Alix: [00:00:00] Hey there. Welcome to Computer Says maybe this is your host, Alix Dunn. In this episode, I am talking to Marietje Schaake, who I met like, I don't know, 15 years ago or something. She used to be a member of European Parliament in the Netherlands, and she has been thinking for at least a decade and a half about the way that technology can be used to reshape, geopolitics, reshape.
Alix: Relationships between those in power and those who are trying to hold them accountable. And she's one of my favorite thinkers who is thinking kind of at a macro level about how nation states, tech companies, innovation society kind of crash into each other. And earlier this year, she released a book, which I love.
Alix: I highly recommend you read it. We will link to it in the show notes called The Tech Coup. She actually. Started writing it. I mean, as one does like, I don't know, two years ago, and I think the intervening period has only shown that her thesis is correct, that [00:01:00] there is a structural issue with the balance of power between democratic states, democratically elected leaders.
Alix: I. And the public that they represent, and the power being increasingly accumulated in the hands of a small number of companies, a small number of tech CEOs who, even if they're domiciled in a single country like the United States, have dramatic power that they are now leveraging around the world. So we break down the thesis of her book, which is that essentially this is a coup.
Alix: I think she makes some pretty compelling arguments. We also had her on a few weeks ago to get her reaction to open AI for countries, which is this new, I guess you'd call it, a B2B pitch from open AI to countries around the world. Hey, do you need a really friendly helping hand to roll out generative AI in your country for your government?
Alix: We're here to help. I talked to her about that in that episode and she's also since then written a piece in the Financial Times about that, which we will also link in the show notes. Anyway. Marietje, one of my favorite thinkers on some of the most important [00:02:00] political questions of our time, so let's get into it.
Marietje: Let me tell you first in variation of angles what I think the problem is. So in the US, particularly when people talk about technology and democracy, the conversation quickly moves to social media, disinformation, online manipulation, foreign interference. I. All very important. But what I wanted to do with the tech coup is to show how the power grab the coup by tech companies is systemic, and it's often not very visible.
Marietje: It's not necessarily the technology that people use every day, but it's everywhere. Meaning that there has been a trend of decades of outsourcing of critical functions by governments. This was obviously cheered on by tech companies. US government itself. The idea being if you [00:03:00] don't digitize, you're stuck in the Middle Ages.
Marietje: You are not willing really to provide the best services to your citizens. You don't wanna be efficient. You don't want to be cost efficient. Basically, you cannot afford not to digitize. And I think governments throughout the democratic world, including in Europe, have. Proceeded to do this to just keep embracing more and more digitization.
Marietje: But digitization essentially meant privatization because it's not investing in your own government capabilities, hiring talents, advancing the public interest with regard to tech. No, it's basically saying, okay. You do our data analysis, you build our tax authorities functioning, you run our universities, our hospitals, et cetera, and you get into a sort of negative downward spiral that's.
Marietje: With outsourcing, there's a loss of expertise With outsourcing, there's more proprietary data and information, and so it's harder to come by expertise of the kinds of services that are now [00:04:00] operated by companies, but in the name. Of the government, right? And then with the next wave of a new technology or with the need to change something about the system, the knowledge is no longer inhouse.
Marietje: And so guess what? It becomes easier to outsource and then that just perpetuates, perpetuates. And so you basically end up transferring enormous amounts of critical functions, critical insights. Agency to private actors that have fundamentally different incentives to make profits, to please shareholders, to grow market size, to be faster than the competitor or the fundamentally different objectives than what a government's responsibility really is between different people in society, different policy objectives that have to be brought into balance with a limited budget.
Marietje: And so. To outsource so much to actors companies, and I'm not even distinguishing between one or the other, but with such different objectives is principally going to hollow [00:05:00] out your public interest capabilities. And it's also the political criticism that I voice in the book, meaning different governments, democratic, Republican, and the same in Europe of different political colors have allowed this.
Marietje: Power on the part of the private tech companies to grow incredibly over the past decades and has not been matched with countervailing powers. And basically that mismatch has brought us to where we are today, and I think it's therefore eating away the ability of. Protecting the rule of law, protecting democratic values, but also the democratic process as such.
Marietje: So I can give you an example. The Dutch Tax Authority has an outdated dysfunctional IT system, and the timeline for revamping it was six years. This is long. In the meantime, a lot of money was spent on basically propping up the old system to keep it functional, but it was very expensive with consultants and all kinds [00:06:00] of stuff.
Marietje: The six year deadline was not met. So the IT system overhaul of the Dutch tax system has not been completed within six years of time. And the concluding result is that the parliament, even if it adopts laws that have impact on the tax. System basically should not expect those to be implemented because it, they can't because the IT systems are outdated.
Marietje: And so essentially, this is a literal example of how your democratic process is blocked by IT problems. And this is not public. It. And so you have just one example of how there's just not the capability on the part of governments to handle this Well, it's boring. It's about taxes. You know, it's not very sexy.
Marietje: It's not about Russian interference or what Elon Musk has done this time. But I do think that this gets to the heart of questions of governing for whom? Where's the knowledge? Where's the agency? How did it get to this? I mean, how did we get. To this completely out [00:07:00] of control situation where the grip is lost.
Alix: Yeah, I mean I love this idea that digitization has become privatization. Like I think that is something that a lot of people don't see because they see the value of digitization and then they say, well, who can do that? Well, and it's obviously companies 'cause governments can't innovate to save their lives.
Alix: Um, and I feel like that. Case, that fundamental case about what the role of the state should be is being lost. Like essentially the public perception of the capability of state institutions to be able to adapt to using technology in meaningfully high quality ways. Even if there's all kinds of examples where states have been able to set up internal units.
Alix: You mention the US Digital Service as an example in the book of like, maybe we should have that across government and have that be expanded. I presume that you couldn't have anticipated that that would've been destroyed by the incoming US administration. So it feels like there's this battle between public perception and expectation of both [00:08:00] state officials and corporate officials about where the labor lies in terms of digitization, and I feel like it's a losing battle right now.
Alix: Like if you made the case to Starr. There should be an in-house unit that experiments and like builds out this infrastructure. You shouldn't be outsourcing NHS function to Palantir as an example. The first reaction is like, we don't have that talent. It's all in the companies. So how do you think about the narrative battle and the kind of political battle and tug of war between public expectation of what the state should do and also just the like under confidence of people in government to be able to take these big problems on.
Marietje: Well, thank you for bringing up. One, the framing of how we think about tech and tech governance. And two, the empowerment of public officials because those have both been very important anchors as I wrote the tech coup because. I also spent quite a bit of time on the notion of framing, meaning who benefits from the way in which we think about technology, and I think this whole idea that [00:09:00] government can't innovate, cannot possibly be clever enough to do something useful with technology is not accidental.
Marietje: I mean, that frame has been very helpful for Silicon Valley, basically disrespecting and discarding governments as capable actors without. They're saving services, and that's of course not true, and it should also not be a situation that is acceptable. So if there are fundamental capabilities lacking on the part of government, the solution should be to invest in those and not to sort of sacrifice the whole ambition and be like, okay, well we'll just give up on governments ever being capable of doing that.
Marietje: And there are plenty of examples. Where governments have made crucial investments, have made crucial decisions to allow for innovations. There are a number of places where there's independent labs that are developing products and services, but that will actually end up serving. Defense or other kinds of goals [00:10:00] in wider society.
Marietje: So the whole idea that there cannot be a public oriented model of innovation is nonsensical, but it's a very powerful frame. The same frame with regulation. Stifles innovation is my favorite. You know, and I think
Alix: most those pesky laws. Laws, you know, like we can't have pesky laws getting in the way of us, like being creative.
Alix: No, exactly. Yeah.
Marietje: Yeah, exactly. But it, it's become so mainstream. I often found myself sort of beginning arguments that I wanted to make with saying, it's not that I wanna stifle innovation, but you know, to sort of pave the way for saying something. Because that narrative that everything should be prevented.
Marietje: To stifle innovation is remarkable because there are so many things that governments have to do, and yes, having an innovative economy is super important, but it's definitely not the only, and it's certainly not the most important thing that needs to happen. You know, you need to make sure that fundamental rights are protected.
Marietje: You need to make sure that there's employment. You need to make sure that national security is. Taken care of [00:11:00] and so on and so forth. And so it's just become this very obsessive view of how important innovation is and has pushed aside all kinds of other objectives that are clearly responsibilities of government.
Marietje: So I think that's been a very successful slogan, a very unhelpful way of thinking about the role of regulation, because of course. It's not a goal in of itself to make rules. I think that that's the sort of caricature that we often hear, particularly in the United States where small government has really been the mantra for so long.
Marietje: Regulation is often a reaction to a harm or a disbalance or a problem that has emerged from a new technology or just a new set of facts that have emerged and there's a need to correct, or there may be a need to protect smaller players against the outsized power of bigger players, or there's just a need to create fairness.
Marietje: To compete or what have you, but we really would benefit from having a more sophisticated discussion about what regulation is and is not. [00:12:00] Because even today I hear people asking questions like, are you in favor or against regulation? I. I have no idea because it really depends on what we wanna achieve with the regulation.
Marietje: Then the other part of your question was about the self-confidence of governments, or in any case, to empower them. I think there's been a numbing effect of just continuing to hear that governments are not capable and there's a fear that has risen, and I see this in Europe as well. Of missing the boat again, quote unquote.
Marietje: So the idea is Europe has missed the boat on successful Silicon Valley type companies. You know, big tech does not come from Europe. Now there is ai Europe cannot afford to miss the boat again. And what that leads to is a major embrace of any new technology because the fear is to be too late and an uptake without asking the proper governance questions.
Marietje: That, in turn, has fueled this sort of outsourcing to Silicon Valley companies, which now. It's hitting home to people that it's actually not served. [00:13:00] Our societies that, you know, smart solutions, quote unquote, were pretty stupid. We need a reckoning. And I'm saying this all from a European perspective, but I think the same could be said for the us.
Marietje: I mean, are these big tech companies that yes, they're important for us, GDP and all these kinds of metrics, but what do they really do in terms of job creation, in terms of harm, in terms of democracy, in terms of governance? You know, I think there's a lot of. Critical debates be had about pluses and minuses of where this Silicon Valley impact on our societies has brought us.
Alix: Turning the fraud, waste and abuse frame at the companies rather than citizens, I think would also be refreshing. Um, sort of where money has gone to companies that has been just wasted. There's also a presumption or a benefit of the doubt given to companies that if they roll out a program, that that's it in terms of the money that governments are transferring to those companies.
Alix: So like the Palantir contract with the NHS, that's. Presuming that they're not just gonna re-up and then [00:14:00] continue to charge huge sums of money well into the future. And I think there's a naivete about thinking about is it worth it? What are we getting out of it? Is it actually saving us money? Is it a really immature conversation?
Alix: 'cause there's a presumption that forward motion, more innovation will always eventually accrue benefit when that's not necessarily proven. Out. Historically,
Marietje: people sort of have a knee jerk to say government's expensive. And so if you hear the sums of money that are spent on government operating, yeah, okay, that's a lot of money.
Marietje: But if you look at how much money is being spent on outsourcing tasks, that's when you really fall off your chair. But that is not technically government spending on the government itself. And so I think people don't even really know. How much money is involved with the kinds of contracts between the NHS and Palantir and between Microsoft and governments, or between cloud companies and hospitals.
Marietje: I mean, it's enormous. And therefore, when we have a discussion in Europe now about European alternatives, a Euro stack, you know, European alternatives [00:15:00] across the tech stack, people say, but where would we find the budgets? That's a fair question. That's indeed what you have to think about with public spending.
Marietje: You can't just go to a VC and say, Hey, you know, throw a couple of billion at this startup idea. Ultimately, the spending that happens to the private sector already, if that would go to more public facing alternatives or more European alternatives, that could really change the game. It's not about extra resources necessarily.
Marietje: It's just about thinking about where those would be spent. I. Again, from having served in public office, being a representative is not the same as being in government, but I have thought a lot about what is the responsibility and the role of our public services and our governments. There's just not a clear view about why we're spending money, what we're spending it on, and what we're getting in return, and certainly the idea that hiring it off the market, buying it off the market leads to better and more economically Sound results is, again, it's a frame
Alix: that doesn't hold.
Alix: It just feels sometimes like [00:16:00] that. Lack of confidence as it relates to technology building for public services also translates into an under confidence, but sometimes a lack of knowledge about how to think about the right intervention points of regulation and in a mature, systemic way. So your book has a very sweeping analysis of this power center that I think you're right to suggest that it should be.
Alix: Attacked by democratic governments, but the people doing that attacking or doing that regulation, I don't think have done a great job of identifying regulation that should be passed. So how do you, in your head, think about regulation? 'cause you, you mentioned yourself that unless you get into the specifics, you can't say whether regulation is good or bad.
Alix: So how do you think about the messiness of democracy, the populism that we're currently experiencing, and like how do you get good regulation out of an environment like that and what might it look like?
Marietje: So to start with the first point when you said, I didn't wanna be limited to what seemed possible, I mean, look at how much has changed over the past six to 12 months.
Marietje: You have to prepare for [00:17:00] momentum and create it. Otherwise, you know, the biggest sweeping changes. Of all kinds, whether Republicans love it or Democrats love it, have always started with an idea that sounded outrageous at the time, and then the consensus changed or campaigns were started that were very successful, and that's how, in my opinion, ultimately progress is made.
Marietje: Right. I. But looking at where the US is now, I think there are a couple of thoughts. One is that the way we discuss tech regulation often implies governments providing or setting up guardrails for companies, right? So restricting the freedom of doing business, but rules are also in place to restrict the power of governments.
Marietje: If they are done well, the way I think of regulation, it is very much about upholding fundamental principles, so non-discrimination competition, transparency, accountability, and so on. It's also about making sure that governments can't abuse their [00:18:00] power through the use of technology. So yes, the KU is a criticism of how far and how brazen and narrowly oriented the tech companies are not taking responsibility for their deep impact on society and democracy.
Marietje: But the criticism is at least as strong vis-a-vis leaders that have allowed this to happen because it was their responsibility and they've abdicated that responsibility to a large extent. A lot of rules actually apply to all. So I'll give you the example of the European General Data Protection Regulation, which in the eyes of a number of people in Silicon Valley, was a hammer that was invented to hit on tech company nails.
Marietje: Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, the law was initiated to harmonize 28 at the time, 27 later, because of Brexit, different systems of data protection across the EU into one. So there was just a need to go from 27 different systems to one. Then the law actually applies to the swimming pool around the corner the [00:19:00] same way as it applies to Google.
Marietje: I think that that's problematic because of course, it doesn't consider who is more powerful, which actor has more impact with its breaches of data protection rules. But okay, this is what it is. And so fines also go to public organizations or to governments. The same way that they might go to a meta or whichever kind of company that violates data protection rules.
Marietje: And so a rule of law based system is not about. Government versus business alone. It's about checks and balances. It's about a separation of powers, and it's about the kind of oversight that also applies to governments themselves. And so if you have rules based on those goals and principles, then it would be harder for this government, for example, to abuse its position to favor one political idea over the other.
Marietje: If you look at what is happening now, it's actually not so much Trump and the political allies regulating. It's just, again, outsourcing the whole regulation [00:20:00] to tech players. And so this is the ultimate tech, right? This is a very direct tech. The one that I describe is systematic. One, it. It talks about how there are key decisions being made by companies from infrastructure to cybersecurity, from fundamental rights to elections.
Marietje: But here we see it. In real time at the highest political level, leveraging state power towards private interests. And so I would actually, from a legitimacy point of view, accept fully that the Trump administration would use its majorities to legislate and to go through that process that has checks and balances in it, rather than saying, oh, you know what, we're not gonna regulate it and we're gonna ask the companies to decide how to reform the government in the form of Doge.
Marietje: God,
Alix: there's so much there. I feel like, yeah, like listening to Eric Schmidt say. If government doesn't know what it's doing, just let us do basic like, and then paying for people to go in government by paying for their position. I don't think anyone [00:21:00] realizes that you can pay the salary of a non yet existing government employee and get who you want in government and basically create roles in government.
Alix: Like I don't think people are aware that the ability of money to buy direct government roles and then influence them directly and how much of that's been outsourced and influenced by. Basically just the tech elites.
Marietje: Well, and generally we could have, you know, series of episodes of your podcast about.
Marietje: Money in US politics, which yeah, it's true for non Americans is just baffling. I think even a lot of highly educated Europeans don't know that a donation in dollars is speech.
Alix: I mean, this is actually another question I wanted to ask you, which is, you talk about in shorthand democratic governments being more engaged in regulation, understanding, preventing the accumulation of corporate power.
Alix: How do you in that. Mental model, think about backsliding democratic states because I think there is a point at which the US is not conceptualized as a democracy anymore. And maybe, I think [00:22:00] actually there have been researchers, political scientists who have essentially broken it down and said it's not anymore.
Alix: Because when you have money as speech, basically people can buy that level of influence. How do you think about whether a country is a democracy and how that manifests in its attempt to govern these systems?
Marietje: Well, it's the key question, and in my own mind, we've lost the US there already. One because the government is not interested in regulating, and so those discussions are not held.
Marietje: Two, because it has broken the alliance with fellow democratic nations, and of course a whole bunch of rule of law violating steps that the Trump administration is taking that are not restricted to tech, but that give you a good impression of where the tolerance for authoritarian steps lies. There's also just.
Marietje: Tremendous hypocrisy between what is being said and what is being done that I think is really important. You know, the whole framing of the storming of the Capitol as a day of love, which the New York Times did a very [00:23:00] good long read on a couple of months ago showing how. The president himself took four years to reframe one of the biggest attacks on democracy as something that should really be embraced and celebrated.
Marietje: And there are more examples there, particularly around speech. I think it's striking how Trump and his tech CEO supporters have positioned themselves as being supporters of freedom of expression while they're suing NGOs that are. Saying things that they don't like. People are being intimidated and persecuted for what they have said in the past in ways that has nothing to do with respecting freedom of speech.
Marietje: And so. I think it's challenging for a lot of people to distinguish between what they hear and what's actually happening on the ground, particularly for non-Americans, but I know it's already overwhelming for Americans to process all the things that are happening. And then of course, we get to a point where when judges are targeted as enemies, when they say things that are not in line with the political majority, this is [00:24:00] beginning to eat at the roots of what the rule of law looks like.
Marietje: And I'm deeply worried about where this may end up. And this should really inform the way we think about leaving so much to American tech companies to be decided. I mean, I listened to Alix Car's book recently because on the one hand he criticizes Silicon Valley for not stepping up and serving democracy and for doing frivolous and basically dumb stuff, right?
Marietje: He talks a lot about the need to defend democracy in the West, but. Takes zero consideration of what the impact on democracy in the West is of the Trump administration. Whether you like Trump or not, you cannot pretend that nothing happened with his inauguration. I mean, for both fans and opponents alike, what he's doing is dramatic.
Marietje: To then carry on by saying, you know, the government should blah, blah, blah, and Palantir will support the US as a state without considering how a different [00:25:00] president is actually treating that state. Treating democratic values. Treating that west that needs defending, I think is just completely out of touch, but it shows that it's actually opportunistic and it's much more about business interest because those are served by the Trump administration, not those core principles of democracy and.
Marietje: Western values that are signaled in the book so much. So I think there is still a real moment of reckoning going on between what is being said, what is being done. How this adds up on the yardstick of upholding democracy. You know, I'm curious whether we'll hear more protest from Americans or whether they're already so worried, which again, doesn't speak well to respecting free speech.
Marietje: How many people I've heard that are scared to demonstrate is not a sign of, oh, hey, here we have an administration that just loves free speech.
Alix: Yeah, it's an interesting observation too that tech companies ride the narrative. Of the day. And I think that, you know, thinking back when you and I first met in like, I don't [00:26:00] know, 2010 or something, and like Arab Spring times like that, oh, we're a, we're all about, you know, connecting people so that they can democratically engage even in authoritarian environments.
Alix: And then how that evolved to be some pro-American vision of imposing, I think a lot of the ideas about community and engagement from the us. And then the kind of way that, that, I think the inauguration was basically, it felt like a moment where it was they, they stopped pretending to recognize that they were building the public square, even though for years they'd been like, we take this responsibility very seriously.
Alix: And it's like, oh, actually. You don't, that was just a moment in time where that was the appropriate policy and communication positioning. And now we see, I'm reading careless people right now and it's so interesting to sort of see how uninterested the company wasn't actually engaging in some of those core questions.
Alix: And instead, it's a business which, like, obviously it's a business, but it's so obvious now that like they could care less about what [00:27:00] government they're helping as long as they're making. Money and that public opinion needs to kind of be in their corner, but at core there's not many values there. Aside from profit orientation,
Marietje: I agree with all of what you said, except that I don't understand why they've gone the extra mile to support the Trump administration.
Marietje: So I think all of this opportunism and sort of riding the waves of what is popular, you know, going, they could have kept their head
Alix: down.
Marietje: Could have not sit there. And I think it's a huge gamble that will have a huge price. I just don't know when, but this will not go without consequences. Companies are nervous to lose their European markets now that it's getting real.
Marietje: And at the same time, I still see a lot of events that are happening where you know, their sponsorship of one tech company or the other. While there's sort of collective concern across the European Union about what. The impact of the loss of the Transatlantic Alliance could be, and it's all very dire. I mean, I know zero people of any political color that think, oh, this is great for Europe.
Marietje: You know what's happening. [00:28:00] But the consequences for the tech companies cheering on this aggressive anti-European policy have just not been drawn. And I think it's because they hope that under the wings of the Trump administration, besides all the domestic plans that they might have, they can actually attack.
Marietje: Kill the EU as a democratic regulator of their services and products. Of course, it is the biggest constituency and market that actually does impose restrictions on what these companies can do. Try to prevent harm, try to. Create interoperability, more fair competition, and so on. And if you listen to Musk, it's pretty clear.
Marietje: If you listen to Meta, it's pretty clear that this is just not what they wanna see. Vance, of course, yes, definitely Vance. But I think it's a huge gamble by the tech companies too. Actually be both opportunistic, but then so explicitly aligned with an administration, which they didn't do under the Clintons, they didn't do under Obama or Biden.
Marietje: I think that [00:29:00] picture of the CEOs on the front row of the inauguration will go down into history as a very, very significant moment.
Alix: A hundred percent agree. Like I think in a hundred years. We're gonna see that picture. Like it's, it felt like such an important expression of something so deep and meaningful and huge.
Alix: I, I completely agree. Yeah. And it's not gonna age well. So I have one more question and it's something that came up and I loved that you said it explicitly, which was. All of the kind of wishy-washy global goy, principally things that have happened in the last 10 or 15 years, well intentioned from sometimes civil society actors or government actors who are like, let's have a conference and talk about the future of the internet.
Alix: That a lot of times it was a distraction from meaningfully, um, building regulatory countervailing force that could be implemented and actually like hold company's feet to the fire. I agree. But I think that given. The extra territorial nature of digital and of how technology works. It, it necessarily works across borders, which means [00:30:00] essentially there's no obvious container aside from maybe the US and the EU that have this leverage essentially over the companies.
Alix: So how do you square the circle between global is too abstract and actually not. Tethered to Democratic lawmaking that can be used to hold the companies accountable, but national level legislation or jurisdictional legislation that actually could be made democratically and actually have that kind of force that that is too small to sort of deal with the systemic issues we're dealing with.
Alix: So what is the perfect in your head register at which we're regulating.
Marietje: Ideally, like-minded actors would work together, and I think there's increasing room also to try to see who on the side of the United States still wants to be a part of that. And not to bulk every American together in writing them off, but basically I.
Marietje: The idea that the biggest scale is the best still holds, but I think companies will soon find, and this is where I'm very curious to see the impact of the Trump [00:31:00] administration on a very different level. We've heard for a long time from companies as well, and for many people, that when there was still this narrative of one.
Marietje: Open global internet, that fragmentation was bad. So the idea was there should be this access to knowledge and ability to communicate and connect for all. And regulation itself, rules in itself could fragment, but there could also be the risk of fragmentation between countries. Right. Well, the whole promise of the open internet is no longer a realistic one.
Marietje: So governments have seen that the stakes are very high. They have asserted themselves and they have, you know, seen that leaving it up to markets is difficult. And so increasingly we see. Interventions to make sure that not everything is given to Silicon Valley and in the United States. In the absence of federal rules, we see states taking charge and that actually will have impact.
Marietje: So it may not be at the scale that I would hope for, but I think one of the. Indirect effects that it will have is that it will actually be complicating the work of companies because they will have to [00:32:00] adjust for different states, and they may then ultimately prefer federal rules over this fragmented landscape between states.
Marietje: And so that will be an interesting tension to watch, I think, because where. It started with, you can't improve anything unless you do it globally. And that was really a way of saying like, it's never gonna happen because you know, when will there ever be global agreement. We are now at a point where because the US federal government is so absent.
Marietje: Putting up guardrails to the harms and and behavior of tech companies. States are saying, look, we're not gonna wait. We're not gonna wait. And in the case of a state like California, that is huge. Also, from an economic point of view, these are economies of scale. I think California is typically the fifth or the fourth largest economy in the world if it would stand alone.
Marietje: So the ripple effects of states. Regulation both to what companies will opt for in the United States and for what it will mean globally, I think should not be discarded. So I, I also think for global collaboration, it could be interesting to see, for example, EU, [00:33:00] California cooperation along shared values being strengthened.
Marietje: Mm-hmm.
Alix: So what I'm hearing is regulation where there's robust democratic process where regulation that emerges would be high quality and that those jurisdictions that are interested in that should be joining up with other jurisdictions that are also interested in that, to try and cobble together alliances that maybe are new or different, but might have the level of scale that then forces behavior change within.
Alix: Companies.
Marietje: The other thing is, of course, that from rules that have been imposed, we can learn. And so the idea that they have to be perfect from the beginning, no, there will probably be lessons to be learned and we will see in real time what it means. That there is an AI act in Europe implemented soon, and that there will not.
Marietje: Be in the United States. So we will also learn about do these rules prevent the harms that they hope to prevent? Will this be something people rally around? Because you can actually see a difference in experiences of internet or AI or tech users between the different jurisdictions. So I think one benefit [00:34:00] of.
Marietje: Just proceeding with the regulatory process in the interest of correcting wrongs is that it creates a new case that can be observed, can be learned from and seen as a stepping stone. Like, okay, we're gonna use this example, but we're gonna tweak it to address some of the unintended consequences a little bit.
Marietje: This comes back to the part of the conversation where we spoke about how there's so much scrutiny of new regulatory proposals, but so little of the status quo, I think. Part of the success is actually getting something on the table that has broad political support and then can be used to be improved and corrected when it's necessary.
Alix: Which is very democratic. I feel like the messiness of democracy, like I think we have to accept that there's not gonna be fully formed perfect legislation that lasts for 20 years without an iterative process that people are involved in. There's feedback loops. Yeah. I think that there's a desire, I think, from some people that think democracy's too complicated to try and find shortcuts.
Alix: [00:35:00] I don't think there are any,
Marietje: what one person loves the other person hates. I mean, it's all very political. Right? Totally. I sometimes smile when I see AI versus humans and I'm like, who are these humans? That sort of band together vis-a-vis technology because last time I checked, humans don't agree on much.
Marietje: True. And that's why we have democracy to work it out between those different views.
Alix: Yeah, this was so good. Again, I really love the book. I knew it would be good 'cause I've always liked the way you think about these issues, but I wasn't expecting like the original research in it. And also some of the, I think, useful recommendations around how to think about this.
Alix: And I know so much has changed in the last nine months that some of the recommendations, if you could write them again, might be a little bit different. Of course it would be different. Yeah. But yeah. Good on you for being brave enough to put this into a book. 'cause I feel like
Marietje: thank you so much. The topic changes so fast.
Marietje: The fact that you like it means a lot to me, so that's wonderful.
Alix: I hope that was as interesting and educational for you as it was for me. Definitely check out her book. It includes original research, not just analysis. [00:36:00] It also includes some amazing stories about when she was a member of European Parliament. She was an election observer in a really contentious election in Kenya.
Alix: And her analysis on how big tech companies from outside of Kenya who were nominally providing technology and resources to the Kenyan government really screwed up, um, causing dramatic. Democratic challenges for the country and the implications of that. It's not just an intellectual book, it's also kind of a whistle stop tour of what she's learned in the last 15 or so years doing all the work she's done, which is super impressive and oftentimes cutting edge and really prescient, as was this book.
Alix: So order the Taku 'cause it's really excellent. Um, we're on a live show bonanza, if you want us to come to a city. That you're in and talk to people about stuff that's relevant to that city, relevant to the work that you're doing. Just reach out and we will see what's possible. If you missed the episode we aired last week, please go back and listen to it.
Alix: It is essential listening. It is a recording of our live show in Mexico City two weeks ago with some of the most amazing [00:37:00] activists and policy experts thinking about how to stop the genocide in Gaza. Also how to hold big tech accountable for its enabling of that genocide. It is painful listening, but I think the least we can do, given what's going on, is know about it and hear from people who are working to change it.
Alix: The second thing is that we are gonna be at fact, so we have a couple of team members from the maybe who will be there interviewing folks to better understand the different types of projects, kind of like we did last year. If you didn't catch that episode, I think it's actually still interesting and relevant from a year ago.
Alix: But if you're at fact. And wanna connect with our people, drop us a line, and we are interested in hearing from folks who want us to learn more about their research and share it with our audience. Thank you for making it to the very end. And thank you to Georgia Iacovou and Sarah Myles for putting this episode together, and we will see you next time.
Alix: Relationships between those in power and those who are trying to hold them accountable. And she's one of my favorite thinkers who is thinking kind of at a macro level about how nation states, tech companies, innovation society kind of crash into each other. And earlier this year, she released a book, which I love.
Alix: I highly recommend you read it. We will link to it in the show notes called The Tech Coup. She actually. Started writing it. I mean, as one does like, I don't know, two years ago, and I think the intervening period has only shown that her thesis is correct, that [00:01:00] there is a structural issue with the balance of power between democratic states, democratically elected leaders.
Alix: I. And the public that they represent, and the power being increasingly accumulated in the hands of a small number of companies, a small number of tech CEOs who, even if they're domiciled in a single country like the United States, have dramatic power that they are now leveraging around the world. So we break down the thesis of her book, which is that essentially this is a coup.
Alix: I think she makes some pretty compelling arguments. We also had her on a few weeks ago to get her reaction to open AI for countries, which is this new, I guess you'd call it, a B2B pitch from open AI to countries around the world. Hey, do you need a really friendly helping hand to roll out generative AI in your country for your government?
Alix: We're here to help. I talked to her about that in that episode and she's also since then written a piece in the Financial Times about that, which we will also link in the show notes. Anyway. Marietje, one of my favorite thinkers on some of the most important [00:02:00] political questions of our time, so let's get into it.
Marietje: Let me tell you first in variation of angles what I think the problem is. So in the US, particularly when people talk about technology and democracy, the conversation quickly moves to social media, disinformation, online manipulation, foreign interference. I. All very important. But what I wanted to do with the tech coup is to show how the power grab the coup by tech companies is systemic, and it's often not very visible.
Marietje: It's not necessarily the technology that people use every day, but it's everywhere. Meaning that there has been a trend of decades of outsourcing of critical functions by governments. This was obviously cheered on by tech companies. US government itself. The idea being if you [00:03:00] don't digitize, you're stuck in the Middle Ages.
Marietje: You are not willing really to provide the best services to your citizens. You don't wanna be efficient. You don't want to be cost efficient. Basically, you cannot afford not to digitize. And I think governments throughout the democratic world, including in Europe, have. Proceeded to do this to just keep embracing more and more digitization.
Marietje: But digitization essentially meant privatization because it's not investing in your own government capabilities, hiring talents, advancing the public interest with regard to tech. No, it's basically saying, okay. You do our data analysis, you build our tax authorities functioning, you run our universities, our hospitals, et cetera, and you get into a sort of negative downward spiral that's.
Marietje: With outsourcing, there's a loss of expertise With outsourcing, there's more proprietary data and information, and so it's harder to come by expertise of the kinds of services that are now [00:04:00] operated by companies, but in the name. Of the government, right? And then with the next wave of a new technology or with the need to change something about the system, the knowledge is no longer inhouse.
Marietje: And so guess what? It becomes easier to outsource and then that just perpetuates, perpetuates. And so you basically end up transferring enormous amounts of critical functions, critical insights. Agency to private actors that have fundamentally different incentives to make profits, to please shareholders, to grow market size, to be faster than the competitor or the fundamentally different objectives than what a government's responsibility really is between different people in society, different policy objectives that have to be brought into balance with a limited budget.
Marietje: And so. To outsource so much to actors companies, and I'm not even distinguishing between one or the other, but with such different objectives is principally going to hollow [00:05:00] out your public interest capabilities. And it's also the political criticism that I voice in the book, meaning different governments, democratic, Republican, and the same in Europe of different political colors have allowed this.
Marietje: Power on the part of the private tech companies to grow incredibly over the past decades and has not been matched with countervailing powers. And basically that mismatch has brought us to where we are today, and I think it's therefore eating away the ability of. Protecting the rule of law, protecting democratic values, but also the democratic process as such.
Marietje: So I can give you an example. The Dutch Tax Authority has an outdated dysfunctional IT system, and the timeline for revamping it was six years. This is long. In the meantime, a lot of money was spent on basically propping up the old system to keep it functional, but it was very expensive with consultants and all kinds [00:06:00] of stuff.
Marietje: The six year deadline was not met. So the IT system overhaul of the Dutch tax system has not been completed within six years of time. And the concluding result is that the parliament, even if it adopts laws that have impact on the tax. System basically should not expect those to be implemented because it, they can't because the IT systems are outdated.
Marietje: And so essentially, this is a literal example of how your democratic process is blocked by IT problems. And this is not public. It. And so you have just one example of how there's just not the capability on the part of governments to handle this Well, it's boring. It's about taxes. You know, it's not very sexy.
Marietje: It's not about Russian interference or what Elon Musk has done this time. But I do think that this gets to the heart of questions of governing for whom? Where's the knowledge? Where's the agency? How did it get to this? I mean, how did we get. To this completely out [00:07:00] of control situation where the grip is lost.
Alix: Yeah, I mean I love this idea that digitization has become privatization. Like I think that is something that a lot of people don't see because they see the value of digitization and then they say, well, who can do that? Well, and it's obviously companies 'cause governments can't innovate to save their lives.
Alix: Um, and I feel like that. Case, that fundamental case about what the role of the state should be is being lost. Like essentially the public perception of the capability of state institutions to be able to adapt to using technology in meaningfully high quality ways. Even if there's all kinds of examples where states have been able to set up internal units.
Alix: You mention the US Digital Service as an example in the book of like, maybe we should have that across government and have that be expanded. I presume that you couldn't have anticipated that that would've been destroyed by the incoming US administration. So it feels like there's this battle between public perception and expectation of both [00:08:00] state officials and corporate officials about where the labor lies in terms of digitization, and I feel like it's a losing battle right now.
Alix: Like if you made the case to Starr. There should be an in-house unit that experiments and like builds out this infrastructure. You shouldn't be outsourcing NHS function to Palantir as an example. The first reaction is like, we don't have that talent. It's all in the companies. So how do you think about the narrative battle and the kind of political battle and tug of war between public expectation of what the state should do and also just the like under confidence of people in government to be able to take these big problems on.
Marietje: Well, thank you for bringing up. One, the framing of how we think about tech and tech governance. And two, the empowerment of public officials because those have both been very important anchors as I wrote the tech coup because. I also spent quite a bit of time on the notion of framing, meaning who benefits from the way in which we think about technology, and I think this whole idea that [00:09:00] government can't innovate, cannot possibly be clever enough to do something useful with technology is not accidental.
Marietje: I mean, that frame has been very helpful for Silicon Valley, basically disrespecting and discarding governments as capable actors without. They're saving services, and that's of course not true, and it should also not be a situation that is acceptable. So if there are fundamental capabilities lacking on the part of government, the solution should be to invest in those and not to sort of sacrifice the whole ambition and be like, okay, well we'll just give up on governments ever being capable of doing that.
Marietje: And there are plenty of examples. Where governments have made crucial investments, have made crucial decisions to allow for innovations. There are a number of places where there's independent labs that are developing products and services, but that will actually end up serving. Defense or other kinds of goals [00:10:00] in wider society.
Marietje: So the whole idea that there cannot be a public oriented model of innovation is nonsensical, but it's a very powerful frame. The same frame with regulation. Stifles innovation is my favorite. You know, and I think
Alix: most those pesky laws. Laws, you know, like we can't have pesky laws getting in the way of us, like being creative.
Alix: No, exactly. Yeah.
Marietje: Yeah, exactly. But it, it's become so mainstream. I often found myself sort of beginning arguments that I wanted to make with saying, it's not that I wanna stifle innovation, but you know, to sort of pave the way for saying something. Because that narrative that everything should be prevented.
Marietje: To stifle innovation is remarkable because there are so many things that governments have to do, and yes, having an innovative economy is super important, but it's definitely not the only, and it's certainly not the most important thing that needs to happen. You know, you need to make sure that fundamental rights are protected.
Marietje: You need to make sure that there's employment. You need to make sure that national security is. Taken care of [00:11:00] and so on and so forth. And so it's just become this very obsessive view of how important innovation is and has pushed aside all kinds of other objectives that are clearly responsibilities of government.
Marietje: So I think that's been a very successful slogan, a very unhelpful way of thinking about the role of regulation, because of course. It's not a goal in of itself to make rules. I think that that's the sort of caricature that we often hear, particularly in the United States where small government has really been the mantra for so long.
Marietje: Regulation is often a reaction to a harm or a disbalance or a problem that has emerged from a new technology or just a new set of facts that have emerged and there's a need to correct, or there may be a need to protect smaller players against the outsized power of bigger players, or there's just a need to create fairness.
Marietje: To compete or what have you, but we really would benefit from having a more sophisticated discussion about what regulation is and is not. [00:12:00] Because even today I hear people asking questions like, are you in favor or against regulation? I. I have no idea because it really depends on what we wanna achieve with the regulation.
Marietje: Then the other part of your question was about the self-confidence of governments, or in any case, to empower them. I think there's been a numbing effect of just continuing to hear that governments are not capable and there's a fear that has risen, and I see this in Europe as well. Of missing the boat again, quote unquote.
Marietje: So the idea is Europe has missed the boat on successful Silicon Valley type companies. You know, big tech does not come from Europe. Now there is ai Europe cannot afford to miss the boat again. And what that leads to is a major embrace of any new technology because the fear is to be too late and an uptake without asking the proper governance questions.
Marietje: That, in turn, has fueled this sort of outsourcing to Silicon Valley companies, which now. It's hitting home to people that it's actually not served. [00:13:00] Our societies that, you know, smart solutions, quote unquote, were pretty stupid. We need a reckoning. And I'm saying this all from a European perspective, but I think the same could be said for the us.
Marietje: I mean, are these big tech companies that yes, they're important for us, GDP and all these kinds of metrics, but what do they really do in terms of job creation, in terms of harm, in terms of democracy, in terms of governance? You know, I think there's a lot of. Critical debates be had about pluses and minuses of where this Silicon Valley impact on our societies has brought us.
Alix: Turning the fraud, waste and abuse frame at the companies rather than citizens, I think would also be refreshing. Um, sort of where money has gone to companies that has been just wasted. There's also a presumption or a benefit of the doubt given to companies that if they roll out a program, that that's it in terms of the money that governments are transferring to those companies.
Alix: So like the Palantir contract with the NHS, that's. Presuming that they're not just gonna re-up and then [00:14:00] continue to charge huge sums of money well into the future. And I think there's a naivete about thinking about is it worth it? What are we getting out of it? Is it actually saving us money? Is it a really immature conversation?
Alix: 'cause there's a presumption that forward motion, more innovation will always eventually accrue benefit when that's not necessarily proven. Out. Historically,
Marietje: people sort of have a knee jerk to say government's expensive. And so if you hear the sums of money that are spent on government operating, yeah, okay, that's a lot of money.
Marietje: But if you look at how much money is being spent on outsourcing tasks, that's when you really fall off your chair. But that is not technically government spending on the government itself. And so I think people don't even really know. How much money is involved with the kinds of contracts between the NHS and Palantir and between Microsoft and governments, or between cloud companies and hospitals.
Marietje: I mean, it's enormous. And therefore, when we have a discussion in Europe now about European alternatives, a Euro stack, you know, European alternatives [00:15:00] across the tech stack, people say, but where would we find the budgets? That's a fair question. That's indeed what you have to think about with public spending.
Marietje: You can't just go to a VC and say, Hey, you know, throw a couple of billion at this startup idea. Ultimately, the spending that happens to the private sector already, if that would go to more public facing alternatives or more European alternatives, that could really change the game. It's not about extra resources necessarily.
Marietje: It's just about thinking about where those would be spent. I. Again, from having served in public office, being a representative is not the same as being in government, but I have thought a lot about what is the responsibility and the role of our public services and our governments. There's just not a clear view about why we're spending money, what we're spending it on, and what we're getting in return, and certainly the idea that hiring it off the market, buying it off the market leads to better and more economically Sound results is, again, it's a frame
Alix: that doesn't hold.
Alix: It just feels sometimes like [00:16:00] that. Lack of confidence as it relates to technology building for public services also translates into an under confidence, but sometimes a lack of knowledge about how to think about the right intervention points of regulation and in a mature, systemic way. So your book has a very sweeping analysis of this power center that I think you're right to suggest that it should be.
Alix: Attacked by democratic governments, but the people doing that attacking or doing that regulation, I don't think have done a great job of identifying regulation that should be passed. So how do you, in your head, think about regulation? 'cause you, you mentioned yourself that unless you get into the specifics, you can't say whether regulation is good or bad.
Alix: So how do you think about the messiness of democracy, the populism that we're currently experiencing, and like how do you get good regulation out of an environment like that and what might it look like?
Marietje: So to start with the first point when you said, I didn't wanna be limited to what seemed possible, I mean, look at how much has changed over the past six to 12 months.
Marietje: You have to prepare for [00:17:00] momentum and create it. Otherwise, you know, the biggest sweeping changes. Of all kinds, whether Republicans love it or Democrats love it, have always started with an idea that sounded outrageous at the time, and then the consensus changed or campaigns were started that were very successful, and that's how, in my opinion, ultimately progress is made.
Marietje: Right. I. But looking at where the US is now, I think there are a couple of thoughts. One is that the way we discuss tech regulation often implies governments providing or setting up guardrails for companies, right? So restricting the freedom of doing business, but rules are also in place to restrict the power of governments.
Marietje: If they are done well, the way I think of regulation, it is very much about upholding fundamental principles, so non-discrimination competition, transparency, accountability, and so on. It's also about making sure that governments can't abuse their [00:18:00] power through the use of technology. So yes, the KU is a criticism of how far and how brazen and narrowly oriented the tech companies are not taking responsibility for their deep impact on society and democracy.
Marietje: But the criticism is at least as strong vis-a-vis leaders that have allowed this to happen because it was their responsibility and they've abdicated that responsibility to a large extent. A lot of rules actually apply to all. So I'll give you the example of the European General Data Protection Regulation, which in the eyes of a number of people in Silicon Valley, was a hammer that was invented to hit on tech company nails.
Marietje: Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, the law was initiated to harmonize 28 at the time, 27 later, because of Brexit, different systems of data protection across the EU into one. So there was just a need to go from 27 different systems to one. Then the law actually applies to the swimming pool around the corner the [00:19:00] same way as it applies to Google.
Marietje: I think that that's problematic because of course, it doesn't consider who is more powerful, which actor has more impact with its breaches of data protection rules. But okay, this is what it is. And so fines also go to public organizations or to governments. The same way that they might go to a meta or whichever kind of company that violates data protection rules.
Marietje: And so a rule of law based system is not about. Government versus business alone. It's about checks and balances. It's about a separation of powers, and it's about the kind of oversight that also applies to governments themselves. And so if you have rules based on those goals and principles, then it would be harder for this government, for example, to abuse its position to favor one political idea over the other.
Marietje: If you look at what is happening now, it's actually not so much Trump and the political allies regulating. It's just, again, outsourcing the whole regulation [00:20:00] to tech players. And so this is the ultimate tech, right? This is a very direct tech. The one that I describe is systematic. One, it. It talks about how there are key decisions being made by companies from infrastructure to cybersecurity, from fundamental rights to elections.
Marietje: But here we see it. In real time at the highest political level, leveraging state power towards private interests. And so I would actually, from a legitimacy point of view, accept fully that the Trump administration would use its majorities to legislate and to go through that process that has checks and balances in it, rather than saying, oh, you know what, we're not gonna regulate it and we're gonna ask the companies to decide how to reform the government in the form of Doge.
Marietje: God,
Alix: there's so much there. I feel like, yeah, like listening to Eric Schmidt say. If government doesn't know what it's doing, just let us do basic like, and then paying for people to go in government by paying for their position. I don't think anyone [00:21:00] realizes that you can pay the salary of a non yet existing government employee and get who you want in government and basically create roles in government.
Alix: Like I don't think people are aware that the ability of money to buy direct government roles and then influence them directly and how much of that's been outsourced and influenced by. Basically just the tech elites.
Marietje: Well, and generally we could have, you know, series of episodes of your podcast about.
Marietje: Money in US politics, which yeah, it's true for non Americans is just baffling. I think even a lot of highly educated Europeans don't know that a donation in dollars is speech.
Alix: I mean, this is actually another question I wanted to ask you, which is, you talk about in shorthand democratic governments being more engaged in regulation, understanding, preventing the accumulation of corporate power.
Alix: How do you in that. Mental model, think about backsliding democratic states because I think there is a point at which the US is not conceptualized as a democracy anymore. And maybe, I think [00:22:00] actually there have been researchers, political scientists who have essentially broken it down and said it's not anymore.
Alix: Because when you have money as speech, basically people can buy that level of influence. How do you think about whether a country is a democracy and how that manifests in its attempt to govern these systems?
Marietje: Well, it's the key question, and in my own mind, we've lost the US there already. One because the government is not interested in regulating, and so those discussions are not held.
Marietje: Two, because it has broken the alliance with fellow democratic nations, and of course a whole bunch of rule of law violating steps that the Trump administration is taking that are not restricted to tech, but that give you a good impression of where the tolerance for authoritarian steps lies. There's also just.
Marietje: Tremendous hypocrisy between what is being said and what is being done that I think is really important. You know, the whole framing of the storming of the Capitol as a day of love, which the New York Times did a very [00:23:00] good long read on a couple of months ago showing how. The president himself took four years to reframe one of the biggest attacks on democracy as something that should really be embraced and celebrated.
Marietje: And there are more examples there, particularly around speech. I think it's striking how Trump and his tech CEO supporters have positioned themselves as being supporters of freedom of expression while they're suing NGOs that are. Saying things that they don't like. People are being intimidated and persecuted for what they have said in the past in ways that has nothing to do with respecting freedom of speech.
Marietje: And so. I think it's challenging for a lot of people to distinguish between what they hear and what's actually happening on the ground, particularly for non-Americans, but I know it's already overwhelming for Americans to process all the things that are happening. And then of course, we get to a point where when judges are targeted as enemies, when they say things that are not in line with the political majority, this is [00:24:00] beginning to eat at the roots of what the rule of law looks like.
Marietje: And I'm deeply worried about where this may end up. And this should really inform the way we think about leaving so much to American tech companies to be decided. I mean, I listened to Alix Car's book recently because on the one hand he criticizes Silicon Valley for not stepping up and serving democracy and for doing frivolous and basically dumb stuff, right?
Marietje: He talks a lot about the need to defend democracy in the West, but. Takes zero consideration of what the impact on democracy in the West is of the Trump administration. Whether you like Trump or not, you cannot pretend that nothing happened with his inauguration. I mean, for both fans and opponents alike, what he's doing is dramatic.
Marietje: To then carry on by saying, you know, the government should blah, blah, blah, and Palantir will support the US as a state without considering how a different [00:25:00] president is actually treating that state. Treating democratic values. Treating that west that needs defending, I think is just completely out of touch, but it shows that it's actually opportunistic and it's much more about business interest because those are served by the Trump administration, not those core principles of democracy and.
Marietje: Western values that are signaled in the book so much. So I think there is still a real moment of reckoning going on between what is being said, what is being done. How this adds up on the yardstick of upholding democracy. You know, I'm curious whether we'll hear more protest from Americans or whether they're already so worried, which again, doesn't speak well to respecting free speech.
Marietje: How many people I've heard that are scared to demonstrate is not a sign of, oh, hey, here we have an administration that just loves free speech.
Alix: Yeah, it's an interesting observation too that tech companies ride the narrative. Of the day. And I think that, you know, thinking back when you and I first met in like, I don't [00:26:00] know, 2010 or something, and like Arab Spring times like that, oh, we're a, we're all about, you know, connecting people so that they can democratically engage even in authoritarian environments.
Alix: And then how that evolved to be some pro-American vision of imposing, I think a lot of the ideas about community and engagement from the us. And then the kind of way that, that, I think the inauguration was basically, it felt like a moment where it was they, they stopped pretending to recognize that they were building the public square, even though for years they'd been like, we take this responsibility very seriously.
Alix: And it's like, oh, actually. You don't, that was just a moment in time where that was the appropriate policy and communication positioning. And now we see, I'm reading careless people right now and it's so interesting to sort of see how uninterested the company wasn't actually engaging in some of those core questions.
Alix: And instead, it's a business which, like, obviously it's a business, but it's so obvious now that like they could care less about what [00:27:00] government they're helping as long as they're making. Money and that public opinion needs to kind of be in their corner, but at core there's not many values there. Aside from profit orientation,
Marietje: I agree with all of what you said, except that I don't understand why they've gone the extra mile to support the Trump administration.
Marietje: So I think all of this opportunism and sort of riding the waves of what is popular, you know, going, they could have kept their head
Alix: down.
Marietje: Could have not sit there. And I think it's a huge gamble that will have a huge price. I just don't know when, but this will not go without consequences. Companies are nervous to lose their European markets now that it's getting real.
Marietje: And at the same time, I still see a lot of events that are happening where you know, their sponsorship of one tech company or the other. While there's sort of collective concern across the European Union about what. The impact of the loss of the Transatlantic Alliance could be, and it's all very dire. I mean, I know zero people of any political color that think, oh, this is great for Europe.
Marietje: You know what's happening. [00:28:00] But the consequences for the tech companies cheering on this aggressive anti-European policy have just not been drawn. And I think it's because they hope that under the wings of the Trump administration, besides all the domestic plans that they might have, they can actually attack.
Marietje: Kill the EU as a democratic regulator of their services and products. Of course, it is the biggest constituency and market that actually does impose restrictions on what these companies can do. Try to prevent harm, try to. Create interoperability, more fair competition, and so on. And if you listen to Musk, it's pretty clear.
Marietje: If you listen to Meta, it's pretty clear that this is just not what they wanna see. Vance, of course, yes, definitely Vance. But I think it's a huge gamble by the tech companies too. Actually be both opportunistic, but then so explicitly aligned with an administration, which they didn't do under the Clintons, they didn't do under Obama or Biden.
Marietje: I think that [00:29:00] picture of the CEOs on the front row of the inauguration will go down into history as a very, very significant moment.
Alix: A hundred percent agree. Like I think in a hundred years. We're gonna see that picture. Like it's, it felt like such an important expression of something so deep and meaningful and huge.
Alix: I, I completely agree. Yeah. And it's not gonna age well. So I have one more question and it's something that came up and I loved that you said it explicitly, which was. All of the kind of wishy-washy global goy, principally things that have happened in the last 10 or 15 years, well intentioned from sometimes civil society actors or government actors who are like, let's have a conference and talk about the future of the internet.
Alix: That a lot of times it was a distraction from meaningfully, um, building regulatory countervailing force that could be implemented and actually like hold company's feet to the fire. I agree. But I think that given. The extra territorial nature of digital and of how technology works. It, it necessarily works across borders, which means [00:30:00] essentially there's no obvious container aside from maybe the US and the EU that have this leverage essentially over the companies.
Alix: So how do you square the circle between global is too abstract and actually not. Tethered to Democratic lawmaking that can be used to hold the companies accountable, but national level legislation or jurisdictional legislation that actually could be made democratically and actually have that kind of force that that is too small to sort of deal with the systemic issues we're dealing with.
Alix: So what is the perfect in your head register at which we're regulating.
Marietje: Ideally, like-minded actors would work together, and I think there's increasing room also to try to see who on the side of the United States still wants to be a part of that. And not to bulk every American together in writing them off, but basically I.
Marietje: The idea that the biggest scale is the best still holds, but I think companies will soon find, and this is where I'm very curious to see the impact of the Trump [00:31:00] administration on a very different level. We've heard for a long time from companies as well, and for many people, that when there was still this narrative of one.
Marietje: Open global internet, that fragmentation was bad. So the idea was there should be this access to knowledge and ability to communicate and connect for all. And regulation itself, rules in itself could fragment, but there could also be the risk of fragmentation between countries. Right. Well, the whole promise of the open internet is no longer a realistic one.
Marietje: So governments have seen that the stakes are very high. They have asserted themselves and they have, you know, seen that leaving it up to markets is difficult. And so increasingly we see. Interventions to make sure that not everything is given to Silicon Valley and in the United States. In the absence of federal rules, we see states taking charge and that actually will have impact.
Marietje: So it may not be at the scale that I would hope for, but I think one of the. Indirect effects that it will have is that it will actually be complicating the work of companies because they will have to [00:32:00] adjust for different states, and they may then ultimately prefer federal rules over this fragmented landscape between states.
Marietje: And so that will be an interesting tension to watch, I think, because where. It started with, you can't improve anything unless you do it globally. And that was really a way of saying like, it's never gonna happen because you know, when will there ever be global agreement. We are now at a point where because the US federal government is so absent.
Marietje: Putting up guardrails to the harms and and behavior of tech companies. States are saying, look, we're not gonna wait. We're not gonna wait. And in the case of a state like California, that is huge. Also, from an economic point of view, these are economies of scale. I think California is typically the fifth or the fourth largest economy in the world if it would stand alone.
Marietje: So the ripple effects of states. Regulation both to what companies will opt for in the United States and for what it will mean globally, I think should not be discarded. So I, I also think for global collaboration, it could be interesting to see, for example, EU, [00:33:00] California cooperation along shared values being strengthened.
Marietje: Mm-hmm.
Alix: So what I'm hearing is regulation where there's robust democratic process where regulation that emerges would be high quality and that those jurisdictions that are interested in that should be joining up with other jurisdictions that are also interested in that, to try and cobble together alliances that maybe are new or different, but might have the level of scale that then forces behavior change within.
Alix: Companies.
Marietje: The other thing is, of course, that from rules that have been imposed, we can learn. And so the idea that they have to be perfect from the beginning, no, there will probably be lessons to be learned and we will see in real time what it means. That there is an AI act in Europe implemented soon, and that there will not.
Marietje: Be in the United States. So we will also learn about do these rules prevent the harms that they hope to prevent? Will this be something people rally around? Because you can actually see a difference in experiences of internet or AI or tech users between the different jurisdictions. So I think one benefit [00:34:00] of.
Marietje: Just proceeding with the regulatory process in the interest of correcting wrongs is that it creates a new case that can be observed, can be learned from and seen as a stepping stone. Like, okay, we're gonna use this example, but we're gonna tweak it to address some of the unintended consequences a little bit.
Marietje: This comes back to the part of the conversation where we spoke about how there's so much scrutiny of new regulatory proposals, but so little of the status quo, I think. Part of the success is actually getting something on the table that has broad political support and then can be used to be improved and corrected when it's necessary.
Alix: Which is very democratic. I feel like the messiness of democracy, like I think we have to accept that there's not gonna be fully formed perfect legislation that lasts for 20 years without an iterative process that people are involved in. There's feedback loops. Yeah. I think that there's a desire, I think, from some people that think democracy's too complicated to try and find shortcuts.
Alix: [00:35:00] I don't think there are any,
Marietje: what one person loves the other person hates. I mean, it's all very political. Right? Totally. I sometimes smile when I see AI versus humans and I'm like, who are these humans? That sort of band together vis-a-vis technology because last time I checked, humans don't agree on much.
Marietje: True. And that's why we have democracy to work it out between those different views.
Alix: Yeah, this was so good. Again, I really love the book. I knew it would be good 'cause I've always liked the way you think about these issues, but I wasn't expecting like the original research in it. And also some of the, I think, useful recommendations around how to think about this.
Alix: And I know so much has changed in the last nine months that some of the recommendations, if you could write them again, might be a little bit different. Of course it would be different. Yeah. But yeah. Good on you for being brave enough to put this into a book. 'cause I feel like
Marietje: thank you so much. The topic changes so fast.
Marietje: The fact that you like it means a lot to me, so that's wonderful.
Alix: I hope that was as interesting and educational for you as it was for me. Definitely check out her book. It includes original research, not just analysis. [00:36:00] It also includes some amazing stories about when she was a member of European Parliament. She was an election observer in a really contentious election in Kenya.
Alix: And her analysis on how big tech companies from outside of Kenya who were nominally providing technology and resources to the Kenyan government really screwed up, um, causing dramatic. Democratic challenges for the country and the implications of that. It's not just an intellectual book, it's also kind of a whistle stop tour of what she's learned in the last 15 or so years doing all the work she's done, which is super impressive and oftentimes cutting edge and really prescient, as was this book.
Alix: So order the Taku 'cause it's really excellent. Um, we're on a live show bonanza, if you want us to come to a city. That you're in and talk to people about stuff that's relevant to that city, relevant to the work that you're doing. Just reach out and we will see what's possible. If you missed the episode we aired last week, please go back and listen to it.
Alix: It is essential listening. It is a recording of our live show in Mexico City two weeks ago with some of the most amazing [00:37:00] activists and policy experts thinking about how to stop the genocide in Gaza. Also how to hold big tech accountable for its enabling of that genocide. It is painful listening, but I think the least we can do, given what's going on, is know about it and hear from people who are working to change it.
Alix: The second thing is that we are gonna be at fact, so we have a couple of team members from the maybe who will be there interviewing folks to better understand the different types of projects, kind of like we did last year. If you didn't catch that episode, I think it's actually still interesting and relevant from a year ago.
Alix: But if you're at fact. And wanna connect with our people, drop us a line, and we are interested in hearing from folks who want us to learn more about their research and share it with our audience. Thank you for making it to the very end. And thank you to Georgia Iacovou and Sarah Myles for putting this episode together, and we will see you next time.
