President Donald Trump’s early days in office portend a seismic shift in the tech policy landscape. In a whirlwind of decisive moves, the Trump administration swiftly rescinded the Biden-era October 2023 Executive Order on AI, unveiled a staggering $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure project, and directed the development of an AI Action Plan to “sustain and enhance America’s AI dominance.” With tech titans like Elon Musk playing a prominent role in the new administration, the stage is set for a profound transformation in tech policy.
Is a tech coup underway in the United States? What are the implications for democracy and global AI governance? Just Security’s Dr. Brianna Rosen sat down with leading expert and former Member of European Parliament Marietje Schaake to unpack these developments and explore their far-reaching consequences for democracy, accountability, and the global balance of power.
In your book The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, you highlight the unprecedented reach of tech companies into public life. What are the implications for democracy and the rule of law?
Without guardrails, transparency, independent oversight and accountability, we will see corporate interests capturing politics and state power towards their own objectives. Unfortunately, the synergy between Elon Musk, other tech CEOs, and President Trump illustrate what that looks like. It is a direct assault on democracy and the rule of law and needs to be stopped.
Anthropic CEO Daio Amodei recently asked whether AI will “empower more democracy or more autocracy.” What are your views on the impact of AI on political systems?
If there is one lesson from the past decades of digital disruption, it is that the rule of law is fragile and needs to be upheld if we believe it needs to survive. AI is a potent instrument for the abuse of power, and unfortunately the line between authoritarian regimes and democratically led states is blurring. I hope the fact that Amodei gave this warning about the likelihood of authoritarians’ benefitting from AI means he and other CEOs are willing to work harder to prevent the tools they develop from breaking open societies, human rights, and fundamental freedoms.
Is there a tech coup underway in the United States right now? What should be done about it?
Unfortunately, yes, and what we are witnessing may be going beyond a coup. Musk, with full support from President Trump, but without a democratic mandate, is not only taking over state institutions with a corporate agenda but actively breaking down the pillars of U.S. policy, checks and balances.
We have heard the (then-candidate) Vice-President JD Vance threaten Europe that the United States might not continue security guarantees should the EU regulate more of Musk’s companies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has asked President Trump to consider EU competition fines a trade barrier. Such prevalence of corporate interests over longstanding alliances is unprecedented and a low point in the United States’ standing and reliability around the world.
What does the tech coup mean for global AI governance? What governance frameworks are most promising at the global level or has AI governance failed?
Without U.S. leadership on regulating AI, an ambition that should start domestically, the global efforts to agree on AI rules will be weakened and more easily shaped by non-democratic governments.
Reflecting on your tenure in the European Parliament, what lessons from the EU’s regulatory approach should other democracies seek to adopt or avoid as they address the growing influence of Big Tech?
It is a mistake to imagine that regulation alone can solve for all the harms coming from tech products and services. The enforcement is often overlooked, and investments and the leverage of public procurement should be used to shape markets. Another lesson is that scale matters. With large tech companies’ market caps larger than many countries’ GDP, joining forces along the lines of shared values is critical.
Is it possible to address the tech coup from the inside? What challenges or limitations exist in embedding democratic principles — including legitimacy, transparency, accountability, and fairness — directly into the design of technology?
Building governance into the technology has at least two downsides. One, it empowers the already empowered companies and allows “the teacher to grade its own homework.” But it also overlooks the political nature of questions surrounding fairness, harms, and legitimacy. It is critical to go back to core questions about representation: who is at the table to make rules? Whose interests do the rules serve? What independent access to information and oversight exist? How are trade-offs decided? And so forth.
Regulation is often portrayed as impeding innovation. How can policymakers reframe this narrative and build unlikely coalitions of innovators and regulators who aim to “move fast and not break things”?
It is absurd that we have come to a point that democratically-elected lawmakers have to justify regulating. We have rules to protect people, national security, the environment, consumer rights, and fundamental rights for good reasons. While an innovative economy serves people, it is not the end goal of a government. I would love to see political leaders saying: indeed, sometimes regulation must curb innovation, so that we can have civil liberties or national security and indeed the rule of law itself protected.