Technology's Role in Democratic Backsliding: A Lawfare Panel Discussion

Defining Democratic Backsliding and Technology's Role

• 💡 Democratic backsliding is defined as a sustained erosion of democratic health, not a single event like a coup.
• 🎯 The panel explores the connection between technology and democratic backsliding, differentiating between the role of tech companies/billionaires and technology itself.
• 🔍 The decline in democratic quality since 2010 is global, with technology playing a peripheral role catalyzed by economic crises and party system failures.

Historical Parallels and the Dual State

• ⏳ Comparisons are drawn to the 1930s and 40s, highlighting how large technology companies collaborated with authoritarian regimes, such as IBM's role in the Holocaust.
• ⚖️ The concept of the dual state is introduced, describing a system operating with both normal legal processes and lawless, capricious actions.
• ⚙️ Technology, particularly surveillance and inference tools, can facilitate the consolidation and persistence of non-democratic regimes by lowering the cost of exercising arbitrary power.

Technology as a Tool for Control and Erosion

• 🔪 The panel discusses how data provided to government agencies can be weaponized as contexts shift, severing traditional firewalls (e.g., IRS data to ICE).
• 🌐 Companies like Palantir are building technical infrastructure that can have real-world consequences, potentially enabling deportations without due process.
• 📉 The Trump administration's dismantling of government tech services (18F, USDS) and embrace of chaotic processes are seen as a deliberate rejection of rationality and organization.

Scale, Internalization, and Political Economy

• 🚀 Scale is a key effect of technology, enabling exponentially larger actions (e.g., deportations) regardless of accuracy, aligning with Silicon Valley's economic principles.
• 🧠 Internalization occurs when individuals alter their behavior due to the belief that their actions can be inferred, creating a