Book Review: “The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy From Silicon Valley”
With the election of Donald Trump a real possibility in 2024, there are significant attempts to find someone to blame other than the Democratic Party and liberal elites over the last decade for putting in place policies half the electorate don’t seem to approve. And so, for many on the left, the culprit is clear: Big Tech: aka Silicon Valley letting anti-democratic voices sway the unwashed masses into voting for that Hitlerian aberration, Donald Trump.
As Rob Atkinson writes in the New York Journal of Books, the latest entry comes from former EU Parliamentarian Marietje Schaake, who now resides at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and holds that tech is unleashing “anti-democratic” forces. If one is inclined to be critical, or even simply skeptical of digital technology and the companies that bring it to us, this is the book for you. (Full disclosure I am president of a pro-technology think tank that receives funding form many of the companies that Schaake excoriates). For Schaake, democracy itself hangs in the balance unless democratic nations get their act together and follow the lead of the European Union and impose sweeping and stringent regulations and bans on the digital ecosystem.
