“The growing power of digital technologies, especially AI, requires urgent innovation in democratic governance to counterbalance corporate influence. Instead of opposing regulation, we must uphold human rights, protect democracy, and support the development and deployment of technology for the common good. This book offers an essential reflection in this regard.”—Yoshua Bengio, Université de Montréal and Mila-Quebec AI Institute“A thorough and necessary explanation of the parade of policy failures that enshittified the internet—and a sound prescription for its disenshittification.”—Cory Doctorow, author of The Internet Con and Red Team Blues“Marietje Schaake is one of the most acute contemporary observers of digital technology. In The Tech Coup, she explains how the tech industry has escaped democratic oversight despite the many problems it has created for modern societies. She alerts us to critical problems and points to some ways out of them.”—Francis Fukuyama, author of Liberalism and Its Discontents“A twenty-first century Tocqueville, Schaake looks at Silicon Valley and its impact on democratic society with an outsider’s gimlet eye. She unflinchingly shows how technologies like AI tip the scales of power and justice threatening our freedoms, values, and rights. The Tech Coup is an essential roadmap for deploying policy innovation to guard the public interest and reinvigorate democracy.”—Alondra Nelson, Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab, Institute for Advanced Study“A must-read from a former European lawmaker turned Silicon Valley expert! Marietje Schaake pulls together the different strands that we now call Big Tech, from chips and satellites to addictive design and virality to, more importantly, how its business model —surveillance for profit—created the dystopia we are living in today. Marietje exposes the unchecked, corrosive power that is undermining democracy, human rights, and our global order. She rightfully calls it the ‘tech coup.’”—Maria Ressa, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 and author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator