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International Development

BOOK TALK | The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

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On Wednesday, October 27 at 10 am Pacific Time, please join Andrew Grotto, Director of Stanford’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance, for a conversation with Jacob Helberg, senior adviser at the Stanford Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to discuss his newly released book "The Wires of War:  Technology and the Global Struggle for Power" - an urgent and groundbreaking account of the high-stakes global cyberwar brewing between Western democracies and the autocracies of China and Russia that could potentially crush democracy.

From 2016 to 2020, Jacob Helberg led Google’s global internal product policy efforts to combat disinformation and foreign interference. During this time, he found himself in the midst of what can only be described as a quickly escalating two-front technology cold war between democracy and autocracy.

On the front-end, we’re fighting to control the software—applications, news information, social media platforms, and more—of what we see on the screens of our computers, tablets, and phones, a clash which started out primarily with Russia but now increasingly includes China and Iran. Even more ominously, we’re also engaged in a hidden back-end battle—largely with China—to control the Internet’s hardware, which includes devices like cellular phones, satellites, fiber-optic cables, and 5G networks.

This tech-fueled war will shape the world’s balance of power for the coming century as autocracies exploit twenty-first-century methods to re-divide the world into twentieth century-style spheres of influence. Helberg cautions that the spoils of this fight are power over every meaningful aspect of our lives, including our economy, our infrastructure, our national security, and ultimately, our national sovereignty. Without a firm partnership with the government, Silicon Valley is unable to protect democracy from the autocrats looking to sabotage it from Beijing to Moscow and Tehran. The stakes of the ongoing cyberwar are no less than our nation’s capacity to chart its own future, the freedom of our democratic allies, and even the ability of each of us to control our own fates, Helberg says. And time is quickly running out.


Praise for “The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power”: 

“An analytical tour de force on the rapidly increasing challenge of techno-authoritarian nations to our national security, our economy, and our democracy.” —President Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States

  

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The Administrative State of Content Moderation

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evelyn douek

In this talk, Evelyn Douek argues that the stylized picture of content moderation that dominates academic, public and regulatory discourse needs reframing. In this picture, content moderation is a process in which social media platforms write legislative-style substantive rules and apply them in individual cases. This standard picture of content moderation is a striking analogue to offline judicial adjudication of speech rights and, as a result, leads regulators and scholars to assume that the best way to vindicate speech interests online is through the kind of ex post individual review provided by courts in First Amendment cases.

But this assumption is mistaken. The most important decisions about content moderation are ex ante and systemic. These decisions are made by a wide range of actors and institutions that determine how speech flows through platforms and they promote multiple goals of governance, not merely individual justice. To make content moderation as a whole accountable, and not merely a narrow slice of it, the standard picture needs to be expanded and online speech governance needs to be made more ex ante and systemic. This presentation outlines the standard picture of content moderation, what it misses, and how regulators should therefore borrow from the tools and principles of the administrative state instead when thinking about how to rein in platforms and resist the allure of First Amendment analogies.

Evelyn Douek is an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, Senior Research Fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and Visiting Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project at Yale Law School. She studies online speech regulation and platform governance. Before coming to Harvard to complete a Master of Laws, Evelyn clerked for the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, the Hon. Justice Susan Kiefel, and worked as a corporate litigator. She received her LL.B. from UNSW Sydney, where she was Executive Editor of the UNSW Law Journal.
 

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Evelyn Douek

Technology and Geopolitics: EU Proposals for Regulating Rights, Security and Trade

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The future of technology policy in Europe will be affected by growing nationalism and protectionism, cyber and national security threats, and great power rivalries. The Program on Democracy and the Internet invites you to a technology policy discussion led by International Policy Director, Marietje Schaake. Join us on September 16th from 9 AM - 12 PM PST (6 PM - 9 PM CET), as we dive into conversations on EU legislative packages, digital trade rules, and cybersecurity & geopolitics. We hope to develop a more precise understanding of how the EU and its allies can collaborate to create compatible technology standards, build more resilient supply chains, and address novel opportunities and risks presented by emerging technologies.This event is organized by the Program on Democracy and the Internet (part of the Cyber Policy Center and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society) and co-sponsored by the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

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Marietje Schaake Included in POLITICO’s Tech 28: Class of 2021

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POLITICO has announced their annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s tech revolution. In addition to an overall No. 1, the list is divided into three categories — rulemakers, rulebreakers and visionaries — each representing a different type of power. The Cyber Policy Center's Marietje Schaake is included on the list as a visionary and "voice to listen to on both sides of the Atlantic."

From the announcement:

The 42-year-old Dutch native has become a leading voice of European philosophy on how to regulate technology, especially in the U.S., where she’s been teaching at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center since leaving European politics.

Her message — that the internet’s early leaders have grown into all-too-dominant behemoths unable to subdue their own vices and are violating human rights — might have seemed out of whack in the U.S. a few years ago. But it has since become mainstream, in part thanks to Schaake’s work to reshape the American conversation on technology and inject some of Europe’s criticism on the sector.

In Europe, too, Schaake’s star keeps rising and rising. Once one of Brussels’ most visible politicians, she has now turned her attention to taming algorithms and the growing issue of cyber threats. In 2019, she launched the CyberPeace Institute in Geneva, a group focused on getting European policymakers to care about the human victims of cyberattack.

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Marietje Schaake

International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center
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The Cyber Policy Center Turns Two

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Marietje Schaake to Join Stanford Cyber Policy Center and Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in Dual Policy Roles

Marietje Schaake to Join Stanford Cyber Policy Center and Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in Dual Policy Roles
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POLITICO’s annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s tech revolution includes the Cyber Policy Center's Marietje Schaake. The list is divided into three categories — rulemakers, rulebreakers and visionaries — each representing a different type of power.

New Book From Shelby Grossman of Stanford Internet Observatory

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Property rights are important for economic exchange, but many governments don't protect them. Private market organizations can fill this gap by providing an institutional structure to enforce agreements, but with this power comes the ability to extort group members. Under what circumstances, then, will private organizations provide a stable environment for economic activity?

Based on market case studies and a representative survey of traders in Lagos, Nigeria, this book argues that threats from the government can force an association to behave in ways that promote trade. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that private good governance in developing countries thrives when the government keeps its hands off private group affairs. Instead, the author argues, leaders among traders behave in ways that promote trade primarily because of the threat of government intrusion.

 

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Shelby Grossman

Research Scholar, Stanford Internet Observatory
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In The Politics of Order in Informal Markets: How the State Shapes Private Governance, Grossman explores findings that challenge the conventional wisdom that private good governance in developing countries thrives when the government keeps its hands off private group affairs.

Election 2020: Antitrust and Privacy in the Age of Big Tech

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ANTITRUST AND PRIVACY CONCERNS are two of the most high-profile topics on the tech policy agenda. Checks and balances to counteract the power of companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook are under consideration in Congress, though a polarized political environment is a hindrance. But a domestic approach to tech policy will be insufficient, as the users of the large American tech companies are predominantly outside the United States. We need to point the way toward a transnational policy effort that puts democratic principles and basic human rights above the commercial interests of these private companies.

These issues are central to the eight-week Stanford University course, “Technology and the 2020 Election: How Silicon Valley Technologies Affect Elections and Shape Democracy.” The joint class for Stanford students and Stanford’s Continuing Studies Community enrolls a cross-generational population of more than 400 students from around the world.

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New Ideas in Antitrust and the Tech Platforms

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In October, the Justice Department sued Google for violating antitrust laws.These antitrust concerns are motivated by the potential economic harms caused by the tech giants’ monopoly positions, but there might be greater reason to worry about the political harms that the platforms pose to American democracy because of their control over the modern information ecosystem. If the antitrust laws are designed to address economic harms, how should policymakers confront the political harms from dominant digital platforms?

Join us on November 18th at 10 a.m. PST to discuss recommendations from the new White Paper of the Stanford Working Group on Platform Scale, where we will assess how today’s digital platforms pose threats to American democracy and a proposal for how creative technological interventions might mitigate the platform’s growing power. Panelists include Francis Fukuyama, Mosbacher Director of Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and a leader at the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet, Ashish Goel, Professor of Management Science and Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science at Stanford University, Barak D. Richman, Professor of Law and Business Administration at Duke University, Luigi Zingales, Professor of Economics at the Chicago Booth School of Business and Co-host of the podcast Capitalisn't, and Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter, founder and CEO of multiple startups, and now a Managing Partner at 01 Advisors, in conversation with Kelly Born, Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center as they discuss new ideas in antitrust.

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Dick Costolo

Francis Fukuyama

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy Program, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book,  Liberalism and Its Discontents, was published in the spring of 2022.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.  

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), and the Pardee Rand Graduate School. He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2024)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Digital Trade Wars

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Digital Trade Wars

Please join the Cyber Policy Center, Wednesday, October 21, from 10 a.m. –11 a.m. pacific time, with host Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director of the Cyber Policy Center, in conversation with Dmitry Grozoubinski, founder of ExplainTrade.com, and visiting professor at University of Strathclyde, along with Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organizations at Columbia Law School and author of How the European Union Rules the World, for a discussion and exploration of the digital trade war. 

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

 

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Marietje Schaake

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Marietje 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 European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
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Panel Discussions

Exploring Potential “Solutions” to Online Disinformation

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Avi Tuschman, Adam Berinsky, David Rand

Please join the Cyber Policy Center for Exploring Potential “Solutions” to Online Disinformation​, hosted by Cyber Policy Center's Kelly Born, with guests Adam Berinsky, Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT and Director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL) at MIT, David Rand, Erwin H. Schell Professor and an Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Director of the Human Cooperation Laboratory and the Applied Cooperation Team at MIT, and Avi Tuschman, Founder & CIO, Pinpoint Predictive. The session is open but registraton is required.

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Adam Berinsky is the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT and serves as the director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL). He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). Berinsky received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2000. He is the author of "In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq" (University of Chicago Press, 2009). He is also the author of "Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America" (Princeton University Press, 2004) and has published articles in many journals. He is currently the co-editor of the Chicago Studies in American Politics book series at the University of Chicago Press. He is also the recipient of multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

David Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and an Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT Sloan, and the Director of the Human Cooperation Laboratory and the Applied Cooperation Team. Bridging the fields of behavioral economics and psychology, David’s research combines mathematical/computational models with human behavioral experiments and online/field studies to understand human behavior. His work uses a cognitive science perspective grounded in the tension between more intuitive versus deliberative modes of decision-making, and explores topics such as cooperation/prosociality, punishment/condemnation, perceived accuracy of false or misleading news stories, political preferences, and the dynamics of social media platform behavior. 

Avi Tuschman is a Stanford StartX entrepreneur and founder of Pinpoint Predictive, where he currently serves as Chief Innovation Officer and Board Director. He’s spent the past five years developing the first Psychometric AI-powered data-enrichment platform, which ranks 260 million individuals for performance marketing and risk management applications. Tuschman is an expert on the science of heritable psychometric traits. His book and research on human political orientation have been covered in peer-reviewed and mainstream media from 25 countries. Previous to his career in tech, he advised current and former heads of state as well as multilateral development banks in the Western Hemisphere. Tuschman completed his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in evolutionary anthropology at Stanford.

Q&A: The Data Delusion

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Marietje Schaake

 

  

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The European Union is often called a ‘super-regulator’, especially when it comes to data-protection and privacy rules. Having seen European lawmaking from close by, in all its complexities, I have often considered this qualification an exaggerated one. Yes, the European Union frequently takes the first steps in ensuring principles continue to be protected, even as digitization disrupts. However, the speed with which technology evolves versus the pace of democratic lawmaking leads to perpetual mismatches.  

Even the famous, or infamous, General Data Protection Regulation does not meet many essential regulatory needs of the moment. The mainstreaming of Artificial Intelligence in particular, poses new challenges to concepts of the protection of rights and the sustaining of the rule of law. In its White Paper on Artificial Intelligence, as well the Data Strategy, the European Commission references to the common good and the public interest, as well as societal needs as opposed to an emphasis on regulating the digital market. These are welcome steps in acknowledging the depth and scope of technological impact and defining harms not just in economic terms. It remains to be seen how the visions articulated in the White Paper and the Strategy, will translate into concrete legislation. 

One proposal to make concrete improvements to legal frameworks, is outlined by Martin Tisné in The Data Delusion. He highlights the need to update legal privacy standards to be more reflective of the harms incurred through collective data analysis, as opposed to individual privacy violations. Martin makes a clear case for addressing the discrepancy between the profit models benefitting from grouped data versus the ability of any individual to prove the harms caused to his or her rights. 

The lack of transparency into the inner workings of algorithmic processing of data further hinders the path to much needed accountability of the powerful technology businesses operating growing parts of our information architecture and the data flows they process.  

While EU takes the lead in setting values-based standards and rules for the digital layer of our societies and economies, a lot of work remains to be done. 

Marietje Schaake: Martin, in your paper you address the gap between the benefits for technology companies through collective data processing, and the harms for society. You point to historic reasons for individual privacy protections in European laws. Do you consider the European Union to be the best positioned to address the legal shortcomings, especially as you point out that some opportunities to do so were missed in the GDPR?

Martin Tisné: Europe is well positioned but perhaps not for the reasons we traditionally think of (strong privacy tradition, empowered regulators). Individual privacy alone is a necessary, but not sufficient foundation stone to build the future of AI regulation. And whilst much is made of European regulators, the GDPR has been hobbled by the lack of funding and capacity of data protection commissioners across Europe. What Europe does have though, is a legal, political and societal tradition of thinking about the public interest, the common good and how this is balanced against individual interests. This is where we should innovate, taking inspiration from environmental legislation such as the Urgenda Climate Case against the Dutch Government which established that the government had a legal duty to prevent dangerous climate change, in the name of the public interest. 

And Europe also has a lot to learn from other political and legal cultures. Part of the future of data regulation may come the indigenous data rights movement, with greater emphasis on the societal and group impacts of data, or from the concept of Ubuntu ethics that assigns community and personhood to all people. 

Schaake: What scenario do you foresee in 10 years if collective harms are not dealt with in updates of laws? 

Tisné: I worry we will see two impacts. The first is a continuation of what we are seeing now: negative impacts of digital technologies on discrimination, voting rights, privacy, consumers. As people become increasingly aware of the problem there will be a corresponding increase in legal challenges. We’re seeing this already for example with the Lloyd class action case against Google for collecting iPhone data. But I worry these will fail to stick and have lasting impact because of the obligation to have these cases turn on one person, or a class of people’s, individual experiences. It is very hard for individuals to seek remedy for collective harms, as opposed to personal privacy invasions. So unless we solve the issue I raise in the paper – the collective impact of AI and automation – these will continue to fuel polarization, discrimination on the basis of age, gender (and many other aspects of our lives) and the further strengthening of populist regimes. 

I also worry about the ways in which algorithms will optimize on the basis of seemingly random classifications (e.g. “people who wear blue shirts, get up early on Saturday mornings, and were geo-located in a particular area of town at a particular time”). These may be proxies for protected characteristics (age, gender reassignment, disability, race, religion, sex, marriage, pregnancy/maternity, sexual orientation) and provide grounds for redress. They may also not be and sow the seeds of future discrimination and harms. Authoritarian rulers are likely to take advantage of the seeming invisibility of those data-driven harms to further silence their opponents. How can I protect myself if I don’t know the basis on which I am being discriminated against or targeted? 

Schaake: How do you reflect on the difference in speed between technological innovations and democratic lawmaking? Some people imply this will give authoritarian regimes an advantage in setting global standards and rules. What are your thoughts on ensuring democratic governments speed up? 

Tisné: Democracies cannot afford to be outpaced by technological innovation and constantly be fighting yesterday’s wars. Our laws have not changed to reflect changes in technology, which extracts value from collective data, and need to catch up.  A lot of the problems stem from the fact that in government (as in companies), the people responsible for enforcement are separated from those with the technical understanding. The solution lies in much better translation between technology, policy and the needs of the public.  

An innovation and accountability-led government must involve and empower the public in co-creating policies, above and beyond the existing rules that engage individuals (consent forms etc.). In the paper I propose a Public Interest Data Bill that addresses this need: the rules of the digital highway used as a negotiation between the public and regulators, between private data consumers and data generators. Specifically: clear transparency, public participation and realistic sanctions when things go wrong.

This is where democracies should hone their advantage over authoritarian regimes – using such an approach as the basis for setting global standards and best practices (e.g. affected communities providing input into algorithmic impact assessments). 

Schaake: The protection of privacy is what sets democratic societies apart from authoritarian ones. How likely is it that we will see an effort between democracies to set legal standards across borders together? Can we overcome the political tensions across the Atlantic, and strengthen democratic alliances globally?

Tisné: I remain a big supporter of international cooperation. I helped found the Open Government Partnership ten years ago, which remains the main forum for 79 countries to develop innovative open government reforms jointly with the public. Its basic principles hold true: involve global south and global north countries with equal representation, bring civil society in jointly with government from the outset, seek out and empower reformers within government (they exist, regardless of who is in power in the given year), and go local to identify exciting innovations. 

If we heed those principles we can set legal standards by learning from open data and civic technology reforms in Taiwan, experiments with data trusts in India, legislation to hold algorithms accountable in France; and by identifying and working with the individuals driving those innovations, reformers such as Audrey Tang in Taiwan, Katarzyna Szymielewicz in Poland, and Henri Verdier in France. 

These reformers need a home, a base to influence policymakers and technologists, to get those people responsible for enforcement working with those with the technical understanding. The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence may be that home but these are early days, it needs to be agile enough to work with the private sector, civil society as well as governments and the international system. I remain hopeful. 

 

 

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Protecting Individual Isn't Enough When the Harm is Collective. A Q&A with Marietje Schaake and Martin Tisne on his new paper The Data Delusion.

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