There is no neoliberal globalization anymore where profits rule and states don't matter.

It doesn't matter what sector it is, every company can be used as a geopolitical tool.

And I think Nixby proved that, but also proved where the power really likes, you know, and it's not not in Europe.

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host,

Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Ben Ray. Ben is a researcher specializing in the platform economy.

He writes the Gig Economy Project newsletter and has written a number of reports, including a recent one called Uberization.

Now, in this interview, we talk about a few different things. We start by digging into the case of Nexperia, which maybe you haven't heard very much about.

Maybe you have been paying attention to.

But it's this chip company in the Netherlands that was recently in the middle of this geopolitical firestorm.

And for Ben, it shows a lot about how Europe is really limited in its ability to project its sovereignty, whether

that's digital sovereignty or, you know, just political sovereignty, because it's quite clear

that the Dutch government was pushed to try to take over this chip company because of things

happening in the United States, because of the United States broader project of trying to restrict China's chip

development and access to chip technology. Before, of course, Donald Trump made an agreement with

Xi Jinping, and this was all reversed. So it's a good indication of how these European governments,

even as they're talking a lot about sovereignty, are displaying that they're actually very dependent

on the United

States, its decisions, and have limited room to make decisions in their own interests when it

comes to these bigger geopolitical subject matters. And then, of course, you know, this is not just

an issue when it comes to something like Nexperia, but is a much broader one when we think about tech policy

more generally. And this was the case when I talked to Aline Blankhurst last week, but in this

interview, we also dig into what that means for platform workers, right? For the regulations that

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