We’re used to thinking of technology as politically neutral—the zeroes and ones of binary code that operate independently of partisanship.  But Marietje Schaake says that, increasingly, private technology companies are usurping the function of government and thereby posing a real threat to the health of Western democracies. 

Schaake is a non-resident 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 the European Parliament where she worked on trade, foreign and tech policy. She is the author of “The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley,” which provides insight into steps government institutions can take to protect their citizens from emerging invasive technology.