Why Countries Must Fight For Digital Sovereignty w/ Cecilia Rikap

Tech Won't Save Us

Paris Marx is joined by Cecilia Rikap to discuss how countries’ dependence on US tech companies is harming them and why they need to get serious about digital sovereignty.
Cecilia Rikap is Associate Professor in Economics at University College London and Head of Research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Cecilia (and Paris!) worked on a report offering a roadmap to reclaiming digital sovereignty.
• The UK Labour Party forced the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority to step down earlier this year to promote its pro-growth agenda.
• A Microsoft executive told a French Senate committee that it could not guarantee data sovereignty if the US government requested information stored on its servers in Europe.
• Alexandre de Moraes is the Brazilian judge pushing back against big tech.
• The US is sanctioning judges from the ICC (as well as Alexandre de Moraes)

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1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. The UK Labour Party's tech policies (00:03:38)

3. Why using economic growth as a metric for tech reliance doesn't make sense (00:11:36)

4. The costs of global dependence on US tech companies (00:14:36)

5. How the relationship between the US government and big tech has evolved (00:21:24)

6. What is digital sovereignty (00:27:43)

7. Europe's views on digital sovereignty (00:34:39)

8. The role of regulation in digital sovereignty (00:38:52)

9. Why governments should be developing their own tech (00:45:29)

10. How Latin America is responding to the encroachment of US big tech (00:49:26)

11. Outro (00:58:56)