From the insider who—according to The New Yorker—offers a
“forceful critique…of Big Tech’s steady erosion of democracy,”
and what must be done to stop it

Over the past decades, under the cover of “innovation,” technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. Facial recognition firms track citizens for police surveillance. Cryptocurrency has wiped out the personal savings of millions and threatens the stability of the global financial system. Spyware companies sell digital intelligence tools to anyone who can afford them. This new reality—where unregulated technology has become a forceful instrument for autocrats around the world—is terrible news for democracies and citizens.



In The Tech Coup, Marietje Schaake offers a behind-the-scenes account of how technology companies crept into nearly every corner of our lives and our governments. She takes us beyond the headlines to high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians to show how technologies—from social media to artificial intelligence—have gone from being heralded as utopian to undermining the pillars of our democracies. To reverse this existential power imbalance, Schaake outlines game-changing solutions to empower elected officials and citizens alike. Democratic leaders can—and must—resist the influence of corporate lobbying and reinvent themselves as dynamic, flexible guardians of our digital world.



Drawing on her experiences in the halls of the European Parliament and among Silicon Valley insiders, Schaake offers a frightening look at our modern tech-obsessed world—and a clear-eyed view of how democracies can build a better future before it is too late.

Marietje Schaake is international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and author of  The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (Princeton University Press; Sept 2024).

Between 2009 and 2019, she served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs, and technology policies. 

Marietje writes a monthly column for the Financial Times and serves on the UN’s AI Advisory Body. She is an (Advisory) Board Member with a number of non-profits including MERICS, ECFR, ORF and AccessNow.

"both alarming and hopeful" and praises Schaake, for writing with "hard-won experience and clear-minded intelligence."

Complete Review

"Compelling… both evidence-based and instructional. Schaake deftly tells sobering stories of tech interference in elections, reveals how dictators use surveillance technologies to spy on their citizens and lets readers in on the boardroom shenanigans of Silicon Valley executives… Schaake’s book is a valuable guide to preserving our democratic institutions.”

Must-read books for a big election year. See Link

Contact:
✉️ Ellen van der Kroft
marietje.ellen@gmail.com

Media contact:
✉️ Aileen Boyle, Audere Media
Aileen@auderemedia.com