Konrad Bleyer-Simon: In his book Survival of the Richest, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff describes how many tech billionaires, if faced with a post-apocalyptic reality, plan to keep less wealthy survivors as quasi-slaves or servants. What is the value of freedom in such a mindset?  

Paris Marx: Tech billionaires are particularly focused on freedom for themselves: the ability to do what they want without being hindered by the rest of society or by governments. They have a particular vision of the world, and they do not want the rest of society to get in the way of that. That is why we see this shift to the right in the tech industry, and in particular, this move to get closer to governments and to get parties elected that will ensure there will not be overly restrictive regulations, taxation, or antitrust investigations against them and their companies. Elon Musk has been building ties with a lot of extreme right-wing leaders – in many parts of the world, not just in the US – and with people who promise not to restrict the American tech industry if they are elected. Tech billionaires are also trying to use the power that they’ve gained to pressure the European Union and governments in Europe and elsewhere. 

Tech billionaires have always advertised themselves as supporters of a wide range of freedoms, especially free speech. Has this self-positioning ever reflected reality?  

The notion that tech industry leaders are people who support free speech has always been a lie, and we see that in the way that they are acting. Their current project of free speech is one where bigots can say whatever they want, no matter how offensive it might be, and not feel any consequence. At the same time, if people on the Left say anything that they disagree with, they are silenced and pushed out of public discourse. This understanding is very close to the right-wing framing of free speech, which is designed to promote certain political objectives and further a certain form of society. We’ve seen the political Right move more and more to the extremes, and they are now expressing views that would have been outside of the realm of acceptable discourse in past years. They are trying to legitimise their ability to target minority groups and reframe what is seen as acceptable.  

The notion that the tech industry leaders are people who support free speech has always been a lie.

Do changing realities also play a role in this repositioning?  

I think that a lot of what we see has to do with the unprecedented amounts of power and wealth that tech industry leaders have accumulated over the past two decades – not to mention that, for many years, they were told they were genius founders making the world a better place. Now, governments are finally starting to recognise that there are harms and drawbacks to the business models these billionaires created. When governments start to seriously look at antitrust investigations or regulations that would reduce their power, the tech industry and its billionaires will be in a strong position to challenge them – as they are already. They can deploy the influence and resources they have accrued over all these years to support a political programme that protects their power. They have found this political programme on the extreme right.  

With Silicon Valley entrepreneurs increasingly embedded in the national security state and cosying up to authoritarian forces, does it still make sense to speak of “tech libertarianism”?¹  

Tech libertarianism has always been more of a marketing ploy than anything else. In the United States especially, tech has had a very long relationship with government. At the same time, there was a period of time when these companies wanted to appear more independent – you had the tech industry on the West Coast in California and the government on the East Coast in Washington. Under this narrative, the government would infringe on people’s rights, while technology was presented as a saviour against the totalitarian power of the state. You see these sorts of ideas a lot, especially in hacker communities.  

Now, those relationships with the government are coming back out into the open. Tech billionaires are explicitly moving into government roles, trying to shape the way that the US government works and the decisions that it makes. It is not just Elon Musk and DOGE that are changing the American government; there is also Peter Thiel and his company Palantir trying to remake the way that the United States does military contracting. They want the government to buy a lot more products from post-1990s companies that we typically associate with the Internet. If they don’t do this, China might win [the geopolitical battle], they claim. So they are explicitly framing the tech industry as something that needs to be focused on defending American power through the 21st century, which is very distinct from the kinds of arguments and rhetoric that we heard in decades past.  

Governments in China, Russia, and some Western countries are increasingly using digital technologies to control and surveil their populations – or even other nations. Are these authoritarian states the risk factor that we need to focus on, or is it the willing collaboration of large tech companies that enables the rise of digital authoritarianism?  

These issues are distinct, but maybe not as distinct as tech companies would want us to think. I do think that there are serious problems in countries like China and Russia and how they deploy digital technologies in their societies. But at the same time, I also think we tend to downplay the risks that digital technologies present in the United States and Europe, because so many of these tech infrastructures are created by private companies and deployed on the pretence of freeing us from the grip of government. In fact, the private sector, by building all this infrastructure, has enabled the creation of probably the most comprehensive surveillance apparatus in history. And these technologies have not received the kind of scrutiny that they would have gotten if they had been built by governments.  

The private sector has enabled the creation of probably the most comprehensive surveillance apparatus in history.

These major tech companies have constructed a business model that is all about maximal data collection. Intelligence agencies have been able to take advantage of that infrastructure to surveil populations at home and abroad, on a scale that we probably could never have imagined in the past. It is easy to point to countries where the state is more involved and see digital authoritarianism, but what is happening in our own societies also presents serious threats.  

The Internet was, for many years, an enabler of freedom movements and a space where well-meaning actors could collaborate and exchange ideas. Does this free Internet still exist?  

It is hard to say. There are nostalgic people who say we could just go back to the way things were in the 1990s or the early 2000s, before the big companies took over. But they tend to forget that far fewer people used the Internet at the time. In the last two decades, it was the major tech companies that made the Internet accessible to people who didn’t have a high degree of technical skill. I think that is a positive thing.  

However, due to these narratives of the Internet being a wonderful place, and due to all the benefits that countries experienced from their populations going online, governments did not want to look at the potential downsides or harms that came from these companies and their businesses. As I said earlier, by the time governments decided to act, these companies had more power to push back.  

Today, there are some good examples of a more progressive Internet, like decentralised apps and open-source tools, but many people don’t use them because they require a higher degree of technical skill. Most people are stuck on harmful platforms, full of right-wing discourses and bigotry. For this reason, I think, the only viable way to make the Internet better is for governments to realise the need for an alternative. We have often recognised in history that in certain sectors, the market doesn’t always deliver, and that public institutions need to step in – there are public broadcasters, postal services, or even banks, and it is time to think seriously about what public solutions in the realm of digital technology would look like.  

Something like a public service social media platform?  

Possibly. There are a number of different approaches and alternatives challenging the dominant idea that these services need to have high valuations when they go public, and that they need to become “the next unicorn”. But in many of the new solutions, the role of private actors is still too pronounced, even if they are supported by the public sector. I wonder if a time will come when we recognise that the private sector just will not deliver certain forms of digital technology.  

We also need to accept that we can set up public institutions and give them a mandate and sufficient funding so they can start working on public digital technology that does not need to serve a profit motive, maximise shareholder value, or get a very high valuation when it goes public. Instead, such institutions can focus their resources on developing technologies that provide important public benefits.  

What is your impression of the European approach to regulating big tech, which puts significant emphasis on protecting freedom of expression and transparency?  

Since the European Union is large and influential, and because it moved forward with its tech regulations early, it has influenced the decisions of many other countries. With the market power that it has, the EU can make rules that companies have to follow, even outside of its borders. But over time, there has also been criticism of the types of regulations that the European Union has pursued, and a lot of it is justified. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for example, is too focused on individual rights instead of thinking more collectively or reining in the amount of data collection and transmission more seriously.  

The EU often approaches these issues through the lens of markets and commerce. EU regulations and antitrust measures certainly make some tweaks around the edges of big companies, but they are still not pulling apart the power that tech giants have in order to start a widespread transformation. Thanks to EU regulations, you are able to choose the browser or the app store that you use, but the big tech companies still dominate the market – they only need to slightly adjust their practices to be a bit more friendly. I hope that, in the years to come, the EU will get more aggressive on the regulations it pursues.  

As discussions about EuroStack² or, in general, European digital sovereignty continue, there will be a need not just to finance alternatives but also to rein in more aggressively what already exists within the market. This approach is necessary for making the general environment align with the new standards and expectations in the European Union and will make it easier for alternative companies and services to properly compete against the giants. 

Finally, I must highlight that there is already a broader coalition of countries that want to rein in American tech companies and their power. There is a lot of potential in working collaboratively on responses – especially in light of an aggressive and belligerent Trump administration in the United States that tries to put pressure on individual countries.  

There is a lot of potential in working collaboratively on responses – especially in light of an aggressive Trump administration.

What conception of freedom would make the most sense in light of the risks and opportunities that tech provides?  

I am not sure if I’m prepared to tackle the broader question of what freedom is, but if we look at the digital infrastructures, services, and platforms that we are currently dependent on, they have created a particular idea of how we use the Internet and how we communicate online. That has obviously led to a lot of negative consequences, which have only gotten worse over the years with tech companies and their executives maximising their own power and wealth at the expense of the benefits that their platforms were supposed to provide.  

The Internet as it is today neither guarantees users’ freedoms nor prioritises public benefit. Social media platforms are filled with right-wing, bigoted arguments and a bunch of AI-generated images and videos. These platforms are not prioritising the kind of information that would allow you to communicate with the people you care about or help you exercise your freedoms. The question is, how can we promote a different kind of digital freedom? In my opinion, reaching this goal takes an entirely different approach. We need to rethink the foundations on which this industry was built.  

How should progressive parties such as the Greens advocate for better tech?  

With regard to Green parties, I would probably highlight the question of sustainability. The way digital technology has been built is not just infringing on people’s freedoms and their rights and allowing mass surveillance and data collection; it is also environmentally unfriendly.  

Still, when we talk about digital technology, sustainability is not a question that we think about a lot because the industry has sold us this fantasy that digital technology is clean, green, and efficient. But in fact, the supply chain of these technologies depends on very dirty mining. There is a lot of toxic chip production and e-waste that comes out at the other end of the process. Over the past couple of years, we have seen a boom in generative AI, which corresponded with a massive buildup of hyperscale data centres that demand not just a lot of electricity and water but also minerals. We are witnessing record new investment in fossil fuel infrastructure at the moment that is intended to power this growing energy demand.  

Challenging the underlying model also means thinking about whether generative AI is beneficial enough to justify all the resources it is claiming, or whether we actually need as much computation as these major tech companies are selling us. Due to the financialisation of technological development and the constant need to increase shareholder value, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google need their cloud business to grow every year. This means that they keep pushing more computationally intensive processes and more computation in general on our societies. 

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1. Quinn Slobodian & Aro Velmet (2025). “Far-right foreign policy in the age of MAGA 2.0”. Eurozine. 15 April 2025. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/slobodian-foreign-policy/ ↩︎
2. An initiative entailing sovereign AI, open-source ecosystems, green supercomputing, data commons, and sovereign cloud in Europe. ↩︎