The Authoritarian Stack

What is it?

In a study funded by FES Future of Work, Prof. Francesca Bria and her team show how across the United States, tech billionaires are building a post-democratic America, via a fusion of venture capital, technology, and ideology. From data and defense, via space, to energy and money – all the foundations of democratic power are implicated.

Based on an open-source dataset of 245 actors, thousands of verified connections, and $45 billion in documented financial flows, the study exposes how companies such as Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX—backed by the powerful American tech-right network around Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Alex Karp, and Elon Musk—are becoming the operating system of government itself.

Check out the full report and dataset available here: authoritarian-stack.info.

(The website is available in English, German, Spanish and French)

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Why is it important?

This model is spreading rapidly across Europe, from Palantir’s NHS contracts in the UK and police contracts in Germany, to NATO’s growing reliance on U.S. private platforms. This means our digital dependence is becoming political dependence.

Defending democratic sovereignty requires a coordinated European response—such as the EuroStack—built on public-interest technology, open standards, and democratic governance, at work and beyond. Of course, full autonomy is not realistic, but it is crucial Europe starts to invest more of its public funds and private savings in technological infrastructures that align with European values and interests, and that create wealth in Europe.

As Langdon Winner already knew: “Different ideas of social and political life entail different technologies for their realization”. And it is becoming increasingly clear that democracy cannot survive on authoritarian infrastructure.

What are we doing?

Given widespread media coverage in many European countries, we have supported making the authoritarian stack website accessible in German, French, and Spanish. In addition, in March 2026 FES Future of Work visited multiple political stakeholders and ministries in Berlin, to underline the threat of Europe becoming increasingly dependent on technological infrastructure run by autocrats with a reactionary political agenda. The visit included a roundtable with interested civil society stakeholders, to build new alliances.

At European level, we keep a close eye on the EU agenda around digital sovereignty, AI and data protection (the Digital Omnibus). In addition, subscribe to our newsletter Wage Against the Machine, for a monthly update on the political economy of digital (among others).

Links to our work – the world of work

Several influential Silicon Valley thinkers, funders and founders believe that we should be ruled by CEOs, rather than democratically elected leaders. Should ´citizens´ of these autocratic entities be unhappy, they could simply vote with their feet and leave. This has close links to authoritarian conceptions of the workplace, like the idea that workers should have no rights at work, and can simply leave if they are not happy. In other words, workers should have no voice, only exit rights.

As the workplace digitalises, these authoritarian ideas around technology and work are being embedded in our infrastructure, with decisions over technology being opaque, unaccountable, and fundamentally undemocratic. At FES Future of Work, we stand for democratic workplaces, by supporting worker data rights and increased transparency over algorithmic systems, as well as fostering collective bargaining over technologies like AI.

For an excellent account of the links between authoritarian thinking in Silicon Valley and the world of work, we recommend watching the keynote speech by Prof. Valerio de Stefano, at our event on The Future of Quality Jobs and Workplace AI: Regulation for Innovation.

About the author

Francesca Bria

Digital and Innovation Policy Expert

Francesca Bria is a technologist, economist and one of Europe's most influential voices on digital sovereignty and public technology. She is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London, a Board Member of the European Innovation Council, and the initiator of the EuroStack initiative (https://www.euro-stack.info/). She advises governments and international institutions on democratic technology governance and public digital infrastructure, and is for instance member of the International Advisory Council on AI, set up by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Previously, Francesca was president of the Italian National Innovation Fund (CDP Venture Capital) and a board member of RAI, Italy’s public media company. From 2015 to 2019, she served as chief digital technology and innovation officer for the City of Barcelona, where she led the Barcelona Smart City Agenda and spearheaded digital democracy experiments. She co-founded the UN-backed Cities Coallition for Digital Rights and launched DECODE, the EU’s flagship project on data sovereignty in Europe. She has advised the United Nations on digital cities and digital rights and led the New Hanse project on public-interest data governance for the City of Hamburg, pioneering a model where data is treated as a public infrastructure, governed democratically and mobilized for the common good.

In the press

Le Monde diplomatique

Frankfurter Allgemeine (paywall)

Netzpolitik

Tagesspiegel (paywall)

Spiegel (paywall)

Contact person

Justin Nogarede

Senior Policy Officer

justin.nogarede(at)fes.de