Episode 2194: Marietje Schaake explains how to save democracy from Silicon Valley
This is the final episode of a trilogy of critical conversations about the digital revolution. Earlier this week, Gary Marcus explained how to tame Silicon Valley’s AI barons. Then Mark Weinstein talked to us the reinvention of social media. And now we have the former member of the European Parliament & current Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, Marietje Schaake, explaining how we can save democracy from Silicon Valley. In her provocative new book, Tech Coup, Schaake explains how, under the cover of “innovation,” Silicon Valley companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. So what to do? For Marietje Schaake, in addition to government regulation, what we need is a radical reinvention of government so that our political institutions have the agility and intelligence to take on Silicon Valley.
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. She is the author of The Tech Coup.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
The Case for American Power: Why Hypocrisy is the Price of Idealism
Obama as Gorbachev and Trump as Yeltsin: How America is Like the Soviet Union Before Its Collapse
Dr Stranglove 2.0: Silicon Valley as the New Trillion Dollar Military-Industrial Complex
The Handmaid's Tale Is No Longer Fiction—Welcome to the Brave New MAGA World of Trad Wives and State Fecundity
From Pigeons to Polyamory: A New Yorker Cartoonist's Fix For American Loneliness
How Lawyers Created a Can't Do America: The Tragedy of Too Many Laws and Not Enough Innovation
Enstatification Over Enshittification: America as the New China
Six Books, One Story: The Closing of the American Century
Women Lie Too: A Smug San Francisco Intellectual Cross-Examines a Fearlessly Authentic Florida Psychologist
Beyond the New Deal: How the Left Must Reinvent Itself in a Populist Age
Why Tech Billionaires Are So Angry: Elon Musk and the Gilded Rage of Silicon Valley
The Bell Curve Author Takes God Seriously: But What if God Doesn't Take Him Seriously?
Dignity Has Never Been Photographed: More Balkan Ghosts for our Indignant Times