I've been feeling a lot of panic and fear about this talk. And not just for the normal reasons of public speaking, although that's there, too. But it's also because I want to say something meaningful, and I've been overwhelmed by the enormity of what is happening right now. And there's a particular set of circumstances which have also been feeding into my confusion and denial.
And that is because the last time that I stood on this stage, it led to a three-year legal battle, culminated in London's High Court, in which it felt like I was on trial for my life, because I was. My career, my reputation, my finances, even my home was on the line. All because I came here to warn you that I didn't think democracy was going to survive the technology that you're building, however incredible it is.
In fact, I was the person who almost didn't survive, and pretty much everything I was warning about is now coming true. I can't sugarcoat it. It's a bit of a headfuck.
I have a lot of emotions about coming here. And TED, also, I suspect, is feeling them too. But what actually I finally realized yesterday is that the denial and the confusion that I've been feeling is maybe what you're feeling, too.
I felt powerless for a really long time. So if that's what you're feeling, I get it. But we have to act now. My alarm system is ringing again. There are things that we can do. In my case, I survived. And you will too. But it's by learning how to fight back.
The Russian and American presidents are now speaking the same words. They are telling the same lies. We are watching the collapse of the international order in real time. And this is just the start.
Coups are like concrete. When they stop moving, they set. It is already later than we think.
政变就像混凝土一样。 当它们停止移动时，它们就会开始行动。 现在已经比我们想象的要晚了。
3:03.714
This image, some of you in this room might know these people. I call it tech bros in hostage situations. It's a message to you. This is Putin's playbook. He allows a business elite to make untold riches in exchange for absolute loyalty.
Some people are calling this oligarchy, but it's actually bigger than that. These are global platforms. It's broligarchy. [Tech bros + oligarchy = broligarchy]
There is an alignment of interests that runs through Silicon Valley to what is now a coming autocracy. It's a type of power that the world has never seen before.
硅谷与现在 即将到来的专制 政体形成了一致的利益。 这是一种世界从未见过的力量。
autocracy
/ɔːˈtɑːkrəsi/
n. 独裁政治；专制政治；独裁政府；独裁统治的国家
4:03.640
[Follow the data]
[关注数据]
4:06.076
It's always the data. It's the crack cocaine of Silicon Valley. You know, the first thing that Elon Musk did was to send his cyber troops into the US Treasury to get access to the data. That is not a coincidence. It's a hack. That data is now feeding AIs that are choosing who to sack and who to replace -- Sorry -- eliminate fraud and waste.
n. 麻布（或厚纸、塑料等）大袋；一袋（的量）；<非正式> 解雇（the sack）；<非正式> 床（the sack）；（通常指在战争中）洗劫，劫掠；<非正式>（棒球）垒；（在争球线后对四分卫的）擒杀；宽松直筒连衣裙（=sack dress）；<史>宽松女袍；<史>（流行于18世纪、系于礼服裙裙肩上的）宽褶后拖曳地裙裾；<史>萨克葡萄酒
v. <非正式> 解雇，开除；（军队或军事集团）劫掠，洗劫；（在美式足球中）擒抱（四分卫）；<美，非正式>把……装进袋里；<美，非正式>上床睡觉（sack out）
4:31.201
(Laughter)
（笑声）
4:33.136
When we broke the Cambridge Analytica story about the harvesting [of] 87 million people’s Facebook data, people freaked out, rightly. [That] is chicken feed compared to [this]. But it is the blueprint. It's always the data. Which is why it's so important that you start thinking about your private life. The broligarchy doesn't want you to have one. This is the old headquarters of the East German secret police. They kept detailed files on almost one in three of their citizens. That is nothing compared to what Google has on every single one of us, and hundreds of other companies. The entire business model of Silicon Valley is surveillance. It harvests our data in order to sell us stuff. We are already living inside the architecture of totalitarianism.
Politics is downstream from culture. So I actually learned this from somebody who I think of as one of the great philosophers of our age, Steve Bannon.
He actually stole it from somebody else. But it's not politicians who have the power. He knows that. It's why he's a podcast bro, these days. But culture now is just what's next on your phone. And that's AI. Culture is AI now. And forget the killer robots. If you want to know what the first great AI apocalypse is, we're already living it. It's total information collapse. And if you take one thing only away from this talk, it's politics is technology now. And that's why everybody in this room, you can't look away. It's why your CEOs have been taken captive and are paraded on TV like hostages. But you, you have a choice.
So Trump, he calls the press the enemies of the people. And he probably doesn't even know that he's quoting Stalin. So what happened to me is a playbook, and it's now coming for all sorts of other people. It was actually a friend of this guy who came after me. This is Nigel Farage. He's a Brexit funder. I'm not going to go super into the details. But 19 press-freedom organizations called the lawsuit against me a SLAPP. That means it’s a Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. A really long-winded way of saying it's using law as a weapon to shut people up. Not just journalists, but other public people, too. And it works.
I just wanted to tell you about one aspect of the litigation, which I found terrifying. And that was the data harvesting. There's this quote you may know, it's Cardinal Richelieu, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." In my case, the first forensic searches of my phone and laptop yielded 40,000 pieces of data. It was my messages, my emails, my voice memos, my personal life. And the whole thing about this, the attack which came for me, was really personal. Because the thing about this litigation is only one part of the playbook. It was also this sort of massive online campaign of abuse, which is just day after day, after day, after day. Because my most unforgivable crime was reporting while female. It was a digital witch burning.
And I believe that this man came after me personally, not at "The Guardian" and not TED, it was because I looked like the weakest link. But he was wrong.
30,000 people rose up to support me. They contributed almost a million pounds to a legal defense fund. Because they saw a bully trying to crush me, and they would not let it stand. And it always makes me emotional when I think about that. I just heard somebody was saying, the camera person, I don't know where they are, contributed. This whole talk is actually my gratitude towards everybody who did that. But it's also why I know about what we have to do next. You know, Trump is suing news organizations, and every day they're settling. These are big corporates with corporate interests. Not everybody can stand up to power, but there are people who are doing it, and we can support them. We have to have each other’s backs right now. Because we are the cavalry now.
You know, this is really important to me, but I spoke to a UK libel lawyer before this talk. I want to say that there is an awful lot of facts set down in a High Court judgment, and we're actually taking the case now to the European Court of Human Rights. We're testing the UK on its laws around freedom of expression. So look after facts. You'll miss them when they've gone. This is Wayback Machine. Give them money, they're trying to preserve the internet as it's being deleted day by day.
n. 诽谤罪；诋毁；毁坏名誉的东西；控诉书
vt. 中伤；控告；对……进行诽谤
vi. 进行文字诽谤
11:04.694
(Applause)
（掌声）
11:09.098
History is our best chance of getting out of this.
历史是我们摆脱困境的最佳机会。
11:13.069
You know, you probably know this phrase, "Do not obey in advance." That's Tim Snyder, who's a historian of authoritarianism. We now are in techno-authoritarianism. We have to learn how to digitally disobey. That can be as simple as the dropdown box. Don't accept the cookies, don't give your real name, download Signal, the encrypted messaging app. Don’t bomb Yemen, don't add the editor of "The Atlantic" to your group chats.
Don't experiment on children. You know, social mores change. We don't send children down coal mines anymore. And in years to come, allowing your child to be data-harvested from birth will be considered child abuse. You didn't know, but now you do.
Privacy is power. And we have more of it than we think.
隐私就是力量， 而且我们拥有的比我们想象的要多。
12:13.763
I had this little epiphany yesterday in which I realized, actually, the moments when I felt most powerless were the moments that I felt I was actually most powerful. It was because my journalism had impact. They want us to feel powerless. That's the plan. There is so much, though, that we can learn from people who've been through this before.
Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition, he always talked about a beautiful Russia of the future. He painted a vision. There is a beautiful internet of the future, free from corporate capture and data tracking. We can build it. It is going to take a movement. But we can learn from movements that there have been before us. This is my colleagues and I on strike in December because my news organization, "The Guardian," decided to sell our corner of it, “The Observer,” the Sunday title. And it was a battle we really didn’t need at this time, and we didn’t actually win, but you know, you can’t win every battle. But you definitely won’t win if you don’t fight.
So I want to leave you with this. This is ChatGPT writing a TED Talk in the style of Carole Cadwalladr. And it is creepily plausible. But what it doesn't know, because AI is actually as dumb as a rock, is that I am going to turn to Sam Altman, who is coming here, a TED speaker, and say that this does not belong to you. ChatGPT has been trained on my IP, my labor, my personal data.
You know, "The Guardian" has effectively got rid of more than 100 journalists. We actually leave the building next week. And shortly afterwards, it signed a syndication deal with OpenAI. Or, as I think of it, it married its rapist.
But I do not consent. And while we still have copyright laws in my country, UK government is trying to tear them up at the moment in order to suck up to Silicon Valley and Trump. But while we have them, use them. Because what is happening to my industry is happening to yours, too. And it's more than theft. It's a violation. Data rights are human rights.
In 2019, I came here, and I called out the gods of Silicon Valley. I was wrong. Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, you are not gods. You are men, and you are careless.
You are sucking up to a tyrant ... who is trying to destroy the laws who made your businesses possible. You are collaborators. You are complicit in a regime of fear and cruelty. But the rest of us, we all here, we have a choice.
I chose to come back to TED because I'm reclaiming my story, my words.
我之所以选择重返TED， 是因为我要重申我的故事，我的话。
16:49.171
(Cheers and applause)
（欢呼和掌声）
17:00.049
We are not powerless. The 30,000 people who supported me proved that -- we are not powerless. Because we know who we are, and we know what we stand for. And my question to Silicon Valley is, do you?
"The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you."
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