Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me Stephen Saka.

My guest today made a mid-career switch from Europe to the United States, which was, in a way,

a move into hostile territory. In her decade-long career as a Dutch Liberal Party member of the European Parliament,

Mariche Chaka became an influential advocate for more rigorous regulation of the

world's biggest technology companies, most of them American, to safeguard privacy, individual

rights and the integrity of democratic systems in the face of ever more sophisticated systems

of data appropriation, surveillance and information manipulation. To a certain extent,

European governments listen to her message. The EU has passed a raft of laws designed to safeguard

privacy and control the power of the giants of the tech ecosystem, such as Apple, Google,

and Microsoft. But Europe is not where the tech ecosystem, such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.

But Europe is not where the tech revolution is at its most potent and potentially game-changing.

The vast majority of the world's most powerful tech companies are American, born in Silicon Valley.

And that is where Maritia Shaka now works as a cyber analyst at Stanford University.

Her book, The Tech Coup, How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley, suggests that she

sees herself living in the belly of the monster. But as she herself acknowledges,

digital threats to privacy, freedom and democracy are also coming from

China, India and many other countries far removed from the US West Coast. So is it already too

late to defuse this tech time bomb? Well, Maritia Shaka joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you. Would it be right to call you a tech pessimist?

Yes, if you contrast it to democratic governance, which is lacking.

Right, but why do you juxtapose the two? Because you don't necessarily have to think of democracy

as the first thing you put against technological development and innovation.

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