Book Review: The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
by Marietje Schaake
The lives of most people worldwide are dominated by information technology in an inescapable way—even the poorest people (or perhaps especially the poorest people) need their smart phones to survive. Beyond just the end devices, the back end processing and telecommunications connections that technology companies control are integral to what happens on people’s phones, including yours. In this book, Marietje Schaake presents in both intricate and overarching detail how the tech companies have taken over everything—from individuals’ personal experiences to the governments that people assume are protecting them. Although it’s been an open secret that corporate foxes have been having their way with the chickens in the public hen house for multiple decades, Schaake provides decisive illustrations of how this situation in the area of technology is especially detrimental to the economy and to public safety and welfare.
The author identifies four specific technological manifestations that need to be curbed: commercial spyware, data brokerage, facial recognition technologies, and crypto-currencies. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an increasingly relevant technology that requires regulation to keep it from running amok to dangerous effect—especially as AI aggregates vast amounts of private data for processing in Large Language Models (LLM). Schaake names some of the companies and corporate executives who are unjustly profiting off of their theft and illicit use of private information, and illustrates how they have captured governments for their own advancement at the expense of the public interest. The profit motive also overrides any scruples about dealing with authoritarian governments, and in yielding to their demands that the tech companies become tools of autocratic oppression.
Schaake demonstrates how government service can provide better technology deliveries without unacceptable dependency on private entities, and suggests the way to do that is to build a public stack—that is, build a public tech infrastructure through civic initiatives (after all, the Internet itself originated from public research). The Declaration for the Future of the Internet (DFI) provides good directions to the way forward. The DFI is a global initiative signed by 61 nations promoting an open, free, secure, and inclusive internet, which reflects a collective commitment to counter digital authoritarianism and uphold democratic principles in the digital space.
However, as Schaake aptly points out, governments cannot be trusted to do the right thing on their own—new coalitions of people are needed to reverse the tech coup, and recover from the corruption of the current order. As part of doing that, we’ll need to free those caught in the cult of right wing ideology and its associated false emotional manipulation—although they may want a Daddy to set things straight, what they get instead is an alcoholic father who abuses his family to satisfy his own whims and those of his following (who are not you). Even authoritarian governments have to bend to public pressure—we have the road map, let’s start driving.