About this item
An insider offers a "forceful critique...of Big Tech's steady erosion of democracy" (The New Yorker) and describes what must be done to stop it. Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. Facial recognition firms track citizens for police surveillance. Cryptocurrency has wiped out the personal savings of millions and threatens the stability of the global financial system. Spyware companies sell digital intelligence tools to anyone who can afford them. This new reality - where unregulated technology has become a forceful instrument for autocrats around the world - is terrible news for democracies and citizens.
About the Author
Marietje Schaake is a Fellow at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy.
