Cybersecurity & Tech

Scaling Laws: An EU-perspective on America’s Approach to AI with Marietje Schaake

Kate Klonick, Kevin Frazier, Marietje Schaake
Friday, May 1, 2026, 10:00 AM

In this episode of Scaling Laws, Kate Klonick, Associate Professor of Law at St. John’s University and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Kevin Frazier, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a senior fellow at the Abundance Institute, are joined by Marietje Schaake, the International Policy Director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and author of The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley. A former Member of the European Parliament, Schaake has long been a leading architect of digital rights and tech governance.

Their conversation explores the central thesis of her work: that a handful of tech giants have effectively staged a "coup" over democratic functions, from national security to the very infrastructure of public discourse. They examine the democratic implications of AI development, the "privatization of policy," and why Schaake believes that without urgent intervention, the "rule of law" is being replaced by the "rule of code."

To get in touch with us, email scalinglaws@lawfaremedia.org. Logan Le-Jeffries, a member of the AI Wranglers student program at the University of Texas School of Law, provided research assistance with this episode. 


Kate Klonick is an Associate Professor at St. John’s University Law School, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, Harvard Berkman Klein Center and a Distinguished Scholar at the Institute for Humane Studies. Her writing on online speech, freedom of expression, and private internet platform governance has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post and numerous other publications. For the 2023-2024 academic year, she was a Fulbright Schuman Innovation Scholar in the European Union where she was a Visiting Professor at SciencesPo and University of Amsterdam researching and writing about the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
Kevin Frazier is a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law, a Senior Editor at Lawfare, and a Adjunct Research Fellow at the Cato Institute.
Marietje Schaake is the international policy director at the Cyber Policy Center of Stanford University and a former member of the European Parliament.
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