Public Service: Yaël Eisenstat Tackles the Intersection of Ethics, Tech, and Democracy

In this special edition of "Technically Human," we feature a live public conversation about the future of democracy, technology, and public policy. In 2017, Yaël Eisenstat came onboard Facebook to change it, joining the company as its Global Head of Elections Integrity Operations. What she discovered while working there alarmed her. She started speaking out, becoming a leading critic of tech’s threat to democracy.In this conversation, I sit down with Yaël in front of a live audience to ask:

• How can American Democracy persevere in the age of social media?
• Why does tech need regulation?
• Who can reign in Big Tech?
• What can we do to help?

Yaël Eisenstat works at the intersection of tech, democracy, and policy, with a focus on what the public square and open, democratic debate look like in the digital world. She works as a Future of Democracy Fellow at Berggruen Institute and a policy advisor to start-ups, governments, and investors looking to align technology to better serve the public.

She has spent 20 years working around the globe on democracy and security issues as a CIA officer, a White House advisor, the Global Head of Elections Integrity Operations for political advertising at Facebook, a diplomat, and the head of a global risk firm. She was a Researcher-in-Residence at Betalab in 2020-21 and a Visiting Fellow at Cornell Tech's Digital Life Initiative in 2019-2020, where she focused on technology's effects on discourse and democracy and taught a multi-university course on Tech, Media and Democracy.

Yaël Eisenstat has become a key voice and public advocate for transparency and accountability in tech, particularly where real-world-consequences affect democracy and societies around the world. Her recent TED talk addresses these issues and proposes ideas for how government and society should hold the companies accountable.

In 2017, she was named in Forbes' list of “40 Women to Watch Over 40”. She is also an Adjunct Professor at NYU's Center for Global Affairs, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she provides context and analysis on social media, elections integrity, political and foreign affairs in the media. She has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Brookings Techstream, TIME, WIRED, Quartz and The Huffington Post, has appeared on CNN, BBC World News, CBS Sunday Morning, Bloomberg News, CBS News, PBS and C-SPAN, in policy forums, and on a number of podcasts. She earned an M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

This episode was produced by Matt Perry.

Art by Desi Aleman.