Tech Won't Save Us - France’s Start-Up Nation Is a Neoliberal Hell w/ Nastasia Hadjadji

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by Nastasia Hadjadji to discuss Emmanuel Macron’s plan to run France like a start-up, how that justified a further dismantling of France's welfare state, and how his desire to create national tech champions is having domestic consequences.Nastasia Hadjadji is a French journalist looking at tech from the lens of political economy and the author of “No Crypto. Comment Bitcoin a envoûté la planète.”Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:Paris will be speaking in Auckland on February 18 in an event hosted by Tohatoha.Emmanuel Macron aided Uber’s lobbying efforts as Economy Minister under the former Socialist government.France worked hard to attract the crypto industry. Macron even took a selfie with Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, who’s now pled guilty to felony charges.The group Technopolice documents police surveillance in France.La Quadrature du Net campaigns against algorithmic video surveillance.Louis Pouzin is considered to have almost created the internet.Support the show

We are at this stage where Macron's tactics to prevent the far right to win the next presidential election is actually to endorse the far right himself. So it's a very fucked up moment in French politics. And a lot of people are fairly concerned. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and I have a fascinating interview for you today. As you know, the show often focuses on things that are happening in North America, in part because I'm here, but also, you know, because Silicon Valley is obviously in the United States. But there are also fascinating things happening in other parts of the world that I do want to look at a bit more. And so in this

conversation, I'm talking to Nastasia Ajaji. Nastasia is a journalist looking at the tech industry from a political economy lens, and she's also the author of No Crypto, Comment Bitcoin a Envouté la Planète, which is of course a French book. In this week's conversation, we're talking about what has been going on in France, and in particular, the policy that Emmanuel Macron put forward in 2017 that he called the Startup Nation. This was his goal to not only make France a destination for tech investment, but also to remake the government itself so that it acted more like a startup. What followed was a neoliberal assault on the public sector and on the state and its capacities. And I think that this example serves as a really

important look at the way that the tech industry not only benefits from, but almost requires these neoliberal policies that erode what the government can do so that the tech industry can move into those spaces and take them over. It doesn't mean that those processes then get better or more efficient as the tech industry promises us,'t mean that those processes then get better or more efficient as the tech industry promises us, but it requires those narratives to get us to buy into the program in the first place. You can see similar processes in other countries that have sought to attract tech investment. But I think that the French example is really interesting because a lot of this happened in such a condensed period and such

a more recent period. Whereas when we're talking about the United States, you know, we're probably going back to like the Clinton administration and the policies that were put in place in that moment around the privatization of the internet and the narratives around how the internet was going to allow for all of this new opportunity and prosperity. And, you know, of course, what we've seen is for a lot of the benefits of this to just go to these major companies and the wealthy people who control them. In France, that has been a much more accelerated process.

And while the tech industry in France, and I'm sure wealthy people have certainly benefited from these reforms, a lot of regular French people have not seen those benefits and have been harmed as a result. And so I thought that this was a fantastic conversation to have to look at this specific example and see what we can learn from it. Just a quick heads up that after some great events in Christchurch and Wellington, I will also be doing an event in Auckland on February 18th at 6.30pm at the Ellen Melville Center. The event is being put off by Toa Toa,

which is a local group that fights for a just and equitable digital world in Aotearoa, New Zealand. At the event, we'll be talking about climate and technology and, you know, kind of the false tech solutions that are often presented as the way to address the climate crisis. So hopefully you'll be able to join us. If there's a link with more information by the time the show goes live, I'll include it in the show notes. If not, you can look for me to add it later, or I will share it on social media. Hopefully you can come and join us in Auckland on February 18th. So with that said, if you enjoy this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it.

And if you do want to support the work that goes into making the show every single week, you can join supporters like Pam from Port Townsend, Fiona from Frankfurt in Germany, Miles in New York City, and Alex in Montreal by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Nastasia, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Hi, Barry. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. I'm very excited to speak with you. And the show often deals with issues in North America and sometimes just kind of wider global

issues, I guess. But, you know, we haven't looked enough into what has been going on in Europe with European tech policy. And I thought it was a good opportunity to have a conversation around what has been going on in France, because, of course, technology and tech policy has been very central to the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, kind of, you know, show how he was different than the political class that existed before him, but also how he was going to take a different approach to governing and the type of economy that he was going to build. So can you talk to us a bit about was this young, ambitious newcomer, almost very young president. so meant to have this kind of shock effect on French politics due to this newcoming personality. And everyone was a bit in awe, even internationally when he was elected, because of his youngness, newness, etc. So I think that initially the concept of startup nation was actually being conceptualized on Israel.

I mean, as a state who's like putting a lot of emphasis on tech companies, etc. And Emmanuel Macron kind of seized the concept to make it a central axis for his politics. And so in 2017, he was very vocal and very enthusiastic about making the French state a very leading force in the sense of like tech and commercial trade within the tech industry. So I think it was also a tradition that could trace back to what we call here in France le colbertisme, this very commercial theory that was made by the head of finance of Louis XIV, Louis XIV. And the aim was to make France like a great empire, almost like a great nation through commercial trade. And Emmanuel Macron, with his startup nation framework, clearly wanted to use technologies as a way of making France within Europe, one of the leading nations. So that was

the aim, I think, the global aim of this whole political rhetoric. That's fascinating, especially to hear that connection with the Israeli policy and kind of learning from that, right? Because, of course, as we've talked about on the show, you know, and as people will likely understand, Israel has a significant tech industry, in particular in defense tech, but other pieces of that as well, which has been very helpful to it to kind of gain legitimacy and kind of get that foreign investment and all those sorts of things. You know, when Emmanuel Macron was championing this policy of the startup nation, what kind of policies did that kind of justify in terms of his political program once he was elected president? Because as I understand, you know, the startup nation was not just about attracting tech investment, but also about making the state itself operate more like a startup. So how did that influence the way he governed? Absolutely. This is the tension and even the dialectic that is at the center of this startup nation concept. So both you want to make France a very fertile ground for foreign investment and at the same time run the state as a startup.

So basically it's using the whole vocabulary of agility, budget reduction. You have to be agile. you have to scale, to hyperscale even. So this whole culture of entrepreneurship was taken from the private sector and tried to be applied to the public sector pretty much. So what type of policies? From my perspective, I would say it's an attack on the welfare system, because if you want to rationalize, usually you cut the budget in the name of efficiency.

You cut the budgets in the name of competitiveness. You use this whole rhetoric of efficiency, etc., to pretty much dismantle what makes the very basics of the welfare state. So this is the economic rhetoric. And also, what type of policy? It's pretty much running the public services as a private company. So a lot of emphasis on process, on rationalization, on making the expenses as little as possible. It's the rhetoric of the budget austerity, etc., etc. So this has a direct impact on actually the way the public system is actually evolving, because a lot of sectors are increasingly privatized, to be fair, or on the way of being privatized. It's the case of,

for example, the public healthcare system is going extremely bad at the moment. Like, the public hospital system in France is almost crumbling at the moment, with like, head of services actually committing suicide. The people working within the hospital system have extremely low wages. Everything is congested. It was almost an exploit that the pandemic was handled by the public service in hospital because of the state of it that is extremely concerning. But I could also talk about public universities that are increasingly run as private companies and the people working at university, be it the scholars, but also the administration, are extremely concerned

because they are asked to become almost company CEOs. So this whole logic is being applied to all the public services and it has direct impacts on the public agents, but also on the end of the spectrum on the people having access to it. Also, I would say that the major aspect of it has been a path towards digitalization. It's become a commonplace now. Everything is being digitalized. But this process, first of all, have been delegated to big, big consulting firms that have made a lot of money with the French public money to digitalize the public

services. But this digitalization has led to an increase in the number of people not having access to the public service, being the housing insurance, being the employment insurance, etc. So there is a lot of discrepancy in the way you can have access to the service, also because of this increasingly digitalized infrastructure. So it has many aspects to it. One part is economical, the other is ideological, and there's also a very practical side of it, I would say. It's fascinating to hear that because it almost sounds to me in a way when you talk about

the effects that these policies have had on the French welfare state and French public services, it makes me think about how things have degraded in, say, North America and other kind of English-speaking countries, but I'm sure parts of Europe as well, over the past number of decades. And we always kind of had this story or were told that the French were better at defending the public system and were able to kind of keep these public services that they rely on in a better state than in many other countries that had undergone this neoliberalization. And it almost feels like, you know, maybe belatedly Emmanuel Macron, under the guise of the startup nation, brought this neoliberal assault finally to the French state, that private industry that capitalists wanted to see for a long time. Absolutely. I mean, the work of dismantling, I would say, the welfare state has been started

much before Emmanuel Macron. It's already begun during the 1980s. But it's true that he's been leading a massive assault against what many would consider as pillars of the welfare state. And often in the name of, as we discussed, becoming more agile, becoming like a startup nation, et cetera, et cetera. So it's true that the rhetoric under his presidency has been followed by a lot of reforms that are clearly hyper-liberal. People here in France, they talk about the extreme center, not the extreme right or the extreme left, but the extreme center. And now it's becoming more and more clear that he's a neoliberal president, but he is also more and more endorsing ideas from the conservative right or even the far right within his policy because he doesn't have a clear majority at the parliament. He knows that his presidency is kind of threatened by many social movements.

So he's kind of radicalizing in a way that is very concerning for many people, especially in the left, almost endorsing and putting into practice some of the worst ideas taken from the far right. And I have in mind, especially a bill that was voted last December in 2023 about immigration, that is probably one of the most xenophobic, racist, and outrageous spiller flow that was passed under his presidency. There was huge pushback and social movements and protests. But still, it's like carrying this politics that is, it's a very neoliberal in terms of economics, but more and more conservative when it comes to like the society and the social dimensions of it.

And as far as French safeguarding what has been fought for and acquired during the past decades, it's true that we are a country of social movements, of strikes, la grève, etc. It's true, but I mean, there's also during this presidency, a complete neglection of what the streets have been calling for, a complete neglection of the social movements, and even a fierce repression of it. It's insane how much we can really say that under Emmanuel Macron, the repression of social movements has never been so high. It was already the case back in 2018, when the Yellow Vest Movement started. The repression of it was fierce, with people literally losing their eyes, losing their hearts, because the police was almost deploying a military arsenal to police the protests.

But it was also true during the pension reform protest, because you have to know that this reform was meant to be applied before COVID, but then COVID happened, so they kind of postponed it. And now they decided to vote it last year. So there were huge social protests against this pension reform. And you probably remember those scenes that were a bit viral and you could have seen it in foreign medias

of like Paris bursting into flames almost last year during the pension reform protests. But even though there were huge social movements, Emmanuel Macron didn't care and he wanted to lead the reform to the end and pass it. So, yeah, French people tried to safeguard what was acquired, especially after World War II, the national health care system, our insurance policy that is very protective of people losing their job or quitting their job. They can have state money for a while, but everything that is welfare landmarks are being increasingly attacked.

Yeah. It feels like as you're talking about the neoliberal policies of Emmanuel Macron and the right-wing shift of his politics that has always kind of been there, but has become more explicit recently, you know, based on what you describe, it also feels like it's a very authoritarian politics, where if he can't get bills through the French parliament, then he'll just use constitutional ways to push them through anyway. Or as you say, there's this massive expansion of the policing system. Before we started recording, we were talking about the video surveillance and the expansion of the surveillance state in France as well. I wonder if you can talk a bit about that and how that connects to this broader kind of repression that

Emmanuel Macron has been engaged in. Yeah, the term authoritarian is absolutely accurate when it comes to what's happening right now in France, be it, as I said, repression of social movements. It's very also clear, I want to just talk about it for a minute, but even the climate activists are being increasingly criminalized and repressed. It's almost like, I mean, I'm always so stunned that you you know people are like protesting uh to defend climate and they're climate activists and they're being criminalized as terrorists almost so it's fairly insane france has been the first country in europe to legalize the algorithmic surveillance technology and especially due to the coming Olympic Games that will happen next summer

in 2024. So this big international event is actually setting a precedent in terms of how these surveillance technology will be deployed in France. So it is something very concerning. So we're talking about algorithm being deployed within the cameras that are everywhere in the public space. And they can like kind of police or they can control, they can actually control your behaviors in the streets. Like for example, if you're staying for too long on the floor, or if you're jumping onto someone because you're very happy to see the person,

it can lead to a signal to the police and it can lead to an arrest. So this technology will now be legal in France. It's been voted last spring. One aspect of it that's also very concerning that is not yet legal is also the special recognition algorithm. So this is not legal yet. This will be only authorized for special police forces that want, for instance, to investigate terrorist case, etc. And it could be used after to kind of match it with certain databases in order to recognize some people. This won't be legal at a broader scale for the Olympic Games. But there are many associations that are very concerned with the technology

because the step from algorithmic video surveillance to facial recognition is not a very big one. So there's already a lot of concern around the fact that you can go further quite easily. And also, it's been revealed by various medias that these technologies of algorithmic surveillance and facial recognition have already been in use by the police, especially completely illegally out of the legal framework for almost eight years now. So I think the concerns are very legitimate in that field. And if people want to know a bit more about what's happening in France with regards to the algorithmic video surveillance, there is an association called La Quadrature du Net, and they're very vocal

against it. And they also provide a lot of tools to better understand the subject and to better fight against it as well. That's great to know. And I can include a link to that in the show notes so people can check it out. It's very concerning to hear what you're describing there with the rollout of these technologies in France. And as you say, if there's algorithmic video surveillance now, the step to facial recognition is a very small one. And you can certainly see that coming as well, especially if there's any

kind of public security event that they can use to kind of push it through, right? I did want to pivot a little bit from this discussion to talking about, as part of the startup nation policy, there's not just the neoliberal policies with how services are delivered through the state, but also that desire to attract tech investment. I wonder, on that side of things, have these policies to turn France into kind of the mecca of tech investment in Europe actually worked? I'm not sure. I don't have the clear figures in mind. What I know is that every year there is this summit organized that's called Choose France. And that summit has been gathering every single tech leader in the world for the past couple of years. So they're trying to make fronts to make out of investment.

However, I feel like we still have some sort of tax policy that is not too attractive for many of the big tech companies. So they might prefer to go to other places a bit more flexible when it comes to tax, be it, I don't know, like Northern Ireland or Cyprus or Malta. So what's happening is that a lot of tech companies operating in France, they don't have their headquarters in France. They have it like in Cyprus or in other jurisdictions where the tax climate is a bit cooler, I would say. So I'm not sure it's been a major success in terms of attracting investment.

However, a lot of effort is being made by Emmanuel Macron. As I was saying, this Choose France summit is held every year in Versailles. So it's like a lot of money being spent having this like almost, you know, royal meeting for the tech leaders. So everyone is coming. Like I think Elon Musk came, all of the tech leaders came. Even the infamous former CEO of Binance, CZ, there is this picture that was commented and that went viral in France of Emmanuel Macron taking a selfie with CZ. And at that time, Binance, his platform, was being investigated by the Department of Justice in the US

and was already under a lot of heat for doing all sorts of frauds and noncompliance to different financial laws, etc., etc. And also being accused of financing terrorism. So at that very moment, Binance was being investigated. Emmanuel Macron was taking a selfie with his boss. So that was very concerning. So he's putting a lot of effort into this. And even like the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, in Switzerland, he brought with him a couple of the French unicorns and companies are doing in order to just attract an investment to France, whatever kind of investment that actually is. Can you tell us a bit more about, you know, this effort to attract the crypto industry, you know, something

that I think many people kind of see as a scam and not a kind of technology that you actually want to embrace, you know, the effort that Emmanuel Macron took in order to attract that industry to France. Yeah, so many people call it a scam and myself included, to be fair. I mean, for the most part. So yeah, a lot of effort was made into attracting those companies, Binance being one of them,

but not only Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, all of the major exchanges were welcome in France. I think FTX at the time of the scandal was operating through Cyprus and didn't have any sort of headquarter in France. It was operating in France. And even the minister of economy, Bruno Le Maire, I think it was not long ago, like one year and a half ago, one and a half year ago, said that he wanted France to be a base camp for the crypto economy. And everyone was a bit like, what is he saying? Like in other countries such as the US, for example, the biggest market for this, crypto criticism was pretty vocal.

And no, Bruno Le Maire and Emmanuel Macron really wanted crypto companies to settle in France. And at that time, well, I would say that the global framing of this industry here in France was rather positive. Like, you know, you could hear some people say, but tech is neutral. It's a chance for financial emancipation. You know, all the crypto boosterism was going full force here in France. So it was very disturbing for me to like see how much of compliance there was towards those companies. And one other very concerning example was that when Binance decided to open a branch here in France, they actually hired people from the authority that is in charge of regulating the

financial market, the equivalent of the SEC in the US, which is called the AMF in France. So Binance hired two prominent figures and also other prominent figures in other financial institutions. So that was really concerning. And up until, I would say, 2022, when the big FTX scandal blew up, there was a rather positive attitude towards those crypto and Web3 companies. So now crypto, the hype is gone and there is not much left, I would say. But still, the Web3 narrative is still quite prevalent here in France. And big Web3 companies are still going away with being quite fraudulent in some way. But it's still fine for most of them.

It's almost surprising to hear that that industry still has that degree of support or even interest in France as it has waned in other places. But of course, at the same time, we've seen the Bitcoin prices increasing lately. And I think that has resulted in a bit more interest in cryptocurrencies than there's been for a little while. One of the things that I noticed when I was reading about this policy and Emmanuel Macron's approach to the tech industry is that there was the positioning of the startup nation, you know, in 2017, as he was running. But then he also said that because of the startup nation policies, France was also going to become a unicorn nation, you know, referring to the status that tech companies can reach. Can you talk to us about

the plan there and how he wanted to step up to a unicorn nation and whether you have any indication as to whether that has happened? To be fair, I have no idea what a unicorn nation might be, especially in a country where the public system is like crumbling. So I think it's just, you know, Emmanuel Macron is very now well-known for having this very strong narrative.

And usually he's even more vocal and enthusiastic and emphatic, we say in French, because he has no actual power over what's going on. So he's making those big declaration, big discourse, who the hell knows what a unicorn nation is, to be fair. I have no idea. I cannot reply to that question. And now he's talking about the current narrative is extremely reactionary. What we have right now is he's talking about rearmement démographique. So that would be fostering birth. Well, it's pretty much telling people to have babies because we need more people within the nation which is like so reactionary and you know from unicorn nation to make babies because we need more citizens and he's saying that with a very

martial very military tone this is why i I said it's very reactionary. So, you know, it's very famous for making those bold claims. Nobody knows what he's talking about, really, but it's very bold. Yeah, it stands out to me as well that that kind of rhetoric is becoming increasingly popular on the right, and in particular among the Silicon Valley elite that have radicalized and become kind of vocal in their right-wing politics over the past little while through kind of pro-natalist policies and things like that. Elon Musk, of course, talks about population a lot. So it's almost not surprising to hear that Emmanuel Macron is adopting similar language. I guess to pivot a little bit, again, you know, when we talk about the French state or what French workers have been doing, another, I guess,

assumption that a lot of people have from outside of France is that France has a very strong labor movement and strong worker protections because the unions and because workers defend those rights very strongly when they come under attack by government and employers and other actors. In France, we've also seen the rise of precarious food delivery and ride-hailing platforms. Can you talk to us a bit about how Emmanuel Macron has defended these companies and this business model as Uber and these other companies have expanded into France. Yes, absolutely. So I think it was one year ago, this scandal blew out that was called the Ubergate. And as you mentioned, Emmanuel

Macron was pointed out for his role in advocating for Uber taking over France pretty much. So facilitating, even though it was not almost legal at certain points, but facilitating companies such as Uber to operate within France. And what was really concerning, besides this kind of institutional lobbying directly from the president, which is in itself very concerning when it comes to a company such as Uber or any other company, to be fair, was that that company settled and precisely targeted the suburbs, the precarious suburbs in France, coming in France with the discourse of saying, you know, you're going to be an entrepreneur,

you're going to work for yourself, we're going to empower you through this platform, etc, etc. And there was also an active campaigning targeting the suburbs in order to hire as many contractors as possible, because they are still contractors. They work for the platform, but not with a proper contract, but as self-employed. And the condition in the beginning were pretty attractive because there was Uber strategy to facilitate in order to gain a lot of users. So condition were attractive. And then the condition they tightened. And now we can see people, and it's very common with the platform economy, that you have taxi drivers that work around the clock for almost nothing.

And it's crazy the amount of time they spend in their car. And at the end of the day, they earn what? Like 150 euros. So the conditions of work, of labor, have crucially declined, but they're hooked to the platform because they have to work. So it's a global attack on labor condition, on labor protection. And these people, as they are individualized as workers, they cannot really unionize. However, we've seen unions, for example, in bike delivery people.

They've been unionizing more in France. So now they've gained some sort of power in order to negotiate for themselves. But when it comes to taxi drivers, they're still very individualized. So it's very concerning now to look at the condition of their work. And Emmanuel Macron was key. It was a pivotal moment when he authorized Uber. I mean, it's a bit simplistic to say it's his fault, but he clearly played an active role in just like giving these people bad condition of work in the name of technology

and in the name of like empowerment. Do you know, because, you know, you talked about the scandal when the Uber papers came out about a year or so ago, that showed that as the economy minister under Francois Hollande's socialist government from 2014 to 2016, that he personally helped Uber, you know, lobby in order to get entry to the French market. And I know at the time there were talks about, you know, lobby in order to get entry to the French market. And I know at the time there were talks about, you know, an investigation into this or potentially kind of holding him accountable. Did anything ever come of that or did that just kind of die in parliament? Like many, many other scandals, it died. The McKinsey one also, we don't have many news from it. You know, I was talking about earlier the fact that

under Emmanuel Macron, there was an unprecedented amount of public money going to McKinsey. McKinsey is not paying almost no tax in France. So this influence of these private auditing firms has never been as big as now, but there's not much scrutiny. There is one by Senate and Cour des Comptes, etc., but there's not much political outcome, you know, of this scrutiny. And same with Uber, it just fell through. We don't have much of it now. So it's quite concerning, to be fair. Yeah, it absolutely is. And I wonder, you know, you talked about how these food delivery workers and ride hailing workers are considered contractors in France, like in many other countries. How different is that from the way that the French labor model usually works? Because, you know, obviously, as someone from outside of France, we have this idea of strong unions, a high degree of unionization within the French workforce.

How different is this from how labor is usually composed in France? And does it risk kind of further eroding those labor protections if this way of working is allowed to be entrenched. Yes. So our labor system is, well, used to be considered as very protective towards workers, but this has been under decline since many years now. And not only under Emmanuel Macron, as a result of this neoliberal turn during the 1980s that has been loosening the protection of surrounding workers. But we still have quite a protective system, meaning that each and every employee with a proper contract can obtain, if he decides to leave the company under certain circumstances, state money for quite a long time, which is called l'assurance chômage, unemployment insurance. So that's very interesting. And it's so funny because to make a loop with the idea of the

startup nation, that's the very system that has been allowing a lot of the young startups to be funded in the beginning, meaning that the founders, this is because they can get the state money that they're actually launching the startup. Pôle emploi, which is now called France Travail, is probably the structure that is financing the more startups in the country, to be fair. Like a lot of young startupers are being funded by France Travail, the state insurance system. So we have this. We used to have quite strong unions. That is not true anymore. There has been like unionizing has been on the decline. The influence of unions has been declining for a while now.

They've gained a bit momentum during the pension reform social movements. So all the unions, all the major ones actually grouped and they were together against it. So that was quite a moment for unions in France. But apart from it, I feel like the influence of unions has been under decline for a while now. And we have an increasing lobbying by the state, but also by companies for the alternative to this, what is called a rigid labor system. So you can be self-employed. You can be micro-entrepreneur.

And this path towards from a quite rigid contract, but with strong rights, more and more people are now self-employed and acting as, you know, the gig economy as contractors. So that's a clear trend that's happening right now. Yeah, like in many other countries, unfortunately. And I know at the moment, there is a push to change the rules around gig work and platform work through the platform work directive at the European Union level. How has France been engaging in that? And I know it's been trying to do something domestically in order to get in the way of any kind of more aggressive regulations being put forward on the EU level.

So do you have any insight into what's going on in that process? What I know is that at the level of cities, you know, all these instant delivery food companies such as Flink, Getter, all those companies that were big in the UK, especially, they tried to settle in France. But it didn't last for too long because city mayors decided to ban them because of labor condition, but also because they were using too much space, but pretty much, and at street level, what used to be shops, the competition with other shops was not fair. So they decided to ban those companies, and it was quite effective because in a few months, they were all gone. So now we don't have any more flink kind of quick commerce kind of companies. But when it comes to the EU and bigger companies such as Uber, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's quite flexible for them still. I mean, Uber is still operating freely in France. Same for other companies like this.

So, yeah, besides those quick commerce startups to deliver you food in like less than 10 minutes that were banned, also because the condition of the workers were extremely bad, and there was a social movement to actually denounce this. So that was effective. But besides of it, I don't see a clear trend to curb those bigger platforms. I still feel that the EU has a stronger body of regulation than most of the other countries at the level of the EU. But it's not great step forward for, you know, customer protection, etc. But some others say it's not ambitious enough. But still, at the level of the EU, we also have this quite effective policy called GDPR that has been a step forward in terms of data protection for customers and regular people. But, you know, there's always a tension. People say it's a lack of ambition. Others say it's

better than elsewhere. Yeah, that's completely fair. We've been talking a lot through this conversation about how Emmanuel Macron has been trying to attract a lot of tech investment into France, in particular from large multinational tech companies, but also getting things going domestically as well in terms of getting investments for new companies and things like that. One of the things that seems to be central to France's strategy is not just getting that foreign investment, but also building its national champions and having some degree of digital sovereignty. I wonder if these two policies are somehow in conflict with one another, trying to get that foreign investment, but also trying to build digital sovereignty so

that you're not so reliant on all of these foreign companies. How does that actually play out in the French context? Well, there's clearly a tension between the two in the sense that I feel like the political leaders, be it at the stage of the EU, but also in France, are increasingly concerned about our dependency towards bigger tech companies, such as, for instance, cloud, the companies that provide the cloud service, even the defense softwares, etc., etc. So there is a clear call in Europe, and especially in France, for more digital sovereignty. This is why there is a clear effort into nurturing national champions, especially in the field of defense. And this is also why I feel like France has been the first country

to legalize the algorithmic video surveillance because there is an economic reason for it. And the economic reason is that we have national champions and they have to become bigger. But the bigness somehow is okay when it's French or European, but when it's other big tech companies, they tend to be more regulated. So yes, there is a kind of contradiction in this. I won't be too critical towards the effort to not depend too much on big techs and especially, you know,

well, be it American or Chinese, but I kind of understand the need to not be too dependent on those companies because it's becoming, as everybody knows, also a geopolitical issue for every country. And when you have your more critic industries relying on Amazon Web Services and cloud services, it might be an issue. So this is the reason why there is this call for more sovereignty and especially in Europe, yes. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think it makes a lot of sense to want to not be dependent on these major international companies, right?

And for a long time, it was really beneficial to these companies that these narratives were not as prevalent, right? The idea that everyone would just use Amazon or Google or whatever was just taken as fact taken as reality. And now there is questioning of that. And I think that's healthy. I think it's really interesting that you say that the EU seems more focused on holding kind of foreign tech companies to account than domestic ones, because that's one of the things I've always argued is part of the reason that we get stronger tech regulation in Europe is because the Googles and the Amazons are not based there. So they don't really lose very much from taking on those companies. But it is

interesting that you don't often hear about them going after kind of domestic European companies, or at least not as often. But I guess part of the reason for that might be that they don't tend to be as large. Yeah, of course. But it's also funny when it comes to France, that France almost invented the internet, but never succeeded. It's a French engineer that was very close to invent what has become the internet. But for some reason, he didn't make it through. Before the internet, we had this system called Minitel.

That was a major technological improvement and achievement. But again, we didn't make it till the end. And internet and mostly American-based internet became the standard for what is today's internet. But France, somewhere near the 1970s, was quite forward in terms of technological innovation. Maybe they're referring to this lineage and period of time now with this sovereignty issues in mind. As I was saying in the very beginning, I feel like Emmanuel Macron positions himself in this tradition of digital Colbertism, meaning that France has to be a strong global state.

And we will reach this objective by nurturing digital champions, national champions, being aggressive in terms of trades, in terms of influence, etc. So this all startup nation is also a clear reference to this kind of political tradition. I think it's really interesting that you bring in that history, because one of the things I feel like I remember about the Minitel project was that there was also a degree of interest in having a national champion in that moment as well, right? To not be so reliant on IBM, which was like the major American tech company at the time, and instead to have kind of a French computer company and a French alternative to that. And of course, it was quite successful

for quite a while. Yes, absolutely. Minitel was very successful. It was used by administrations, the press. I'm fairly sure my parents had one, to be fair, because I'm born in 1990 so that would make sense in terms of of the period in time and also Minitel was very famous as a use case for the sex part of it it was called Minitel Rose I think everybody knows in France what it is but yeah this service to have access to like what today would be Tinder I I guess, and sexting and stuff like that. And Minitel became a prominent use case for this. So I was fairly successful at the time. And I couldn't tell exactly the reason why the project declined and was abandoned.

Was it a matter of cost or influence? Because it was designed initially to be both a device, but also a service and a network. It was quite complete, but it was also very closed on itself. So I guess this is the reason why it was a very French thing. So maybe it's the reason why it didn't become this international standard, such as the internet, I guess. But I'm not 100% sure.

That would be interesting to do a little bit of research on why Minitel didn't become the internet. Absolutely. You certainly didn't see many Minitels outside of France, and that was certainly a hindrance of it achieving the global nature that the internet did later. I wonder, we were talking about the desire for national champions in France. Can you talk to us a bit about the industries where France is trying to build up these national champions and what it's trying to achieve with that? Well, I would say it's very cross-sector, but lately there is a big push on anything defense, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence. There's actually a company called Mistral

that is set to become OpenAI's competitor. They've raised quite a lot of money in the field of artificial intelligence. But I would put defense and cybersecurity first. AI for sure. Web3 for the past three years was the darling of Emmanuel Macron with crypto companies, but also NFT gaming companies such as Sorare, a company that we don't really know how they generate revenue to date. We don't really know if the business model actually exists and how they actually survive. But well, they are part of the unicorns in France. I would say also healthcare. That's a pretty strong company called Doctolib.

There was quite a stir during the pandemic because Doctolib was appointed the one and only platform, digital platform to have access to vaccination. So that's a private unicorn. And there was no public system for vaccination. It was through Doctolib, a private company, that the whole vaccination campaign was led in France. That's also a very good startup nation example to be brought forward. So yeah, I would talk about those companies. I think that makes a lot of sense. And it's concerning to hear how there's been that move into private healthcare with these tech companies as well, you know, moving things into these private

apps and whatnot, that would usually be something that would be kind of more in the public system. We've, of course, seen that in Canada as well, where one of the biggest kind of pushers of private healthcare through technology is actually a former state-owned telecommunications company here, which is unfortunate, but I think that is often how things seem to play out. This has been a really fascinating conversation, Nastasia, to learn about what has been going on in France. And I wonder, just to close off our conversation, how would you sum up the wider impact of the Startup Nation policy and Emmanuel Macron's approach that has been inspired by these tech objectives, as you said? And is there anything that I didn't think to ask you that you think is important for listeners to know?

From my perspective, which is obviously situated, to me, it's an unprecedented attack on the welfare state that is being led using tech and neoliberal rhetoric as a justification. So to me, this is a net negative almost. And I feel like a lot of people are very concerned, especially in the light of the recent authoritarian right conservative turn that is being more and more assumed. And it's extremely concerning. And it feels like everybody knows that the option will be next election between the far right Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron again. But it is more likely that Le Pen is going to maybe win the election. So we are at this stage where Macron's tactics to prevent far-right to win the next presidential election is actually to endorse the far-right himself.

So it's a very fucked up moment in French politics. And a lot of people are fairly concerned. And we've seen since the pandemics, social inequalities explode, public services being more and more attacked and dismantled and less functional and less efficient, even though we still have like quite strong basis if you compare to other countries. But the trend towards a more neoliberal, minimal state and minimal welfare in order to give more power to private companies and especially the tech companies is very concerning.

So I think we need more and more people to talk about it, being openly very critical of it. So I hope this is what listeners will understand. And also, I think more and more people are disillusioned about Emmanuel Macron. He was positioning himself as, I'm not from the right, I'm not from the left. We clearly see now his extremely right-wing right leaning, almost far right leaning politics. So a lot of disillusion within the population, but also, I think, a lot of resource for those who want to fight against it. Absolutely. Now, I appreciate you laying all that out. that the French example really shows these connections between the tech industry and

these neoliberal policies very clearly in a way that might not be as evident in other countries because these things happened earlier than they did in France, because there has really been this onslaught during Macron's presidency. Nastassia, it's really been fantastic to speak with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much. And bravo for your work as well. I'm a very regular reader and listener of your podcast. And bravo for your work as well. I'm a very regular reader and listener of your podcast. So thank you for having me. Thank you so much. Nastasia Ajaji is a journalist and the author of No Crypto, Comment Bitcoin a Envooter la Planète. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me,

Paris Marks. Production is by Eric Wickham and transcripts are by Bridget Palou-Fry. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week. Thank you.