"The Tech Coup" is a Brilliant New Book That Describes How the Tech Industry Captured Government

My guest today, Marietje Schaake, is the author of a brilliant new book, The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley. The book explains how the tech industry has effectively captured government, assuming many of the functions traditionally held by governments, but without the oversight inherent in democratic governance. This includes areas like national security, domestic functions, and even the maintenance of democracy itself.

Marietje Schaake is an old friend of mine and a former member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands. We begin our conversation by discussing her experience leading the EU's election observation mission in Kenya in 2017, when a faulty French voting technology company disrupted the election with serious political consequences. We then move on to examine the tech industry's role in supplanting government in the national security realm, and why Elon Musk's alliance with Donald Trump is so potentially dangerous for democracy.

The Tech Coup is easily one of the best books I've read this year. It presents a compelling argument for why democracies should push back against the growing influence of the tech industry—and how they can do so.

Here is my conversation with Marietje Schaake, a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and the Institute for Human-Centered AI, and the author of The Tech Coup.