The Tech Coup

How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley

  • By Marietje Schaake
  • 336 pages
  • English
  • September 2024
  • ISBN: 0691241171
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press

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Review

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“The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley” is a holistic take on how unprincipled, unfettered technology is eroding democracy. Marietje Schaake provides a blueprint for what we can do about it.

Schaake’s government experience as a European Parliament member and her proximity to Silicon Valley—as the international director of policy at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and a fellow at the university’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence—make her perspective one to note. She sees the digital forest for the trees.

The problem: Technology giants and authoritarian regimes, both leveraging monopolies of their own kind, fail to take privacy, security, and democratic principles seriously.

The solution: Upholding fundamental values of openness, transparency, accountability, security, and privacy—across technology and procurement—while advancing a “public stack” and digital public infrastructure, with governments leveraging their purchasing power to drive change.

Global values and policy initiatives, such as those outlined in the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, can guide us.

With core principles and a plan, the attempt can be resisted.