»It's been a race to the bottom of the brain stem«

Audrey Tang on technology as democracy's driver.

Interview

Audrey Tang served as Taiwan’s first Digital Minister from 2016 to 2024. We spoke with her because few articulate more clearly the power of technology as a force for good. Because we believe in ideas and in sharing knowledge broadly. And because voices like hers deserve to be heard – especially by those in power in Europe.

 

 

This interview bridged 14.000 kilometres of space. High-speed internet, which in Taiwan is a human right, linked both locations, transmitting video and audio in real time. Audrey opened with »good local time«, capturing technology’s power to expose distance, and closed with »live long and prosper«, reminding us that we’re all in this together.

Yet today the internet – and increasingly technology itself – is seen more as democracy’s divider than unifier. One case in point is Romania’s 2024 presidential election, which was annulled after an influence campaign exploited 25.000 TikTok accounts to promote far-right candidate Călin Georgescu.

Openness itself has come under attack.

»During the pandemic, a lot of people experienced a trade-off between liberal democracy and health«, Audrey told me. »Many states regressed in terms of assembly, freedom of speech, and democratic control. We’re seeing that trend accelerate with polarising, nationalistic forces taking power. Defending against external pressure has become more important than global democratic collaboration.«

Today, less than 50% of the world’s population lives in democracies, and technology is more often painted as a scapegoat than a saviour.

Image credit: Lin Houjun

For Audrey, the story is a sense of déjà vu.

When Audrey entered government in 2016, Taiwan faced a democratic crisis. For years, the island suffered cyberattacks, grey zone activity, and subsea cable sabotage from the nearby authoritarian regime. Domestically, democracy was in peril. In 2014, Taiwanese citizens’ trust in government was only 9 percent.

But Taiwan did not clamp down on openness. As Taiwan’s first Digital Minister, Audrey created a series of experiments in digital democracy – defined by Audrey as the integration of digital technologies into governance for broader and deeper participation in political decision-making.

vTaiwan helped crowdsource policymaking. The Join platform popularised citizen petitions. The Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS) turned the government into a software platform on which the public could build.

The results speak for themselves. Today, trust in government among Taiwan’s citizens ranks among the highest globally. Taiwan’s youth lead in civic agency. Economic growth remains strong. Uniquely, Taiwan has advanced openness – including technological and digital openness – despite a triptych of trials: internal political crisis, rapid technological change, and looming threats, including a pandemic and the risk of an imminent invasion.

»People in the West are now suffering what we suffered for a decade. We’ve shown there’s a way out.«

When Audrey was hired as Digital Minister, she was asked
to write her own job description, printed below.

»When we see the Internet of Things, let’s make it an Internet of Beings.
When we see Virtual Reality, let’s make it Shared Reality.
When we see Machine Learning, let’s make it Collaborative Learning.
When we see User Experience, let’s make it about Human Experience.
And whenever we hear “the Singularity is near,” let us always remember: the Plurality is here.«
Audrey Tang was born on April 18, 1981, in Taipei, Taiwan.

She began reading classical literature before age five. At age 6, she performed advanced mathematics. By age eight, she had programmed her first lines of code. At 14, she left formal education to pursue self-directed learning, and by 19, she had founded her own IT company.

In 2024, she left government and was a main contributor to an open-source, collaboratively written book titled Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy, in part inspired by her work in Taiwanese government. Today, plurality is at the core of her philosophy.

»The idea is not to solve everything for the next generation – to be a “perfect” ancestor. Because no matter what “optimal” means, if we try to converge on a single vision, we take possibilities away from future generations. “Plurality” means being humble – not destroying the canvas, but also not overcrowding it, leaving future generations a wider canvas on which to paint.«

Today, the canvas cracks and tightens. Social media has »strip-mined the social fabric« to foster division, as she puts it. »I think the social media algorithms that emerged after 2014 were the first large-scale misaligned AI-system, aligned not to human need, but to the need of an extractive AI.«

Audrey followed Europe’s reaction to this burgeoning misalignment closely.

Unlike the SMTP protocol, which made it easy for citizens to switch from Gmail to Proton, or the XMPP protocol, which ensured portability between messaging platforms, the European Commission built no interoperability protocol for social media.

Misaligned incentives, a lack of interoperability, and runaway network effects created a »race to the bottom of the brain stem«, benefitting only a few, misaligned companies and leaving technology and democracy increasingly at a crossroads.

When the European Commission forced WhatsApp to interoperate with third-party apps under the Digital Markets Act, it did so without offering the tools needed to comply. The result? Meta built a temporary bridge with major privacy concerns.

When Romania’s 2024 presidential election was annulled, people looked to the EU’s Digital Services Act, which was meant to prevent catastrophes like that from happening. Yet, the Commission’s Act provided little guidance on how to effectively mitigate such occurrences.

Image credit: Wen Junfu

»The idea is not to solve everything for the next generation – to be a “perfect” ancestor. Because no matter what “optimal” means, if we try to converge on a single vision, we take possibilities away from future generations. “Plurality” means being humble - not destroying the canvas, but also not overcrowding it, leaving future generations a wider canvas on which to paint«
COVID-19 emerged as the litmus test of contemporary democracy’s fortitude and resilience.

Most nations failed. Even in Europe, where many countries opted for top-down solutions, with limited citizen involvement, and unrest to follow.

In Taiwan, the government called on the public to help solve the health crisis. E.g., they released real-time mask availability data from pharmacies via an open API, coordinated via the Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS). Quickly, over 100 decentralised interoperable tools emerged to show which pharmacies had masks in stock. Within a week, public panic subsided.

Instead of taking down information on social media, Taiwan engages in proactive narrative management by funding rapid fact-checking alliances and funneling official clarifications into the broadly used LINE messaging app.

Instead of annulling an election after the fact, Taiwan enforces personhood credentials on social media to build trust – for instance, by implementing real-name registration for online political ads and beefing up disclosure rules​ ahead of an election.

Instead of developing crucial technologies such as AI in isolation, Taiwan orchestrates so-called Alignment Assemblies, where citizens, experts, and governments come together to shape policy and make sure new technology is developed in the public’s best interest. The result of these efforts is a healed social fabric.

»When people see that those unlike them agree on uncommon ground, something heals between people, but also within, because we can sometimes feel splintered. If we can build bridges, then not just outer plurality, but also inner plurality, gets healed as well.«

Audrey is keen to connect Taiwan with like-minded countries, but she also keeps a close eye on the domestic situation. She believes Taiwan can emerge stronger by doubling down on its core principles, not abandoning them. The current situation is not an existential threat, but an existential opportunity.

 

 

»The regime nearby believes that democracy never works, it just creates chaos. But we cannot let that meme go viral in our ecosystem. Taiwan is defined by our top-of-Asia freedom. If we do not invent in such a way that fosters deeper scale democratic collaboration, then our reason for existing is simply gone.«

Explore more stories

The story of a 16-year-old Danish CS superstar

»I’ll play Counter-Strike for as long as I can. Then I’ll be an astronaut«

In our stories, we trace a line from the world of bits and bytes to the lives and emotions of the humans that drive it.