Marietje Schaake talked about the growing influence of technology companies and their impact on our lives, governments, and democracies. Drawing from her book The Tech Coup, she offered a behind-the-scenes look at how tech giants have quietly embedded themselves into nearly every aspect of society. Schaake took us inside high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians, revealing how technologies once celebrated as utopian innovations—from social media to artificial intelligence—are now eroding the very foundations of democracy. In her talk, Schaake also explored how we can reverse this imbalance of power. She shared bold, practical solutions to empower both citizens and elected officials, urging democratic leaders to resist corporate lobbying and reimagine their role as agile, forward-thinking guardians of the digital world.
 Marietje 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 European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.