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- [00:04]
Maricha Shaka
It's also just like infrastructure. Roads, lighting on roads. You know, it's pitch dark, there are big cracks in the roads, trains don't run normally. Basic infrastructure that we take for granted in Europe doesn't even exist there.
- [00:24]
Podcast Host
It might be an impoverished region or a place of conflict, but it's not. It's Northern California Silicon Valley, no less, as described by Maricha Shaka. Maricha is the author of a new book called the Tech Coup. It's a book about how industry tightens their hugely profitable corporations and the fabulously wealthy venture capitalists who fund them are gaining the power to shape the destinies of nations, but how they also foster outsized levels of injustice and unfairness, even, it seems, in their own neighborhood. Marica is a former member of the European Parliament for the Dutch liberal D66 party. But since leaving parliament in 2019, she's spent much of her time in the heart of Silicon Valley, at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Centre and at its Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence. She's also one of four chairs leading the development of the first code of practice for the European Union's AI Act. And as well as being a columnist for the Financial Times, she's a senior fellow at the center for Future Generations. Her book is packed with concrete and compelling examples of the way that tech, in its pursuit of power and profit, is compromising democracy, civil liberties, the environment, and even national security. But the book is not a council of despair. It's also a call to action. Martin Maricha lays out proposals from revamping public procurement to banning cryptocurrencies and trialing AIs before letting them loose on the public. Of course, the new transatlantic era makes the tech coup even more challenging to confront. Donald Trump is headed back to the White House. He and his vice president, J.D. vance, ran campaigns funded by tech magnates. Those magnates will want to leverage US power and influence and block regulations on their industries they don't like, including from the eu. But Maricha insists it's not too late not too late to nurture an alternative model for technology, one that locks in liberal democratic values rather than one that capitulates to Silicon Valley to its arch libertarians, its techno authoritarians and its mythologizers.
- [02:47]
Maricha Shaka
No migrants more in. No Europe without Christianity. An alliance also with Russia.
- [02:57]
Podcast Host
Welcome to EU Scream, the podcast that.
- [03:00]
Interviewer
Guides you through stories coming from the eu.
- [03:03]
Podcast Host
We talk about the news a bit differently, and with people who really know what they're talking about. This is episode 111 with Maricha Shaka Author of the book the Tech Coup.
- [03:19]
Interviewer
Maricha, your book the Tech Coup came out in September, just a few weeks before the US Election. It was an election where fantastically wealthy tech overlords like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel put in huge money and resources to help tip the result Donald Trump's way. This was an extraordinary display of tech and power. So the timing of your book was prescient, if not oracular. Are you an oracle?
- [03:47]
Maricha Shaka
Well, no, but I did fear more and more power grab by the wealthy and the powerful tech leaders like Musk and Thiel and others. So in many ways, it's a logical consequence of not intervening in what I call the tech couple. But what's also happening is that Musk's role makes a lot of this power grab very visible. It's very explicit. Whereas in my book, I talk more about the more subtle, the gradual, the invisible ways in which companies acquire de facto power because of the technologies they built, or they use their capital to lobby and set up entire fields of thought, production and leadership around tech governance. The fact that they are overtaking the role of states when it comes to infrastructure and geopolitical decisions. So my analysis is not only about this very explicit and direct influence on politics that we see in the Musk Trump relationship, but it's also about the more indirect ways. But by and large, I think the urgency of making sure that our tech and other parts of our society are not governed by business interests from Silicon Valley becomes more urgent every day.
- [05:00]
Interviewer
Yeah. And your book, well, before the election, it was already making this point that big tech is off the leash, causing havoc, undermining the pillars of our democracies. You describe tech as metastatic or as having metastatic growth, as cancerous. Tough language. Have you gotten pushback?
- [05:20]
Maricha Shaka
Well, of course, leaders of tech companies are not warm to the feeling that they have too much power. They actually think and argue that they are the best defense of democracy, particularly vis a vis China. This is an argument that's really, really popular and well accepted in Washington by both Democrats and Republicans and of course, the Silicon Valley leaders. So from that angle, yes, people have said that. Any case for putting up more guardrails or rebalancing the governance primacy back to the democratically elected and accountable leaders is, is an explanation of why Europe has been lagging in innovative capabilities and why.
- [06:02]
Interviewer
We'Re going to be so vulnerable to China. This is the China narrative.
- [06:05]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, that's the narrative. So from that angle, yes, I've gotten a lot of pushback, but Actually, also from people in tech companies. I've also had a lot of positive feedback. I think there's two ways to look at this. Some people who are close to the fire actually feel a lot of unease. They recognize what I'm talking about. They know the kind of tactics and sometimes dirty games that happen within their companies, and they are struggling with that as individuals. I mean, a lot of the pushback against the worst outcomes of tech companies actually come from within. And so there have been a lot of people like that reaching out. And then regulators, politicians, heads of state have been reaching out to engage. So I've by and large been very happy with how it's been received.
- [06:48]
Interviewer
I like the sound of heads of state.
- [06:50]
Maricha Shaka
Well, yeah, to my surprise, I was invited by Chancellor Schultz to talk about the book with him, and that was great. It was also a live session before an audience. But, yes, there are governments and heads of state that are very keen to engage directly. And I'm happy to do that, of course, because I wrote the book to have impact.
- [07:09]
Interviewer
And did Shultz have one particular facet of your argument that he zoomed in on?
- [07:14]
Maricha Shaka
What I really liked about what he said was that you don't have to be an expert to say something about this. So he made the very helpful step that I also underline, which is everybody is entitled to talk about this, not just the engineers, not just the computer scientists that study at Stanford. But really, this is an issue, the way we run our lives, including the tech layer, that impacts people in the way they raise children. It impacts all of our national security. It impacts fairness in our economy, our civil liberties. So we have to step away from this idea that only the experts have a legitimate voice in this, which is a way to exclude people. And that obviously is not what democracy needs and also not what the tech debate needs. And I really liked how he picked up on that.
- [08:01]
Interviewer
Maricha, you start your book with what was happening 15 years ago. You are a newly elected member of the European Parliament for the liberal Dutch D66 party. There's turmoil in the Middle east, and tech seems to be part of the answer, the answer to sort of liberating people worldwide. Social media platforms are helping, for example, the Arab Spring to organize and gain critical mass. But you also see tech facilitating anti democratic repression. This is, to me, an important moment in your story, and it's an important part of the story that you tell in the tech coup.
- [08:40]
Maricha Shaka
Yes. So this confrontation with the reality of the struggle for more freedom, more justice and respect for human rights that I First encountered in Iran in 2009 and 10 was really a wake up call for me. So I know this is a while ago. So just to refresh everyone's memories, the narrative indeed, as you laid out, was one of Twitter revolutions, Facebook revolutions. The social media platforms were then much smaller, but they were being used around the world. Mobile phones had spread widely, and young people looking at trends and what everybody else was doing around the world were indeed also using these social media platforms to organize some dictatorships, like the one in Syria explicitly, for example, had tactically lifted a ban on the use of social media. And through this, people started using it more, but then were persecuted for what they had shared, who they had connected with, what they had done. And the fact that governments were able to hack activists, go after journalists, look at where little crowds were gathering on street corners to disperse them was a story that kept coming back. When I talked to activists first, those who had fled Iran and went to Turkey, without exception, they said, our emails are being read, our devices are being hacked. And I was like, wow, that's, you know, pretty serious. But I also was skeptical. I was like, really? Would, you know, on that level, not political opposition leaders, but ordinary citizens, would they really go as far as hacking their devices? And so I started to look into it and learned that indeed, monitoring tools, hacking spyware were being used in Iran and also in the rest of the Middle east by the powers that be. And to my shock and horror, these technologies were made by European companies and were not restricted. And so the whole idea that we had ministers almost universally at that moment condemning the repression, saying that the human rights of the people should be supported. You know, we even had President Obama at the time calling on Twitter not to perform an update so that the Iranian people could stay connected on the platform. I mean, it was really a lot of support for those people, for the movement, and also a lot of focus on the role of tech, but not on any responsibility vis a vis the exports and productions that were happening within our own societies and that continued unrestricted.
- [11:18]
Interviewer
I mean, this is very interesting because part of the point that you make is how some of these surveillance spyware technologies came out of Europe. One of the companies that was kind of involved in this was Nokia Siemens that you call out, you also call out other companies like Safran of France for negligent running of elections in Kenya. Now, when it comes to surveillance spyware and assisting repressive governments, this kind of begs the question, like, why wasn't more being done at the time to stop the Development and sale of these technologies by democratic governments in Europe.
- [11:55]
Maricha Shaka
Well, it's a question that I still wrestle with because I think so much time has been lost between then and now because this is a market that's still ongoing without the proper constraints. And spyware has now turned against Polish opposition leaders, judges, the President of France, journalists in Europe. So this is.
- [12:15]
Interviewer
And the situation in Greece, which is particularly bad.
- [12:17]
Maricha Shaka
Yes, Greece, Spain, Hungary, various countries around Europe have been caught with their governments using these tools against their own citizens. So I think initially the idea might have been that this is a tool that dictators use. Dictators are bad. You know, this is far away from our own context. We ultimately were able to put in place rules that restricted the trade to known human rights violators, but that didn't tackle the internal use. Within the eu, One reason is lobbying has been very severe against any restrictions around tech, including by a broad coalition of European companies. So I recall talking to the German business lobby that were pushing back against any restrictions on spyware, and I was like, but this is not about you. Why would you care?
- [13:09]
Interviewer
And so I think that's when you were an mep.
- [13:11]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, when I was a member of European Parliament and we were trying to adopt these rules restricting the export, we got pushback from, you know, wide coalitions of businesses. And another reason might be that intelligence services in Europe were already using this and just didn't want any restrictions that may negatively impact them. Because the narrative around this technology has always been this is to go after terror suspects, this is to go after organized crime. The narrative was never, this is to go after human rights defenders and to silence journalists. But that has been what's happened. And it's been well documented, well known, even long before the Pegasus project. Investigative journalism that really put this topic on the map for many people in the US and Europe. And so the business lobby and the intelligence interest may explain a little bit. Other than that, I can only imagine that some tech topics, including the capacities of spyware, are just beyond what lawmakers can imagine or know. Because it's crazy that actually without clicks needing to happen, so without the target having to fall for some phishing attempt or click on an infected link, not.
- [14:17]
Interviewer
Everyone is going to know that term of art zero click attacks. I mean, it's becoming more widely known. But that's what you're referring to, right?
- [14:24]
Maricha Shaka
Yes, I'm referring to the fact that initially there was still some step that the target needed to take. So click on an infected link or open some kind of attachment to an email. So that the software could run on their device. Now that's not even necessary anymore. And so the sophistication of this technology is probably beyond what a lot of lawmakers can imagine. And so, you know, that underlines the case for putting more independent expertise about tech in parliaments, in legislative context. But that's, you know, a side note. But really, I still don't quite understand why it's taken so long for more meaningful action. We did see the US Government, Biden government, last year put in place an executive order that prevents the US Government from buying commercial spyware.
- [15:13]
Interviewer
Right.
- [15:14]
Maricha Shaka
And they still have their own spying capabilities. That would mean that they don't even need commercial tools. But it is a very important step to dry out this market, to begin to set a moral standard by saying we don't want to foster this market, which also has a lot of harmful consequences. But of course, with Trump now being elected, the expectation is that this executive order will be annulled.
- [15:42]
Interviewer
So a key point you knock home in the tech coup is that tech firms everywhere are effectively unaccountable, yet they're becoming like shadow governments and assuming the role of the state in everything from welfare payments, management of utilities, to defense. Now, privatization of state and government functions is not necessarily a brand new thing. Right, but. But you argue that this outsourcing is far more worrisome than what we've seen in the past. You were already saying that before this election.
- [16:15]
Maricha Shaka
Yes. So what makes these tech companies different is the many functions that they hold. So gathering location data, gathering communication data, gathering search data, building profiles about us that are incredibly sophisticated and that can be weaponized against us. Gathering data that now becomes the ingredient for training large language models that allow for other AI applications, building infrastructure, scanning it for risk, deploying cybersecurity tools. So if you add it all up, let's take a Google, for example. They roll out undersea data cables. They have incredibly detailed information about each and every one of us, information that reveals things about us that we don't even know about ourselves.
- [17:09]
Interviewer
Right.
- [17:10]
Maricha Shaka
And they also are in a prime position to develop new AI tools with all the data that they've gathered. And so you can just see how these are not companies offering one product or a suite of services, but they are in positions of power and influence in a wide variety of places in our society. And all of their business models, algorithmic settings, data collection methodologies, profiles, et cetera, are shielded as proprietary information. And so as much as they know about us, there's very little that we know about them. And that makes the combination of power, influence, strategic nodes where they sit, and the lack of transparency and oversight particularly problematic.
- [18:01]
Interviewer
The EU has long agonized over its need for its own Silicon Valley. But before we get into that, tell me a bit about values in Silicon Valley that make emulating it so problematic. You know the territory.
- [18:18]
Maricha Shaka
Well, I'm struck by the romantic lens through which people look at Silicon Valley. So it's often seen as a hub for innovation, while it's also very much driven by money and sort of hardcore profit objectives. So the narrative is one of we're going to create opportunities for people, solve problems, connect the world to information and each other, democratize and so on. Whereas blitzscaling, very risky investments, competition at the cutting edge, you know, really being there to drive others out of business, putting out AI models that are known to be harmful and under tested just because the competitor has done it. So you kind of feel compelled to do the same. So really an overly optimistic view of what the technology will bring, a very self confident view of what companies themselves can do to restrict harms, to solve problems if they occur. A disrespect for government in the sense that they're often accused of not knowing anything about technology being useless, slow, bad at service delivery, out of touch, out of time. And so an attitude that really presumes a lot of privilege is what I've come to understand also from living there. Because if you know how the social inequalities play out in Silicon Valley, it's actually extraordinary. It's an extent that we would never accept in Europe and that wouldn't go well. All the service workers are basically day laborers. They get paid every day, everyone in the gig economy. So think about Uber Lyft drivers working day by day, working gardeners jobs, all of that. They're really. We noticed this as we moved from our apartment and were considering to sell something, you know, on like a secondhand kind of listserv. But then we ended up giving all our furniture away. The gratitude, but also sort of the despair really almost that we saw in people who we gave this furniture to, who we found through talking to the gardeners, was actually shocking to us, even though we had seen the social inequality. But it's also just like infrastructure, roads, lighting on roads, you know, it's pitch dark, there are big cracks in the road, the trains don't run normally. Education is incredibly expensive if you want good education. So basic infrastructure that we take for granted in Europe doesn't even exist there. And all this sort of consequences of some People getting very rich and others remaining very poor and having fewer options to rent or live or be just successful by working hard. Sort of the American dream is something that we don't see enough of in Europe, I think, and allows this overly romantic view of Silicon Valley to stay alive.
- [21:11]
Interviewer
There's one paragraph in your book about how you had an office at Stanford University just two miles from the parents of the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman Fried. He retreated to his parents house on the Stanford University campus after the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency platform. It's sort of an example of how close you are to this enormous wealth that also has this kind of academic veneer over it. Right, because he's on the campus. And yet here's somebody who's in the headlines all over the world every day as somebody who was mismanaging billions and billions of dollars in the most extraordinary way.
- [21:51]
Maricha Shaka
Yes. And two miles the other direction you have people who will be arrested for, you know, possession of marijuana, who will not be let out on bail to sit with their parents. So it's also a very unequal society. You know, in the case of Sam Bankman Fried, he at least faced trial and was held to account. My concern in the book is that often very immoral and unacceptable things happen at the hands of these tech companies, but there is no accountability. And so I think that that is the bigger problem, that sometimes our laws lag behind. And so even if something feels very unjust, like the use of European made spyware by dictators against human rights defenders. But. But there's nothing that can be done because the laws are not in place yet. But there's also just very direct and sophisticated evading of regulation in the techco. I talk about the case of Gray Ball, this software that Uber built deliberately to deceive law enforcement and oversight employees by spotting that if they may be looking for a ride in front of.
- [22:55]
Interviewer
A building, if like a law enforcement officer or somebody from the FBI is looking for a ride.
- [22:59]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, or the FTC for that matter, or the European Parliament for that matter. So they identified buildings where oversight bodies or law enforcement officials would work and assumed that people who would want to ride in front of those work there. And they created a whole different parallel universe in the app so that these people would actually never be able to get an Uber and experience the service as a consumer that might inform their opinion as a regulator. And so the whole idea that this is a sort of fair game between the success of companies and the ability of lawmakers to catch up is very much distorted by these kinds of deceptive and untransparent practices.
- [23:39]
Interviewer
I remember going for an interview at the San Jose Mercury News newspaper in Silicon Valley area many years ago and being asked, well, what are you interested in? And I was like, well, you know, regulation, globalization, and literally being shown the door. I mean, the hostility towards regulation, towards Washington D.C. let alone Brussels, that goes very deep in Californian Silicon Valley. DNA is kind of a hard to explain to people unless they've seen it.
- [24:11]
Maricha Shaka
I agree with you. I think you have to see it to really understand it. But also, you know, the flip side is also true. If you see the harms that happen in less privileged part of this world, more vulnerable communities, it's actually remarkable that that reality doesn't change the behavior in Silicon Valley because it's well known now it's reported that, you know, in Myanmar, Facebook became the platform to call for genocide. It's well known that there are sweatshops of people in Kenya that are doing content moder or the training of AI models and filtering out certain content. So it seems a bit of an island sometimes where reality of everything but the shiny offices and the engineering mindset and the VC mindset is just very far away.
- [24:58]
Interviewer
Well, let's talk about the VCs in the valley, the venture capitalists, and just to be clear, these are the people who bankroll big tech, the people with trillions of dollars who decide sort of who wins and who loses in business. Let's call them big capital. The VCs, these venture capitalists, these VCs, they say America is failing and then they say that venture capital is the only thing that can save American dynamism. And that's a bit like Trump. I mean, he's the one who says only he can fix things. And, and now Elon Musk and Peter Thiel with trump and with J.D. vance, the Vice President elect, they're in an unimaginably strong position after the last election, even able to put military development even more so into the hands of Silicon Valley. So we've just been describing Silicon Valley sort of as we know it. But now this world is even more powerful in some ways.
- [25:56]
Maricha Shaka
Yes, although of course Musk and Thiel don't represent everyone in Silicon Valley. They are these sort of radical libertarians who have had anti state ideas for a long time, even the United States, they believe that indeed sort of startup engineering model can do better at everything, problem solving, whatever it might be. And so we must expect less regulation to the extent that there was any. So the revoking of executive orders, the replacing of people like Lina Kahn with those who are going to really give much more room to companies.
- [26:34]
Interviewer
Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission and who has been a bit of a bet noir for big Tech because she's actually brought cases.
- [26:42]
Maricha Shaka
Yes. She's had a very articulate vision as an academic about how tech companies are violating antitrust rules and how the harm should be considered more broadly than just in the pure economic sense. So she looks at the harms to privacy, to democracy, and that has really pissed off a lot of people in Silicon Valley. And I think that's a broadly shared sentiment. But I'm interested in seeing how the sort of civil war between the different tech companies will play out with Musk not only supporting Trump, but really being his sort of governance whisperer. At this point, apparently he's at every table talking about appointees sitting on private jets where they eat snacks and everything. And I'm surprised that Trump tolerates him to be so close. And we have to wonder why that is and how long this sort of honeymoon will last. But certainly a lot can be done in a short period of time with appointees with a deregulatory agenda.
- [27:41]
Interviewer
And they know exactly what they want. They have an expertise about business and about big tech that perhaps other lobbyists might not have. And now these lobbyists, as you say, will be sitting on Air Force One and they're eating snacks with Donald Trump. I mean, what is this coming era going to mean for transatlantic tech lobbying? Is it going to be very different from what we've seen in the past?
- [28:09]
Maricha Shaka
Yes, I think it's going to be more forceful coming from the US Government. So already the US Government was pressuring Europeans on all kinds of things, data protection, et cetera. But I think if Trump adopts some of his promised trade measures, then lifting those will become a huge priority for Europe. Similarly, if he follows through with some of the worst threats around NATO and.
- [28:38]
Interviewer
Collective defense, how vice President elect JD Vance already has been pushing the EU around on tech regulation.
- [28:47]
Maricha Shaka
One of the most striking and bizarre and worrying comments that I've heard from the Trump camp is that of Vance when he threatened Europe with a US Pullout of NATO if Europeans would regulate any of Elon Musk's platforms going forward. So this kind of business lobbying from a candidate and now vice President elect is completely crazy. And it really shows that there is a conflict of interest, that we have to wonder what agenda comes first, that of the United States as a whole, or that of Elon Musk and his suite of companies.
- [29:26]
Interviewer
And as you say, I mean, the whole of Silicon Valley is not dominated by Peter Thiel and the likes of Elon Musk. Nonetheless, these libertarian forces, they certainly have a bit more power than they've ever had in the past.
- [29:39]
Maricha Shaka
They can leverage trade restrictions and security guarantees against a more favorable treatment of US tech companies, which I think we must anticipate. And that means that the enforcement of the Digital Services act, the Digital Markets act, the AI act, will be in question. Because if the pressure is high enough, I'm pretty sure that even European pride in its latest tech regulation will be vulnerable. And so we'll have to see how that goes. But that's what I'm expecting.
- [30:13]
Interviewer
Some of the regulations that the Americans have complained loudly about and for a long time. One of them, for example, is the GDPR. This is the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU's law that place limits on what organizations can do with personal data. That's why we get pop ups on our computers. But there's a good side to that because it limits what organizations can do with our data. And it means that our data can be erased in some scenarios. But we also know that U.S. tech, and Elon Musk in particular, loathe this Digital Services Act. It's the act that seeks to get rid of the worst content, for example, from social media platforms. So which one might need to be sacrificed? If you like, will there be a pecking order and should we keep some, maybe sacrifice others?
- [31:08]
Maricha Shaka
I don't know if there will be explicit sacrificing going on. I think it will be more like a deprioritizing, underfunding, delaying of enforcement. And I imagine also thinking about more strategic autonomy, less dependence on the United States, especially with a government that may not be as allied as consecutive US governments have been.
- [31:34]
Interviewer
Core to your book, Maricha, is sort of your optimism. And the optimism comes through. I mean, it's kind of got a happy ending in a way, is that Europe can still develop this alternative model based on transparent, accountable, sustainable, democratically governed technologies. And you're betting big on public procurement, the billions of euros in public money that governments choose to spend on the right companies for the public. So here we mean both hardware, but particularly software for everything from running offices, border control, Social Security, you name it. And right now, so many of them are still heavily reliant on US providers. Think of Microsoft, it seems to run so much. So how did you foresee Europe making this transition in your book and how might that need to be modified given the fact that Trump is now coming back into the White House?
- [32:32]
Maricha Shaka
The book is written with recommendations for democratic governments writ large, so not just for Europeans. And there's some regulation that I would recommend, but the bulk of it is indeed using the lever of public procurement much more deliberately for more security, more transparency, more public interest outcomes. So fewer lock ins.
- [32:55]
Interviewer
And when we say lock ins, you mean like long contracts that you just can't break?
- [32:59]
Maricha Shaka
Yes, contracts that make it very, very hard to move away from, but that also have consequences for safety, for example. So what we saw during COVID just to illustrate with one example, is that hospitals had not updated to the latest software suite because, you know, presumably their systems are still working fine for everyday activities. They have to choose between investing in more doctors at the beds of patients, especially during a pandemic, or in some latest software version. And they became vulnerable for cyber attacks because of the vulnerabilities that are then in the outdated versions. And so as a society we have accepted that our public institutions like public hospitals become vulnerable for cyber attacks just because they don't want to buy the latest software products, which is how these lock ins work. Once you are with one company, it's very hard to move out. It's taken up by the whole organization. People are used to using a certain service, but also these companies keep selling the latest versions, keep selling add on products, now AI tools and tricks and everything.
- [34:05]
Interviewer
So this is just writ large across corporate software.
- [34:09]
Maricha Shaka
It makes us all unnecessarily dependent, limits the choices we have. And I think public institutions need to be empowered to have better contracts, for example, better negotiating, more collective negotiating, so that they know how to get the best possible outcomes. Whereas now, because there's no harmonized approach to this, even local governments are not really in an empowered position vis a vis these billion dollar companies when they have to decide on, you know, what product are they going to invest in, what does it lead to? And it is becoming an issue. We had a warning from the authority overseeing financial services in the Netherlands that says our banking and financial institutions are too dependent on Microsoft and Google. If you listen to university leadership, they all worry about the fact that these private companies are providing all the services. It's hard to step away from that. Local governments have been hacked and breached because 80% of them was using one particular remote login service. So we see problems of this over dependence everywhere. And we need to really begin to imagine that there are alternatives that will have a better publicly anchored goal and that Governments are capable of changing that without regulating so just by the spending power that they have. And so I think that's just something that empowers and people should see that we're not just talking about regulation, because that's kind of like an. It's also becoming a bit of a tired debate where anyone who recommends some regulation is then accused of stifling innovation. And I do think it's going to be harder politically in Europe to regulate tech. One, a lot has been done, so we need to see it enforced and implemented. But two, the Draghi report, the Trump administration Trumpism in Europe itself will also mean that there's just less support.
- [36:02]
Interviewer
But if we're going to get governments and local authorities and organizations to buy alternatives that might be European software alternatives to build European muscle in tech, how do you get 27 member states to do that? How do you get countless local authorities all across Europe to do that? I mean, are we talking about a kind of Europe first approach to this? I mean, you just said that regulation is not exactly flavor of the month, so how do we get there?
- [36:31]
Maricha Shaka
Well, the security argument will have to be leveraged more forcefully. Regulation in Europe has mainly focused on protecting fundamental rights, on harmonizing between 27 different systems, and on the single market. So economic motives, the national security side, is really missing. And our dependence is also a liability when it comes to national security. So it's not just unfortunate or a bad thing that these companies get too much power. The dependence on companies and foreign companies is putting us in an unfavorable position vis a vis our own agency, our own decision making, and that dependence can be weaponized, and that's a problem. So I think using the national security angle more forcefully, and I believe that model contracts will be embraced by public institutions and local governments.
- [37:19]
Interviewer
Model contracts being, let's say you have.
- [37:23]
Maricha Shaka
To buy cybersecurity product. Like, what criteria would you have to take care of? I think some could be mandated, like transparency or data ownership questions, because I've heard of examples of public institutions outsourcing functions to a tech company. And then after five years asking for data for some kind of analysis or policy question, and then figuring out only five years later that that data is no longer theirs, is now in the hands of companies. And so those kinds of unintended consequences should be prevented. And at least public institutions and local governments should have the opportunity to look at these model contracts. They can still use their discretion to do it differently, but it should be more available. There should be more thinking about the power relationship between People who have to buy software and some hardware in these public institutions and the big multi billion dollar tech companies on the other side that are all too happy for the public institutions to be less knowledgeable, less empowered, because it allows them to keep selling stuff.
- [38:34]
Interviewer
What's so interesting to me about what you said is that we are starting to see the purchase of software and public procurement as a response to a transatlantic situation where the United States is not necessarily our ally.
- [38:51]
Maricha Shaka
That's right. It's not necessarily going to act in the interest of democracy. It may act in the interest of certain business interests or in some kind of anti democratic way which we all fear. But if you look at the appointees so far, their words about Russia and Putin, for example, their thoughts about Ukraine, then indeed the alliance is under crippling pressure and we have to get real. And my book is about the tech angle. I'm equally if not more concerned about defense questions, about the future of democracy writ large, about our ability to lead around human rights with the US absent on the damage that's going to be done to civil society and to critical academics. I mean, I think we're going to see very, very dark times. But my lens for now is on tech policy and there too we will see deep consequences for Europe. And frankly, we're in Brussels now when I'm here. It feels too much like business as usual, too much like we're taking steps because we're doing more than before instead of answering the question, are we doing what it takes right now Already when.
- [39:55]
Interviewer
Your book came out in September, things with Elon Musk were grim enough for Europe. He controls the satellites that are key to Ukraine's defense and thus our security too. And he was already threatening back then to withdraw those satellites unless he was adequately compensated for it. Now the world's richest man is about to go into the US government, so he becomes even more of a security threat in that regard.
- [40:25]
Maricha Shaka
We gave a lot of power to Elon Musk. His Platform X that has been an instrument to support this election outcome, besides the dollars that he gave to the campaign. But Musk is not the only one. It's very visible. Starlink is a very strategic technology indeed because it's used in the battlefield, because it may be the only way in which people in emergency situations like Ukraine can access the Internet. But there are many companies that we rely on. You already mentioned, Microsoft is a really good example that have developed digital infrastructure that are scanning it for risk, that are protecting it, but that are also waging offensive attacks. So cross Border cyber attacks in the name of defense, without a clear mandate, without clear oversight. So companies have become.
- [41:17]
Interviewer
And doing that on behalf of the United States. Microsoft?
- [41:20]
Maricha Shaka
Not necessarily. I mean, yes, we must assume, because there's not that much information about all this, but also on behalf of just defending their own networks. And this is not just Microsoft, it's also cybersecurity companies. All the big tech companies presumably do this, and rarely but sometimes information comes out about it. It really underlines also how we treat cyber so differently from anything physical. So if we stick with the war in Ukraine, we are where we are because the US has not wanted to put boots on the ground in the cyber domain. This is completely different. So at some point, a operation was revealed where in the name of the United States, attacks were waged against Russian targets. And then when a journalist asked, so does this mean a direct confrontation with Russia? The answer was no. And the only reason why the US can get away with such a different approach, the physical and the digital, is because the legal framework, the rules of engagement, laws of armed conflict, humanitarian law, human rights law, have not been explicitly adjusted, updated for how it works in the digital, digital realm. So in principle, of course, international law applies everywhere. But how it works exactly when certain thresholds are met, what the consequences should be is entirely unclear.
- [42:40]
Interviewer
That raises the question, if you kind of look a bit more long term, will Europe, will NATO ever have offensive cyber military capabilities? And will they ever be laid out, spelled out and funded?
- [42:56]
Maricha Shaka
Yes. And what will NATO look like with a Trump presidency? We have all these big questions, and the dependencies have made Europe very vulnerable. And so even if this is not something that people support, from a moral point of view, not having so much power in the hands of private actors, then certainly from a security point of view, they should be worried about this.
- [43:21]
Interviewer
I don't want to dwell on musk too much, but I think it's important. He is an example of one of these oligarchic billionaires who's already interfering in European public policy and in European politics. And it's important to lay that out. He's been supporting the neo fascist alternative for Deutschland in Germany. He's called the German Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz a fool. He told the former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton to go fuck his face. And now he's attacking the judiciary in Italy just because those judges there are doing their job. By assessing whether Giorgia Meloni's plan to send asylum seekers to Albania for processing is legal, he's suddenly very chummy with Giorgia Meloni, with that in mind, should any public authority in Europe still be on the X platform?
- [44:17]
Maricha Shaka
It's a great question. A lot of them have already decided to stop because they don't want to fuel Elon Musk's business model there. I'm torn. People are saying on the one hand, don't cede this space to the far right altogether. Others say you can't support Elon Musk and his profit, but also his influence by just giving it legitimacy, being on there, giving him the content and the connections that you give. I do think it's important that governments always have a public place online where they can broadcast information, engage citizens. Because I've seen examples where governments are only streaming on Facebook, for example, or only sharing things on X or other platforms. That to me is not workable because it actually pulls citizens into these commercial platforms if they only want to listen to their government. So that makes no sense. But broadly speaking, I want to just underline that Musk is not the core of the issue. He just makes a lot of it very visible. But when you look at companies like Microsoft, they too will in a very quiet way, but threaten with withholding investments if they're not going to get their way. They are very much involved also in shaping the tech policy debate. So not just offering services to governments, which they're also one of the leaders of, but also with an office at.
- [45:40]
Interviewer
The United nations, as you point out in your book.
- [45:42]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, I think that's one of the more striking examples that it's really missions of countries that are normally represented at the United nations and Microsoft. But it actually shows one, its power, two, its ambitions, three, how being close to governments, sounding supportive to under resourced projects like the UN obviously has very little money. So if a company comes with $5 million to spend, support clever use of tech in conflict zones or what have you, it will be appealing for the organization. And that's how it shapes global policy debates also through funding of academia, funding of think tanks, creating civil society organizations, funding civil society organizations. The influencing by wealthy tech companies happens in many more ways than meets the eye than the sort of direct lobbying that we know so well here in Brussels. But that is at least sort of fair game, right? Like lobbying. There are rules around lobbying. When somebody knocks on your door and says, hello, I'm a lobbyist, I'm here to share the position of my company, that's fine. Many groups and organizations lobby, including libraries, hospitals, just to make their points clear. But it becomes much more troubling when it's Very intransparent. And when we compare, once again state capabilities with corporate capabilities, because I've heard from governments, even pretty big governments, who say we can't field people, delegate people to every standard setting organization, multilateral initiative, big fora where decisions about tech governance in the multilateral sphere are made are just too many. It's hard to have the capacity, the resources within government, but of course these companies have no problem with the resources. So we just have to look at the various ways in which power is exercised. And I don't think that's clear to the average citizen.
- [47:38]
Interviewer
I want to go to cryptocurrencies and the tech coup. The victory of Trump was sort of a victory for crypto too. Crypto being this alternative form of payment using encryption algorithms. You can think of Bitcoin and there are others now. Pro crypto groups spent tens of millions of dollars to support Trump and Trump's allies in the election. Trump's own media company is getting into crypto too. And a lot of people I speak to in the EU bubble just don't seem to share a sense of alarm about crypto. But you're clear that crypto is good for criminal networks. It's good for ultra far right anti system libertarians who want to destroy the dollar and the Federal Reserve and other currencies. Have I got that right?
- [48:28]
Maricha Shaka
Yep. I'm very critical of cryptocurrencies and I even think nobody should just be allowed to call something a currency because it's misleading. Cryptocurrencies are not currencies. They are speculative products that indeed are used by some to create alternative systems that go against our financial institutions, our monetary policies, against any kind of oversight thereof. And that's how I interpret the supporters for Trump, that they are hoping that to get political, signing off on creating an alternative system. And this can really lead to shockwaves in the trust in the dollar, in the ability to have monetary policies in power relations like who is responsible for managing all of that value and risk in a different kind of context, where regulation doesn't apply the same way as it does to financial services.
- [49:22]
Interviewer
You write in the book that the crypto insanity must end. Is there anything Europe can still do? The European Central bank, for instance?
- [49:33]
Maricha Shaka
Well, I think everything can be done. They've been banned in China, for example. And so making it less legitimate and being very clear about what the difference is between a digital currency such as central banks are experimenting with, which are underwritten by institutions which fall within the rules and regulations of our established monetary and fiscal policies.
- [49:57]
Interviewer
And those central bank digital coins are really meant to kind of end run these other private sector initiatives.
- [50:03]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, probably, probably. Which is ironic, right? Because those who were initially thinking about cryptocurrencies were doing it really to evade central banks and others and now they may have inspired them. So I think there's a funny irony in that. But I do think Europe is doing more. There's a law around anti money laundering through crypto that is almost implemented. Mica, it's called. And hopefully the eye opening that will probably happen as a result of this integration of political and crypto interests in the United States will also help people understand what is at stake, that anything from more oversight to flat out banning is still within the realm of the possible. And it's kind of sad because I think people are opportunistic as well as consumers just investing in Bitcoin now because the value has gone up since Trump was elected.
- [50:59]
Interviewer
Hugely gone up. Now let's make sure to drill down a little bit into artificial intelligence, into AI In Europe, big tech, and in particular Microsoft and Meta and Google, they already are so advanced and wealthy and they have privileged access to models for developing generative AI. So this makes it very hard for startups to get hold of the training data to make rival models. So there's kind of a high barrier to entry here and there's every sign that these large tech monopolies can simply entrench their existing advantages in AI. Now Europe has its AI act, billed as the world's first comprehensive AI law. And you, Marita, are one of four chairs leading development of the first code of practice for general purpose AI models under the AI Act. These general purpose models are in tools like ChatGPT that so many of us are now using for speech recognition, image recognition, audio, video, pattern detection, question answering what are your key goals when it comes to this code of practice and how far can we get with rules and soft law, especially at a time when the incoming Trump administration and so many of the governments around Europe that are nationalist, populist, anti regulation governments are ready to contest any regulation on tech.
- [52:24]
Maricha Shaka
Well, the good news is that the AI act is adopted, so we don't have to worry anymore that it will be struck down because it's been supported by a majority of political leaders of the past term in European context. Now the implementation starts and that's the challenge. And this code of practice is also part of that implementation to spell out what obligations companies should sign up to. And it's still up to them to do that, to test their models and to prevent risk.
- [52:55]
Interviewer
So the Code of Practice will be indeed voluntary.
- [52:58]
Maricha Shaka
It is voluntary indeed. But it is only for a limited period of time, a choice to sign on or not. Because once the AI act is implemented, then of course it applies to companies that are in scope of the various mitigating obligations vis a vis the risks that their applications create.
- [53:18]
Interviewer
Some of the ongoing questions that are out there about the AI act. Will there be liability for AI systems that go wrong? Will Dakota Practice do more to make sure that real time use of facial recognition doesn't harm civil rights?
- [53:31]
Maricha Shaka
I don't know if that's the direction that the Code of practice is going to go into. We're in very early stages. It's an iterative and open process. So we've just put out our first draft that people can then respond to. There are around a thousand people that are part of these working groups representing all kinds of interests, people that are focused on AI risk, but also broader civil society. Companies, experts, academics, and they help us shape this Code of Practice. So it's probably not the best position for me to be in, to start speculating a whole lot. I've understood that there are already people who question my impartiality because of the book that I wrote. But of course our task is within the framework of the law and what the European Commission has tasked us to do. We are not endlessly going to be creative in what it is that we want to do. Our mission is very clear to make sure that there are practices and steps that companies that develop these models can sign up to to mitigate risk. And I think it will be a very important exercise. So we're very, very seriously working on it and I hope that it will have an impact.
- [54:40]
Interviewer
What we can do is look at your thinking about this. And I don't know how much of this would inform your approach to the code of practice on AI, but what you're pushing for in your book is a principles based approach. For example, making the so called precautionary principle in Europe the norm in tech and in regulation of AI. As a practical matter, do you mean sort of field trials, something analogous to what happens in the pharma industry, clinical trials, before a drug is let loose on the public, before an AI is let loose into the public sphere.
- [55:18]
Maricha Shaka
So what I want readers of the tech coup to come away with is that there's a lot we can do with existing rules and that we can learn from how we have managed to put up guardrails, mitigate risk, apply independent oversight over very complicated products or inventions before. Because right now there also is a bit of a resignation on the part of some people who think this technology is so complicated, so powerful. Are we not too late? Is this not a mission impossible? And to those people I want to say, no, it's not too late, it's not a mission impossible. And we can use steps that are already anchored in European law today. And that's why I point to the precautionary principle, which it's not a perfect model. There's a lot of concern about what impact it's had in the past. But the idea is that if, but if there are new innovations about which the broader impact and potential harm are unknown to broader society, for example, or to safety for that matter, that there would be a pause before it can be released into society, onto the market. And currently that pause doesn't exist. Actually, AI companies are rushing ahead, even discarding their own risk assessments just because otherwise the competitor is going to be alone out there. So there's enormous acceptance of experimentation and risk taking with US societies because these models are being pushed out. They are more unpredictable than many other products or services that are out there, even by their own designers. Like people are excited about the fact that they don't know everything that these models are going to do. In fact, there's heated debate about how quickly are they going to be able to more independently operate. Might people lose control over these models? By when would we lose control over these models? What risks does that entail?
- [57:13]
Interviewer
And I think people secretly want to.
- [57:15]
Maricha Shaka
Live in the Matrix, maybe, who knows?
- [57:17]
Interviewer
I mean, there's this kind of like, I don't know, the public has been so primed by Hollywood and by sci fi fantasy that there's almost like this weird naive curiosity about what that would be like. I mean, you must be joking. It's totalitarianism.
- [57:32]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, well, I mean, this sort of blind trust I don't think serves as well. And again, we have to acknowledge that the interests of the companies pushing this and us that this is being pushed onto are not the same. And certainly when you're a democratic government, you simply have different objectives, different trade offs to be made, different responsibilities to take care of, just pleasing the shareholder and being faster than the competitor or just, you know, innovating to the next model. So the idea to create a little bit of time and public interest assessment which can be done in a confidential context. I'm not saying that these models should be put out in society for people to scrutinize, because one that would Be very hard. Two, I understand the competitive disadvantage from that for companies, but to have a process by which the risk assessment is done in the public interest before a green light to release makes total sense to me. And that is indeed somewhat how clinical trials work or rules around clinical trials that prevent pharma companies from saying we have something new, go ahead and use it and we'll learn who falls over or who stays up. I mean that's just not the level of experimentation that we typically accept.
- [58:47]
Interviewer
That's something that Europe could do.
- [58:49]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, for sure.
- [58:51]
Interviewer
Could that be introduced into an updated eu?
- [58:54]
Maricha Shaka
I don't even think it needs to be updated. It's just a matter of invoking it and using it more actively. But there are many people thinking about creating what some sort of AI policy nerds would refer to as friction. So more assessment time slams on the brake between an actual invention in a sort of lab context and making it available to everyone, either through open models or on the market for applications. I see a lot of thinking around this and I'm pretty sure that the kind of free hand that AI companies have now will not be forever irrespective of the AI Act. So even in the United States, even under Trump, I'm sure that there will be restrictions because this, it won't be sustainable.
- [59:42]
Interviewer
Perhaps there'll be some like major accidents, there could be lawsuits in the United.
- [59:48]
Maricha Shaka
States, obviously a lot gets regulated through the courts.
- [59:52]
Interviewer
Right. So eventually we could move to a world where there would be this kind of Pre assessment before AIs are.
- [59:58]
Maricha Shaka
Yeah, and whether it'll be fast enough, whether it'll be enough remains to be seen because of course the push and the lobby by a lot of these big tech AI companies is give us a free hand. Otherwise China will win this competition and Europe by regulating, is shooting itself in the foot. Will never compete, will never innovate enough. We'll never enjoy the fruits of AI. That's kind of the.
- [60:19]
Interviewer
Of course the precautionary approach sounds good and the friction that might be introduced. I do get that. But wouldn't this really only work in a regulatory environment that hasn't already been co opted by big tech interests and let's say kind of neoliberal Chicago school ways of thinking about regulation. I mean take the GDPR regulation. We know full well that that was co opted by Google, among others, to strengthen its position in advertising. So one could ask how effective was that really at the end of the day? And I fear that AI makers would kind of be able to buy test outcomes, test Outcomes that are probably certified by some economic consultancy or other. Any rules that tech companies end up abiding by will probably be the ones that they've written themselves. And given half a chance, these companies tend to create their own reality. But you think that can be overcome?
- [61:16]
Maricha Shaka
I see a small window now that on the one hand there is unprecedented focus on risk of AI. So yes, there's a lot of debate about what risk is more important, more urgent, medium term, short term, long term. It's a heated debate within the AI community, but no one disputes that it's a risky technology that can actually become more harmful if it's not steered, governed. Well, I would imagine that because there is so much focus on risk that actually the companies will also want to build trust not just by saying trust us, but by having more independent processes. So I can see evolution where having oversight actually benefits the trust in products. And so that could be a win win. Two, if there's indeed so much at stake, which pretty much every AI computer scientist warns for, then these risks will probably implode more aggressively in unregulated spaces.
- [62:20]
Interviewer
On this question of kind of where regulation should sit if we're going to even have half a chance at reversing the tech coup, the name of your book, I can't help but think the only real way out of the tech coup is hard power to make big tech understand that the regulator is in the driving seat and that public interest is the direction of travel. And by hard power that means states and regulators really getting the upper hand with injunctions. Cease that harmful behavior immediately. Breakups to bring baymas like Google back down to a governable size and full liability so they pay for the damage that they cause on the market and not letting any sort of processes be captured by industry.
- [63:08]
Maricha Shaka
Yes. So I think that reclaiming the primacy of democratic governance should be a cross cutting policy issue in all democracies vis a vis tech companies. So this is really about regaining control, lessening the dependence, making sure that indeed there's risk, mitigation, liability, accountability at the end of the, the day. And I think it's about being principled, but if you want to call it, you know, hard approach. Yes. I think what's clear here is that the rule of law and the ability to democratically govern the digital aspects of our lives, which are now entangled everywhere, is at stake and it will become harder and harder with every day that we allow the market to prevail over the public interest. So yes, it's urgent and it needs to be A process that leads to actual accountability, not self governance, not statements of principle or ethics or what have you.
- [64:04]
Interviewer
And talking about reclaiming power and democratic governance, there's been a lot of comment for some years actually about how this alliance between tech and government, this de facto merger of political power and personal profit, how it all adds up to sort of a new oligarchy. But this is about way more than some cynical billionaire freelancer just taking advantage of their position to cash in. This close cooperation between big business and the media in alliance with an extreme right. It's not unprecedented if you think about the 1920s and the 1930s and the relationship of big business and media with the Nazis. Do you think that's a useful parallel?
- [64:50]
Maricha Shaka
I think it's always useful to learn from history, but it shouldn't distract us from an intellectually honest assessment of the present. I feel like sometimes the entrenchment also in the AI debate, for example, between those who look at long term risks and those who look at immediate term risks, is almost paralyzing because people end up wanting to see a confirmation of the position that they've taken instead of looking at how the technology actually evolves. And maybe we have to focus on different things altogether. So sure, some of the elements of what is happening now with the oligarchic tendencies, with the excessive power of companies, has happened in the past. Regulatory steps have followed in the past. But if you want to point to the 30s, then also World war followed. So I do fear that we are up for a very volatile, confrontational, dangerous time. And when I say dangerous, I mean for all those foundational principles and values that make our societies free. So democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for fundamental freedoms, oppressive freedom, et cetera. And tech companies, despite their beautiful words, have not proven to be on the side of defending democracy, and we shouldn't assume they are. And therefore, indeed we need accountable and independently verifiable rules and oversight.
- [66:21]
Interviewer
Maricha1 mega trend we're seeing is the demand for more and more storage and processing power for artificial intelligence, for large language models. ChatGPT, OpenAI, Gemini by Google, Claude by Amazon, llama by Meta Talk of explosive demand for hyperscale data centers. And they use land, electricity, water, sometimes in very, very large quantities. And in your book you write about companies in your country, the Netherlands, that had been lobbying for land to build these centers, and these companies seem to have hidden their ultimate owner's identity from the public. What was going on here?
- [67:02]
Maricha Shaka
So the whole dealings with data centers and the process of getting licenses Applying some kind of oversight over that process is incredibly difficult from a democracy point of view. On the one hand we saw in the Netherlands, but this is no different for other places around the world, the United States, northern Europe at large. That part time city councillors have to go through tens of thousands of pages of optimally pitched whispered by the top legal teams of these tech companies, you know, consultants being hired to make these best possible presentations that are out there. And these part time city councillors have to then make a decision about giving a green light or thumbs down to these proposed hyperscales. And what's worse is indeed that tech companies typically, so this is a trend, not an incident, do not do the bidding, showing their true identity. So in the case of the Netherlands, they set up something called polder networks with the sole purpose of doing this bidding and of shielding the true identity of big tech companies. And I see this as fundamentally anti democratic behavior that makes scrutiny of whether it's desirable to give away so much renewable energy to one player to allow for these big black blocks of buildings in agriculture, land in the landscape, in people's backyards, essentially in polders, which were.
- [68:28]
Interviewer
Artificially created land in the first place, created where there'd been water. In the Netherlands.
- [68:33]
Maricha Shaka
That's right. And the Netherlands is an interesting example because it's one of the most densely populated countries in the world. And what you see in practice is that these decisions are made at the very local level, but it doesn't add up to one strategy. So the city of Amsterdam has put a moratorium on adding more data centers.
- [68:49]
Interviewer
Within its borders, as has Dublin.
- [68:52]
Maricha Shaka
I think it's happening increasingly. But if the town next door doesn't, then these companies still have an opportunity. And if on the European level, for example, there's no coordination, we will see things as we witnessed after ultimately the city council in Sebolde, the Netherlands, Polder struck down the application by what turned out to be Meta. Two weeks later, the hyperscale was announced in Denmark. So these companies are just shopping around for these licenses. And the problem is our electricity grids already can't cope. Water use is a big issue, especially in dry and warm states in the United States where families will have to ration the use of water. But these tech companies need endless amounts. And what's even worse is that there is no standard or obligation to report or measure resource use. In one way, we're always talking about.
- [69:46]
Interviewer
How digital technologies are vital to addressing the climate crisis. Right? This is a talking point for prime ministers and policymakers, but data centers are an example of how the truth is way more complicated. Cloud computing now has a larger carbon footprint than the airline industry, and this seemingly insatiable appetite to run data centers raises all kinds of questions. How does the digital world really interface with dealing with the climate crisis?
- [70:16]
Maricha Shaka
Yes, and those questions are becoming more urgent. And tech companies are now coming back to their own promises of two, three years ago because their drive to focus on AI is greater than their commitment to their sustainability pledges of two, three years ago. And so reporters and governments and anyone who cares about this in civil society is scrambling to understand what is the total use of water? What is the use of water per data center? What is the total electricity use? What is the electricity use per data center? And the fact that this is done in such a deliberately intransparent way again harms healthy democratic decision making. A public debate about who wants this, what they need, and whether that is good for the society rather than for the one company.
- [71:09]
Interviewer
That's it for this episode, which was.
- [71:11]
Podcast Host
Made in partnership with the center for Future Generations. You can find out more about the Center's work and their upcoming events at cfg. EU EU screams nonprofit journalism and supported by listener donations, partnerships and by advertising. For more details and for more EU Scream, visit eu scream.com I'm James Kantor.
- [71:36]
Interviewer
Thanks for listening.