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- [00:01]
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Welcome to the People Power Politics podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. Hi everyone and thanks for joining us. I am Litia Gianetti, deputy director of CEDAR and your host for this episode. I am delighted to welcome to the podcast Leopoldo Lopez, who is a Venezuelan democracy activist and the co founder of the World Liberty Congress, which is a global network that connects democracy advocates and leaders from across the world. From 2014 to 2020, he was imprisoned for leading peaceful protests and civil resistance against the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Currently he's a fellow at the Wilson Center. Welcome to the podcast, Leopoldo.
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Oh, thank you very much, Lida.
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Now, we've invited you, as part of our ongoing collaboration with the General democracy, to talk about your recent article on democracy in the age of networked control. Now, of course, this comes at a terrible time for Venezuela. So the article, as I said, was published on the 1st of July. We're recording in early July. This is just week after the powerful earthquakes on 24 June. They've claimed thousands of lives and created enormous destruction. And on top of that, this has hit the country in a period of really significant political turmoil and uncertainty as 2026 started with the US military intervention in Venezuela and the removal of Maduro by the US Army. So, first of all, I wanted to extend my solidarity to you and all the people that are suffering through to the aftermath of the earthquakes. But I also want to ask you about your own opinion and understanding about the current situation in Venezuela. So what things you think listeners should be aware of, pay attention as the situation develops.
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Well, thank you very much, Lisian, and thank you for your condolences. And in fact, the earthquake has been tremendous, of tremendous impact. The number of lives taken by the earthquake, it's unknown today, but it could be on the tens of thousands. If all of the missing people end up being unfortunately dead, as is most probably the case, the impact on the infrastructure has been tremendous in where it hit the most, in the coast of Khat near Caracas in Vargas La Guayra state. And it has had a tremendous impact on the sentiment of the Venezuelan people and the soul of the Venezuelan people, because this is an earthquake that happens, as you said, to a country that was already suffering from a humanitarian and health crisis, a humanitarian complex sustained crisis that is itself the consequence of an economic cr, that is itself of an ongoing democratic and legitimacy crisis. So all of this is a compounded effect that the earthquake has shown and it has made very clear that unfortunately, Venezuela is not only victim of something that could have not been prevented, like an earthquake, but it's also a victim of what could have been prevented, which is the state capacity to respond to this type of impact. The Venezuela state, it's almost a failed state. There was complete absence of the presence of anyone representing the state for 48 to 72 hours. And that led to more people, unfortunately, losing their lives than what could have been the case. And unfortunately, the sentiment of despair, of fear, of anxiety that was. That already existed in Venezuela has gone to an exponential level. So it's a time of great challenges. It's a time of thinking through what's next for Venezuela. And this is not a rhetorical question, because what's next for Venezuela cannot be rebuilding the state and the country as it was, because rebuilding is thinking that takes you to. To what was in the past. So it's not about rebuilding. The real challenge of Venezuela is to build a new Venezuela, build the new possibility for a democratic Venezuela with a state that can actually respond to the needs of the people. So it's times of great challenge. I am structurally optimistic. I think that every crisis is also a window of opportunity. I hope that this becomes an opportunity to bring the Venezuelan people together in a way that we can dream and execute the construction of that new Venezuela.
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Thank you. And thanks for describing the situation so powerfully. I wanted to move to the General Democracy essay, which is in many ways related in the sense that the conditions under which this rebuilding that you are hoping happen are also the conditions in which the problem that you identify in your General Democracy article, the problem of network control. And we'll get into that exists, right? So we'll have to rebuild while also trying to create the infrastructure for freedom. So I would like to, first of all start by saying that you start the article with your own experience of imprisonment and solitary confinement to explain, though, how surveillance works in general on human freedom and also on our capacity to speak out, to organize. And that impacts also those who are not, as you have been, at the sharpest end of authoritarian repression. So to get us started and get a sense for the listeners who haven't read the article yet, what is network control and how is it different from the surveillance or the repression that unfortunately, we have known across all authoritarian regimes ever.
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Yeah. So the basic idea is this, that autocracies have sustained their hold of power because they control certain things about society. They control information, they control the money flow, the finances. They control the movement of individuals within A territory they control the communications and the truth and the perception of reality. So these are things that autocracies have controlled more or less effectively throughout history. But now we live in a world where this control is happening not just at the geographical level, not just at the ground human level, but it's also happening at the digital level. It's happening at a level where there are other considerations, other opportunities. And that's what I write about, specifically the opportunities. There are also other challenges, not just to countries living under autocratic regimes, but also for democratic countries. What does it mean that part of freedom today lives in the digital world? And if you think about it, a lot of our lives today live in the digital world. The way we communicate, the way we do transactions, the way we seek information, the way information is filtered to us, the way we connect, all of that, it's happening in the digital world. And all of that has barriers of entry, all of that has gatekeepers, all of that has economic interest. And of course, all of that has an opportunity for autocratic regimes to exert more control over society. There are some societies, some regimes, that have moved very quickly, especially after Covid, to use technology in order to increment the level of social control. China is, I think, the clearest example of how social surveillance has increased by the use of technology. From facial recognition to the social digital scorecard, to the control of finances to one shop, to the daily lives of Chinese, which is WeChat, that everything happens in a single platform, but everything happens with the site of the state over every single transaction and analyzing what could that mean for individual opinions and what could that mean for collective action? Especially if it means collective action against those in power. So that's a problem. If you live in an autocratic country and you are a part of a movement fighting for democracy and freedom, you face, whether you're in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, in Eastern Europe, you face similar structural challenges. How do you communicate with large numbers of people in a private way that can then mobilize? How can you move resources in order for things that you want to do, from mobilizing people to doing protests, to doing, you know, just different activities on the ground that will require how to move resources, because resources are many times needed for all of these movements, especially at the moments when you are jump starting a new cycle of protest, or when you're jump starting the organization for an election, when you don't have the moment of the spontaneous attachment to a wave that is growing and growing. You need to move resources. How do you Connect. How do you connect? Is a key question because the connectivity layers determine the level of freedom. So we can say, and this is true, that mostly all Chinese citizens have access to 5G Internet access. However, it's not free. I'm sorry, it's not uncensored. It is controlled, it is surveilled. So yes, there is connectivity, but it's not uncensored. And free connectivity, free in the sense of freedom. You can take this to many other cases. The article I wrote to the Journal of Democracy is what can we do in terms of this digital space, in terms of the technologies that would be available today for individuals and movements to be more effective in their drive to promote freedom and democracy? One of the things I speak about is about the importance of thinking about open source technologies as a priority. Because open source technologies are not controlled. There are no gatekeepers. And I will give you some examples of what I mean by this. And it can be a collaborative effort of many people contributing to improve that technology. If we think about resources, an open source, decentralized technology that can move resources without gatekeepers, without anyone blocking or deciding if that transaction goes through or not, is Bitcoin, not all crypto. Bitcoin is different than other cryptocurrencies precisely because it's open source and decentralized. If you think about the technologies available for communication, you find the same challenges through the World Liberty Congress that you mentioned at the beginning. That is the largest global alliance of freedom fighters and democracy defenders. We have members from 65 countries, all of them autocratic. We have come to learn that that access to communications platforms is not always available for the entire population. And sometimes it is taken away from those voices that are uncomfortable for the regimes. So I know many cases where regimes have asked large media, digital media corporations, social media corporations to take away from their platforms voices that are uncomfortable to them and they hear. So there needs to be an alternative to this gatekeeper problem that we see over and over when some of these voices in these platforms, when they are available, are taken down, and then connectivity, how do you connect people? So shutting down Internet is something you hear about every time that there is an election in an autocratic country. And I know you follow elections in Eastern Europe or you have seen it elsewhere as well, that there is always this shadow of they are going to shut down the Internet. And it actually happens, and I have seen it over the past years happen in different countries. In my own home country, Venezuela, it happened during our last election. So there are alternatives. And you can think, okay, what are alternatives to this. You can say Starlink, which is a great technological alternative to this. However, it remains to have a problem. It has a gatekeeper. I want to give you an example. In January of this year, there was an election in Uganda. Bobby Wine, a member of the World Liberty Congress, was a candidate and he was winning the election. And we knew that they were going to shut down the Internet, so we helped him to smuggle 30 starlinks into Uganda. However, the regime decided to connect to Starlink and they sent a request to Starlink to block Starlink services in Uganda. And Starlink complied. This happened the same week that Starlink opened its services for free in Iran. So thumbs up for what Starlink did in Iran and thumbs down for what he did in Uganda. The problem is not the technology. The technology is there. The technology solves the problem of communication. The problem is when you have a gatekeeper that decides. And this can happen with anyone that has control. If a government, an individual, or a corporation have the control as a gatekeeper of who has access to the technology, they will always have some filter of who should have access and who shouldn't. Sometimes the question is on moral grounds. So you can say I agree to that. Other times you can say it's for political reasons.
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And.
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But the problem is that when there is a gatekeeper, there might be moments, and this could have been the case in Uganda, where it just falls through the bureaucratic cracks and then the access to that technology, that could be life saving, or it could be a game changer in terms of the outcome of an election is taken away from the people. So that's what I write the paper about. It's just how can we think? First, how do we think about control? Who is controlling? If you think about you or anyone listening to this podcast today, we are giving a lot of our agency to corporations. We are giving to financial institutions all of our information. And with AI, this is going exponential. We are giving corporations more information that we even know about ourselves. And we might already be at a moment where corporations know more about our own lives and can do more with that information than even we can. So if there is an alternative to the way in which we engage with these technologies while keeping sovereign control of that information, how it's used and who gets to see it, that gives individual agency. And I think it will also be good for individual rights and democracy. So this issue of control in the age of digital network is one that has impact in autocratic countries and also in democratic countries. In autocratic countries, a lot of this technology can become liberating. In democratic countries, a lot of these technologies can become enslaving or at least constraining for individuals. Think about the level of. Of state surveillance that will be at the hands of any government today or in five years. The level of information. Imagine if a state has free access, uncontrolled access to everything that you are doing digitally. They have control of your life completely. And if there is an alternative technological solution that people in autocratic countries can bypass the state control that they have over many of these layered technological engagements that we have as individuals, it could be, as I said before, liberating.
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Yeah. And I think I found your way of putting it in terms of infrastructure. So the infrastructure of control and infrastructure for freedom quite compelling because I think it gives us a reading that makes understand how both can exist first of all, and how some bits of this infrastructure can be used either way. Right. For different reasons. So describe the challenges, especially of a world where the networks through which our life takes place, even our normal life, banking, communication, we are having this conversation through an online platform communication. They're personal political information. All of this takes place in networks. They're often subject to monopolistic control that are at the intersection between private power and state power and that we do not control. Right. So this idea of infrastructure and building a freedom infrastructure to respond and counter this control infrastructure, I think is quite powerful because it indicates a clear direction of action. Right. So we need to create the conditions for democratic resistance. But then I was wondering that the solutions there of course is the short piece and you just kind of give some snippets of possibilities. Right. Kind of people get debunked so their access to financial networks can be stopped by the state to cripple the capacity for resistance. And so maybe bitcoin is a response. So you give in a way the network problem and the technological solution. But I wonder whether thinking of freedom infrastructure only or mostly in terms of technological solutions might also be a risk, given how the tech industries are working, where even startups get bought up by big conglomerates and there is concentration of ownership and power. So is there a way of also thinking of more low tech freedom infrastructures that we should also be struggling to build and to preserve in terms of access to public spaces and to a community gathering spaces?
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No, it's great. That's a great question. I'll give you an example on connectivity. So there's Technology has two basic infrastructure challenges for individuals to access. You need Internet and you need a smartphone. Right. I Mean, if you don't have those, all of the apps that are being developed in Silicon Valley, Austin or in Estonia or anywhere, they're useless. So these are two things that need to be in place for the technological potential to be developed. So as we spoke before, access to Internet is key. There is a low tech alternative to this. This is one of several. This one is called Bitchat. This is a way of connecting people without Internet access, without cell towers, without access to Internet by creating a mesh network through Bluetooth between the different devices. So imagine you're creating a network that you connect one and another and 10 and 100 and 1000 phones and that creates a mesh, that creates a cover, a geographical cover of connectivity and people can communicate without having Internet, without having any other alternative than just the phones. And this is very low tech. It does require, and this is a challenge, it does require that people know that this exists. It does require that people know how to use it. There is a challenge there of getting to the right people, the right technology at the right time for the right usage. I have seen many, many technological solutions that are built for hypothetical cases that are never used by real people. So what we are trying to do with the World Liberty Congress is trying to close that gap by bringing the people on the ground with the challenges that they have with technologists and developers who might have great ideas, but sometimes don't align the ideas with the needs of the people. And that's one of the programs that we have at the World Liberty Congress, our technology for Freedom program that is precisely bringing together the developers, the technologists, the funders with the people on the ground, the leaders, the movements, the NGOs that can precisely identify what are the challenges that they are facing on a day to day basis.
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If you had to give examples of the challenges, because again, for readers who haven't read the article I just mentioned debunking, but maybe be good to have a bit of a menu of the technological challenges at points of friction that activists find that user, you know, through the network. And also in your own experience, where we do need to find solutions to get out of this control. So banking is one, as I mentioned. What else are they trying to find solutions for and what else are you helping to find solutions for?
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Well, as I said before, like moving resources is one. It's very clear that the. And there are challenges. I mean it's like Bitcoin as an alternative does face the challenge of how you can take Bitcoin and then off ramp that and make it local currency but in my experience with more or less hurdles, it can always be done. Even in the closest societies, it can always be done. So that's a permanent problem that we see. The other is just to communicate in a safe way. With encrypted platforms. We have seen the vulnerable vulnerability of speaking through regular phone lines and through just regular text messages, how that is then weaponized by the regimes. So having platforms that can relay messages privately is very important. And of course the regular platforms are good at that. There are others that are better and more secure. But I think WhatsApp and Signal and those regular platforms are at least I've seen that they are widely, especially Signal. We have been using Signal for maybe six years, seven years before it became even known in the US or in Europe. Because we had a use case because we needed this, because it was being weaponized, the communications was being weaponized by the state. Then I think that the AI potential is another huge question. One of the things that we are doing is we are training our activists and leaders in how to have their own AI agents locally hosted and that they can actually not just seek and process information when they are using AI, but that they can build things, that they can build websites, that they can build databases, that they can build follow up platforms. And it's been great to see how very smart, very committed democracy leaders that are not technologists have become great at talking to a technology that can translate your speech into code. And I think that that's a real revolution how speech has been translated into code. The barrier is not how to write the code, but the potential now is around the idea that you have, if you have a good idea and you can translate that idea into speech today with AI, that speech can be translated into code and build things. I have seen incredible things that are being done by different individuals and movements all throughout the world with this new that it's not just the AI aspect of it, it's the agentic. It's like developing agents that can go into your processing systems and just help you build things and do it in a way that it can become more and more effective. And what this does, and this is true for every industry, it is allowing people to concentrate in the things that matter most, which are the people relations. So if you are a leader of a democratic movement, if you're an activist of a democratic movement, what you should be dedicating 90% of your time is talking and organizing people. It's a people, people, people, focus, initiative. It's all about people. Whether you are taking people to the streets to protest, or whether you are mobilizing people to vote, it's always about people. And if you can take the focus, the energy of many of these people away from the cumbersome process of trying to get resources or building things, or imagine what it takes a year ago to build a website. It took a lot of time, a lot of code and a lot of money. And today it just takes a good idea, a good training, and that is just producing incredible outputs.
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So in your essay you focus on state repression, of course, but then you also note, and you've done so at the beginning of this conversation, that the technological infrastructure that allows for network repression is often produced, commercialized and owned and controlled by non state private actors. Who? Corporations. So a fear that I have is that the tech infrastructure, so the capacity for the repressive surveillance that comes with it, is being integrated into normal governance, not only in authoritarian regimes, but also in democratic regime. And this happens well before an outright authoritarian government takes power and then exploits the full potential of that. So here in the UK now, we're having a big debate about the role of Palantir, the Peter Thiels Corporation in the nhs, the National Health Service. And this is a corporation that offers governments the service of integrating data across domains in ways that make populations more controllable. That's their selling point, right? And not only are our dictatorships are investing in this. So, like, my fear is that these investments happen for reasons that might be reasons of governance, let's say, but once they are in place, that they can be used for repression. So the fight against authoritarian infrastructure, you make this clear at the end of the essay. And the fight to build freedom infrastructure doesn't start at the moment where you already are in an autocracy, but should come earlier. But what should the democrats do? Right? You and the people in your network have the experience of being in an authoritarian regime and experiencing the sharper end of this control. What should people in democracies do to avoid getting there, avoid these technologies being used in those ways?
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A
Well, I think at least being aware of the challenges that this has, and I am not a doomster in terms of technology, I think a lot of people, not a lot, but some people would answer that question with just a regulatory, restrictive approach to the technologies, saying we need to regulate. And I do believe that there needs to be some regulation, but I don't think that it's just about restricting the way in which the technologies are being used. I think that there needs to be a lot of effort put into how this can be. What are the positive outcomes of the use of these technologies? There are some hotspots in this conversation, for sure. How to take care of the well being and access of children and, and what type of exposure of children to certain types of information. How is education going to be impacted by all of these technologies? But I think that, especially with this tsunami of change that AI represents, I think that we should approach the conversation by. All right, this is a reality. This is here to stay. It's not going to go away. It's being used by autocratic regimes and democratic regimes alike. There is a global race for dominance in AI. And I think that the question is more how can we embrace it in a way that supports and strengthens democracy, rather than we just need to block it. I've been very surprised in conversations I've had with people who are very, very close, people who are in top universities in the US and Europe and top researchers or policymakers. And many of them are very against AI, but almost with a gut approach against what these technologies mean. Sometimes you cannot fight against the wind. You just need to figure out how to sail with the wind, depending on what direction the wind is blowing. And for our work, for the work of those of us who are fighting autocratic regimes, I think that this opens a huge window of opportunity to become more effective, as I said before, to reach more people and to do it in a more private way. But this requires training, it requires knowledge, it requires a network that can show other people the way in which this can be done.
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Yeah, and I guess the problem is not the technology itself, but it's who controls the technology. And I guess one of the fears that many have is this tendency for ownership, concentration. They concentrate power in very few hands. And then, yes, you can just ask that one tech oligarch to stop the use of that technology in that place and so creates these crunch points that are then difficult to undo. So we're coming to the end of the podcast and I really thank you very much for being with us, especially in this period and for your great piece on the Journal of Democracy, which I will put in the show notes so people can click and read it for themselves. So thanks a lot for being a guest in our podcast and thanks to our listeners.
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No, thank you very much. Thanks to you and to all of your listeners. Thank you and thank you for reading the article and any further questions, I'm always open.
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Perfect. Thank you very much. So I'm Lisa Cenetti, deputy director of Cedar and the host of this People Power Politics Podcast episode and be talking to Leopoldo Lopez, Venezuelan democracy activist and co founder of the World Liberty Congress. Thank you thank you for listening to the People Power Politics Podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. To learn more about our Centre and the exciting work we do on these issues around the world, please follow us on Twitter idarbham and visit our website using the link in the podcast description. Sam.