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Air Dates: March 31 – April 6, 2025

We’re used to thinking of technology as politically neutral—the zeroes and ones of binary code that operate independently of partisanship.  But Marietje Schaake says that, increasingly, private technology companies are usurping the function of government and thereby posing a real threat to the health of Western democracies.

Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN’s High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of the European Parliament where she worked on trade, foreign and tech policy. She is the author of “The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley,” which provides insight into steps government institutions can take to protect their citizens from emerging invasive technology.  

On this week’s episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Schaake discusses the threat new age technology poses to Western democracies. “Tech companies, in mostly invisible ways, have accumulated enormous power without counterweighing power,” she said. “We need to make our democracies more robust to avoid further power grabs by unelected corporates, like Elon Musk, at the expense of the public interest. According to Schaake, these circumstances are not unique to the American political system, as big names in tech all around the world are starting to play a larger, unprecedented role in their political institutions. She said, “Millions of dollars are spent to lobby in Washington D.C., but also in Brussels, the hub of the European Union where tech policy is made.” Schaake says these large tech companies have global reach and are beginning to have more governance over our lives, societies and civil liberties.  

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public television listings for air times near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 2:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. and Mondays at 4:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at ������. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.