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THE TECH COUP

HOW TO SAVE DEMOCRACY FROM SILICON VALLEY

Both alarming and hopeful, and Schaake writes with hard-won experience and clear-minded intelligence.

An assessment of the current state of the technology sector, which has avoided accountability for decades—but there are signs of change.

Schaake is the international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, a former member of the European Parliament, and a columnist for the Financial Times. Consequently, her voice is significant, especially involving issues of technology and regulation. In her debut book, the author takes a deep dive into the ways in which tech behemoths have infiltrated governments, starting with service delivery and working up to critical roles in national security. Some governments have openly contracted tech companies to provide tools for surveillance and control. The size and wealth of these corporations make them extremely powerful, and many of them have mastered the art of burying opponents under waves of techno-babble. They claim that any regulation would stifle innovation, but Schaake sees that as self-serving, pointing out that there are other well-regulated industries that have positive innovation records. She believes that the legislation passed in Europe is a good start but also notes that regulations have to be supported by the will to implement them, which has been patchy at best. In the U.S., Schaake argues for the possibility of a bipartisan coalition that could put effective rules in place. The hard line that politicians are taking with TikTok may signal a change of attitude. The question is now about designing a framework that balances the competing interests, and Schaake puts forward some useful suggestions. The Declaration on the Future of the Internet offers a path for international cooperation, and while none of the relevant problems can be easily solved, the author demonstrates the importance of making sure democratic institutions are protected.

Both alarming and hopeful, and Schaake writes with hard-won experience and clear-minded intelligence.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024

ISBN: 9780691241173

Page Count: 328

Publisher: Princeton Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024

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ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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