The Tech Coup

The Tech Coup, Marietje Schaake. Princeton University Press (ISBN: 9780691241197) 2025.

Summary: An expose’ of how tech companies have seized power from government and the danger this poses to the public interest.

At one point last year, big tech firms accounted for 40 percent of the gains in the U.S. stock market. In the last few years, over 150 data centers have popped up on rich farmland in Central Ohio. It seems most residents only woke up to the significance of this boom when they learned this would more than double power demands on our power grid, leading to rising costs for “infrastructure enhancement.” Much of this has been driven by the tremendous resource demands of Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrency. And there are a number starting to ask how this high tech juggernaut has gained so much literal and cyber space in our culture. Increasingly, many realize a small number of huge tech firms are driving this tech revolution, wanted or not.

Marietje Schaake is a tech insider. As a member of the European Parliament between 2009 and 2019, she was part of an effort to establish guardrails on the burgeoning tech industry’s footprint in Europe. More recently, she moved to Silicon Valley to continue these efforts as international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. She is also an international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence. The basic message of this book is that these tech industries have engaged in a power grab. They have subverted government efforts to establish guardrails, even while supposedly pleading for them. This poses great risks to our democratic interests and to the interests of the public. And it is a plea for governments to assert their proper role of oversight to protect the public interest.

Schaake opens with how online technology, once a means of free speech, has been transformed into a means of surveillance. It even extends across international borders. Even the smartphones most of us carry are used to track our movements. How has something touted to be so beneficial, and in fact is, also become so dangerous. Schaake argues that this is a result of “the code” of these companies that resists efforts for external regulation. She then seeks to delineate the layers of our digital infrastructure, “the stack.”

Furthermore, the whole infrastructure has been turned into a weapon. “Zero day” vulnerabilities in code render all systems subject to cyberattack. Cyber trading of cryptocurrencies can make and unmake fortunes. Datamining can scrape all kinds of private data for law enforcement, a form of illegal search and seizure. And social media platforms combined with AI can generate huge and convincing amounts of misinformation. Meanwhile, the same tech industry seeks to frame the conversation as over-regulatory governments stifling the advance of new and beneficial technologies, even while tech company interests have supplanted the public interest.

The final part of the book is a call for international governments to reassert their role, not to stifle technology, but to ensure that it serves the public interest. This especially needs to engage the world’s four major digital powers: the U.S., the EU, India, and China. That seems challenging because of differing political situations and priorities. Finally, she argues for prioritizing the public. This includes curbing anti-democratic technology: spyware, databrokers, facial recognition, and cryptocurrency. She advocates for transparency and public accountability and the creation of public digital infrastructure.

The strength of this book is its analysis of how Big Tech has gained such a dominant influence. Likewise, as an insider, she offers great insights of how Big Tech maintains and extends its influence. The challenge is the role of government in protecting democratic institutions. It seems the EU has done the most. In the U.S., however, it feels like Big Tech has paid in the form of political contributions to avoid regulation. Furthermore, it is most troubling to see the selective vigilance over the weaponization of digital resources. We fight TikTok while actually utilizing anti-democratic technology. Furthermore, we are not preparing for cyberattacks.

Part of the challenge is the complexity. Perhaps a start is using the lens of the public good consistently throughout. The question, I think, is how to mobilize public advocacy, which the author doesn’t discuss. Such advocacy is proving effective on particular issues, like curbing datacenters, perhaps one of the most visible aspects of Big Tech. But what about those that are less visible?

Schaake’s book, nevertheless, offers crucial analysis of the whole industry and the dangers it poses. And pointing to the question of the public interest seems crucial. And that is a good beginning.