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The Tech Coup: How to save democracy from Silicon Valley

11 November 2024, 5:30pm

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Dr S T Lee Public Policy Lecture

The Tech Coup: How to save democracy from Silicon Valley

Marietje Schaake, International policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center
Date: 11 November 2024, 5:30pm-7pm followed by drinks reception
Venue: St John's Divinity School, Cambridge
Chair: Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy and Co-Director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy
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Over the past decades, under the cover of “innovation”, technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and begun to seize power from governments themselves. In The Tech Coup, Marietje Schaake offers a behind-the-scenes account of how technology companies crept into nearly every corner of our lives and our governments. Going beyond the headlines to high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians, Schaake shows how technologies from social media to artificial intelligence have gone from being heralded as utopian to undermining the pillars of our democracies.

To reverse this existential power imbalance, Schaake outlines game-changing solutions to empower elected officials and citizens alike. Democratic leaders can—and must—resist the influence of corporate lobbying and reinvent themselves as dynamic, flexible guardians of our digital world. Drawing on her experiences in the halls of the European Parliament and among Silicon Valley insiders, Schaake offers a frightening look at our modern tech-obsessed world and a clear-eyed view of how democracies can build a better future before it is too late.

Marietje Schaake

Marietje Schaake is international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. In September 2024, her book ‘The Tech Coup, How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley’ comes out with Princeton University Press.

Between 2009 and 2019, she served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs, and technology policies. She writes a monthly column for the Financial Times and serves on the UN’s AI Advisory Body.

Marietje is an (Advisory) Board Member with a number of non-profits including MERICS, ECFR, ORF and AccessNow.

S T Lee Public Policy Lectures

The S T Lee Public Policy lectures were established in 2003 thanks to a benefaction from Seng Tee Lee, Singaporean business executive, philanthropist and Honarary Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. Each lecture considers aspects of scientific, medical or technological research and developments that are likely to have significant implications for public policy over the next decade.

Previous lectures in this series can be viewed here.

Aubin Ramon

Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge

Marietje Schaake

Stanford University

Professor Dame Diane Coyle

Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), University of Cambridge