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00:00Okay, turning to a different topic now and the impact of technology on our democracies.
00:04Initially seen as a powerful way of connecting politicians to the people,
00:09it was for example credited with the first successful run of Barack Obama for president.
00:14But it has since shown a darker side, used by authoritarian countries to hack and track
00:19any critic. But not just by them, technology is being used by most, many, perhaps all democracies,
00:25by police services in particular to track crime. Run by large corporations,
00:31these technologies and those who run them are not answerable to the people.
00:34The result is that more and more power is now in private hands,
00:38and it's not just our elections, but our daily lives that are paying the price.
00:42To tell us more, we can speak to former politician turned AI policy analyst, Marietje Schaak.
00:47Marietje Schaak, thanks for your time and joining us on France 24.
00:50Now you have a new book out, it's called The Tech Coup.
00:53Is that what it is? Is technology literally stealing power from under us?
00:59Well, indeed, power is leaking away from our democratically elected and accountable
01:03politicians and institutions to these private companies. And we see it everywhere. A recent
01:09example in Romania, for example, where a candidate that had no public profile through newspapers or
01:16television appearances, only through the use of TikTok and with strong accusations of using
01:23manipulative tactics, botnets, fake accounts, disinformation to get him elected, just shows
01:32how the algorithms of social media companies have an impact on our information diet and therefore
01:38on our democracies. But think also about the fact that companies are now putting satellites into
01:45space, allowing or disallowing internet connectivity for people, including in the
01:52battlefields in Ukraine. These are incredibly powerful positions of companies that are
01:57not accountable enough to the people. Let's name names. I mean, I'm thinking of Elon Musk
02:03and his Starlink satellite. You know, and Elon Musk, as we know now, has quite a close role
02:08to the incoming US government. Apart from controlling the internet, how much of an
02:16influence are you imagining blackouts of internet over certain areas or what influence,
02:22you know, might these satellites have on regular countries?
02:26Well, if you look at the decisions that Elon Musk has taken before, he basically is in a position
02:31to say we are or we are not going to grant this connectivity to people. And because he has such
02:37a strong geopolitical agenda, that basically means he can make key decisions that used to be
02:42the exclusive domain of states. And you're right that he is now incredibly close to the president
02:48elect Donald Trump. And I've never seen the kind of synergy between corporate interests of Elon
02:54Musk and the tech sector and the political leadership of the United States, the most
02:58powerful hub when it comes to technology. So the tech coup is really unfolding before our eyes,
03:04where we have seen vice president elect J.D. Vance threatening the EU with a pullout of the United
03:11States out of NATO. If EU lawmakers were to regulate Elon Musk's platforms or companies any
03:17further, this is the kind of connection and influencing of the political agendas by companies.
03:26And the case of Elon Musk makes this phenomenon very visible. A lot of times we see this power
03:32grab, erosion of democratic power to be a much more subtle and invisible process.
03:40When you look, and I'd like to look at that invisible process a little bit later, but when
03:44you look at the level it has reached, I mean, the ultimate question is what can be done about it now?
03:50Well, it's incredibly important that democratic leaders and governments see the reclaiming of
03:56the primacy of governance as a key goal in and of itself, and that that informs both short-term
04:02and long-term decisions. So in the EU, we are expecting to see a lot of investments, for example,
04:09the Draghi report, a key need to make sure that our economies are innovative enough,
04:15but to make those investments in ways that they strengthen public digital infrastructure,
04:21public values, more transparency, more security, more accountability,
04:26would be really important, just as one example.
04:29I don't want to sound defeatist, but it does all come down to money. And when you have companies
04:33like Apple that on the market are worth more than the stock exchanges of Germany and Australia,
04:38as you point out in your book, together, I mean, to what level do you think governments
04:43are going to be able to stand up to that amount of wealth and power?
04:49Well, it's incredibly important to see this problem through the lens of power and for
04:53democratic governments to use the variety of tools that they have to change this status quo,
04:58regulation being one of them, public procurement being another. Governments are important clients
05:04of tech companies, too, and can use that as leverage for better outcomes. And of course,
05:09investment. So if I look at the past four or five years in EU policymaking, there's been a lot of
05:15regulation. I don't expect that that tempo will be repeated in the next five years. So we must
05:21look at powerful enforcement using the purchasing power of governments for changes and a less strong
05:31grip by the big tech companies. And of course, these investments to create different markets,
05:37different incentives for innovation in Europe, but with a stronger emphasis on making sure that
05:42democratic leaders and institutions stay in charge.
05:46Yeah, because ultimately, the alternative is that we have businessmen at the top that we don't vote
05:52in or don't vote out and have little control over. I'm getting the idea of how this technology can
05:58influence the way people might vote or the disinformation they might have towards voting.
06:03But there's a myriad of other ways that it's impacting our daily lives.
06:08Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of hype now around artificial intelligence. And if we take one
06:13application, facial recognition systems, for example, we see that these tend to discriminate.
06:19A lot of AI applications discriminate. And that is, of course, illegal. But companies are still
06:24putting out these models, putting out generative AI models onto the market without a lot of testing
06:31or safeguards in the public interest. So really, we are living through a sort of experiment
06:37where other kinds of products, think about medicines that are new, have been tested,
06:43have been controlled, can only be put out into the public to patients after these
06:50precautionary steps. And so we need to make sure that we are putting up the right procedures,
06:57regulations, oversight mechanisms to make sure that we are not just allowing the release of
07:03either discriminatory or dangerous AI applications, even though that is what's happening now.
07:10Because there's so much people can be spied on, their computers can be hacked without ever
07:14clicking on a dangerous link or even knowing that our devices are being spied on, really.
07:20What can the individual do? Before we leave you briefly, Marietje Schaak.
07:24Individual internet users can really choose the best privacy protecting apps. So for example,
07:31the Signal app, when it comes to messaging, they can decline cookies to trace them on the internet.
07:37But most of all, they should really think twice about being online so much. It's highly addictive
07:44there are fraudsters and cyber criminals active there. So the fact that we are all addicted to
07:50our devices is one problem that hopefully people will think critically about for their children,
07:57but also for themselves. Indeed, the addiction, definitely another major topic. Marietje Schaak,
08:03we'll have to leave it there. But thanks so much for joining us here on France 24
08:06and giving us a glimpse of the price we're paying for our technology.