be dismissed.

Nevertheless, political leaders can do a lot more. So little has been done to curb the power grab by tech companies, that even doing basic common-sense things could go a long way.

The Tech Coup trenchantly describes how tech giants have managed to seize control and hollow out the regulatory role of government. This has happened under the rule of elected governments. Doesn't this challenge the idea that we are moving toward a golden age of representative democracy in which elected politicians are in charge, not the people who pay for their campaigns?

My main concern is in the US, where money plays a very toxic role in campaign financing and politics and the tech sector is very powerful. So the lack of guardrails and rules is more tangible there and has ripple effects all around the world. Market power also plays a role. We don't see a powerful tech industry in the EU, at least compared to the US.

Also, too much trust has been placed in what the tech companies and market forces can achieve. This was a deliberate choice by democratic local and national governments. They outsourced incredible amounts of agency and decision making to tech companies with high expectations that this would lead to better service delivery for citizens. That's been their argument throughout: digitisation is urgent and will lead to better outcomes, also for democracy.

We can learn now from what's wrong with that hands off approach, that lack of leadership. But I don't think that means we should dismiss the whole representative democratic model. In the current volatile environment, we have to be very careful of what we wish for in terms of overhauling the system. Rather, we should hold democratic leaders accountable.

Your book sets the world ambitious goals, including the banning of spyware, full accounting for that alarming rise in energy use by tech, and demands for much greater transparency all round. Where and how do you see change happening over the next few years?

Europe may actually get a wake-up call from the election of President Donald Trump, the high level of support he has from extreme voices in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and the power that tech companies now so blatantly have in steering US policy agendas. That could facilitate more independence, more public digital infrastructure, a sort of 180-turn compared to where we are today: an over-reliance, even over-dependence, on the United States. Sometimes political reality can also lead to course corrections.

It's too narrow just to look at regulation as a source of EU leverage. I also look at the purchasing power of government ... governments can be important actors by setting higher standards and having more public interest-based criteria in the contracts they have with tech companies. And then there are investments which should lead to market making that offers more autonomy and strength for Europe, a more innovative economy.

You don't pull any punches about how tech companies are assuming the functions of states, including in matters of war. How has The Tech Coup's appeal for more controls been received in Silicon Valley?

It depends on who you ask! Some big tech leaders are obviously critical. They keep hammering on about Europe's failures and over-regulation, and how these are to blame for a lack of innovative capability. I think that's too simple and opportunistic, and the people who say this are exactly the ones who benefit from deregulation. In fact, the obstacles to tech innovation in the EU have a lot to do with a lack of access to capital and with the fragmentation of European markets.

What will be interesting to watch will be how different the US experience with online platforms and services will be compared to that in Europe. We will really begin to see divergence in terms of laws and enforcement. I know that American academics are really keen to benefit from the transparency provisions of the EU's 2024 Digital Services Act. These will help more independent research, which are critical to having better informed public debate and policy.

Has anyone in Silicon Valley publicly embraced the ideas in your book?

Nobody has spoken out in favour who is inside the bubble. But The Tech Coup has had a lot of endorsements – from [political scientist] Francis Fukuyama, AI scientists, people from different sides of the ideological spectrum. The book benefitted from what people in Silicon Valley were able to tell me, including whistleblowers who have courageously spoken out. A lot of people who work at tech companies tell me privately that it's a much-needed book that is absolutely right in that there is an active undermining of democratic governance.

Top tech leaders have incentives toward profit. Even if it's not directly harmful, that's not the same as putting the public interest first and making tradeoffs between different needs in a society. At heart, that is what governments are responsible for. Democratic government should not give away the primacy of governance and independent oversight the way they have done. There’s a need to correct course. For some people, after seeing Elon Musk supporting President Trump's election, that message has already begun to resonate. In national security circles too, people are becoming really concerned about over-dependence on tech companies.

Are you using The Tech Coup as a basis for advocacy, are you trying to create a movement to bring tech back under government control?

I'm trying to talk to a lot of people, a lot of policy makers, right up to the German chancellor and the highest level of politicians, oversight bodies, regulators, and enforcement officers. I feel like the book has landed with the right people. My main goal is also to have it reach a broader audience, for whom it is written. Bottom-up engagement is crucial. They can help leverage the political push on political leaders. Only then will we get the big change that's needed.

🎙️ You can also hear Marietje Schaake talking about The Tech Coup with podcaster James Kanter here on EU Scream.