How to Use Tech to Outsmart Dictators | Leopoldo López | TED

Four months ago, my house was raided by the agents of the Venezuelan regime. They destroyed the walls, the ceilings and even killed my dogs. After that, they decided to take away my Venezuelan nationality, something that is prohibited by the Venezuelan Constitution. What sparked this was a public statement I made supporting the law enforcement and military buildup against Nicolás Maduro that led to his capture on January 3. And maybe the fact that my house was only blocks away from Delcy Rodríguez’s, interim dictator of Venezuela. For my family and I, the journey of persecution has been very long. I was elected mayor of Caracas for eight years. After that, I was banned to run for office.

I had three assassination attempts, and in the year 2014, when Maduro stole his first election, we called for protests, peaceful protests. People came out by the thousands, and Maduro called for my arrest. I went into hiding, and I had three choices. I could stay in hiding. I could leave the country. Or I could turn myself in. So I decided to turn myself in. And I became a political prisoner for seven years. In solitary confinement, the sound I remember most is not screaming. It's the locks. One lock, then another, then another. Nine locks in total. I was in complete confinement, so locks became very present to me, and they became the framework through which I started to think about freedom, which was the reason I was in prison.

I started to think about locks and the framework as the things were taken away from me. My speech was taken away from me, a lock on my freedom of speech. My freedom to mobility, a lock on my mobility. The freedom to have a free and fair trial, a lock on my freedom and justice. When they took my home, a lock on my property. When they took my nationality, a lock on my identity. So I started to think about locks as the problem and keys as the solution. While in prison, in solitary confinement, I figured out a way to speak to other prisoners. The only moment I could see other prisoners was when I was able to go to mass. So when I was in mass with two details sitting next to me, there was only one moment when we stood up and gave the hug of peace.

And when that happened, I would stand up and tell those prisoners that I knew that were with me, I would tell them, "Peace be with you, my brother. Please tell your wife to find my wife." And in that way, we developed a protocol to communicate within prison. It took time, a lot of iterations. But over six months, we were able to figure out a way to take control of the prison. A year after we started, there was a spark. And that spark led to the activation of the protocol. And for 12 hours, we took complete control of that prison. After that, things became even more lonely and more difficult. I went [on] a hunger strike for 28 days. I lost 14 kilograms, and then they took everything away from me. Even my books, which were my universe.

So I was in complete loneliness. And in that complete loneliness, I understood that the one thing they were not able to take away from me was my heart and my soul. The way I felt and the way I thought. It was a key to my own internal freedom. By the end of 2020, I was able to escape Venezuela -- something I never wanted to do. We had to cross several checkpoints, and finally I crossed a river and went into Colombia. And I began exile. Exile is another form of imprisonment. And I came out into a very different world. I came out into a world of COVID, and I also came out into a very different world in terms of technology. I had gone into prison with a BlackBerry. (Laughter) And I came out into the world of smartphones, voice notes, video calls and cryptocurrency.

None of that was part of my existence before. It was shocking. Some months after that, I was a visiting fellow at Stanford, and I made a very good friend and he told me, "Listen, man, the most important thing that happened while you were away was Bitcoin and AI. Bitcoin, because it's open-source, decentralized money that you can hold by having your own keys. And AI, because it's going to revolutionize everything, the way we use [and] process information. So I became very interested, not about the technology itself, because I've never written a line of code in my life. I didn't know what open-source or decentralized technology was, but I became interested in the intersection between technology and freedom. And some months after that, I started to meet other people.

Other people like myself that had been political prisoners, that had led protests in their own countries, that had been forced into exile. We were very different -- skin color, religion, languages -- but we were very similar in our struggle for freedom. So we decided to create the World Liberty Congress, which has become the largest global alliance of freedom fighters and democracy defenders. 60 countries are represented -- (Applause) 60 countries represented in the World Liberty Congress. And that gave me the opportunity to get to know a lot of people. It gave me the opportunity not just to go to different countries, but to share, with different people, about their experiences. And particularly about the way in which technology was being used to fight for freedom.

So rather than tell you about the technology, I want to tell you about some of the people that have been using this technology. Maria is a Venezuelan nurse. During COVID, she was earning $3 per month. So we figured out a program for nurses and doctors to get a $100 monthly support. But we had a problem. The financial system was taken by the regime. It was surveilled by the regime. So we turned to stablecoins and Bitcoin, and we were able to support more than 70,000 medical doctors and nurses without the intermediation of the regime. (Applause) It was not just technology, it was a life support. It was a way for them to survive in the moment of largest crisis. Then another friend, Anyan.

Anyan is a journalist. He's dedicated his career to following conflict zones, from Congo to Rwanda to Mexico. And today he has a network of over a thousand journalists. But they have a problem. How do they keep their own information without someone switching it off or deleting their information? So they turn to Nostr. Nostr is to communication what Bitcoin is to money. It's an open-source protocol that nobody owns, you can have your own information, you can have your own followers, you can publish your information, and no one can delete that information. Last January, there was an election in Uganda. My very good friend Bobi Wine, founding member of the World Liberty Congress, was going to win the election. There was no doubt that he was going to win the election. But there was also no doubt that they were going to steal the election.

And in order to steal the election, one of the things that the regime was going to do was to shut down the internet. So I told Bob, I said, "My friend, there is something called BitChat." BitChat is an open-source protocol that connect phones without internet, without cell towers, just by Bluetooth mesh network, you are able to connect people. So for 21 days, Bobi posted about BitChat. And by Election Day, 1.8 million people in Uganda had downloaded this protocol. And this protocol -- (Applause) And this protocol became their internet. It became the way for them to communicate. And it was very powerful. But Uganda also showed me something else. We had a backup plan. So we had helped to smuggle more than 30 Starlinks into Uganda before the election. But the regime knew that something could happen.

So they wrote to Starlink asking for the service to be blocked. And it was blocked. The service was blocked, and it was not able to be used. But that same week, that same week, in Iran, there were protesters. And Starlink was open, the same way it was in Ukraine. So what that showed me is that the technology is not the problem. The technology is there. Starlink can use, or any other technology. The problem was very clear. The problem was the gatekeeper. Whenever there is a gatekeeper, there is a problem. It doesn't matter if the gatekeeper is a government, if it's a bank, if it's a company. The problem is the gate itself. So what we need to figure out is how we can have these keys and the elephant in the room in any conversation today about AI is: who holds the keys?

Who holds the keys to your own information? [Do] you hold the information or [does] a corporation hold that information? Fortunately, in the same way that Bitcoin is working for money or Nostr for communication, or BitChat for connectivity, today there is sovereign AI. AI that you can hold in your own machine. AI that you can manage with your own privacy and that you can decide. Today hold my own sovereign agent, and I am working with other people for them in their autocratic countries to have their own agent that is completely sovereign. But keys are hard to master. I remember when I was in prison, waking up to an assault rifle pointed [at] my head. And several men in the cell just tearing everything apart. I was very scared. And the way that fear felt was my heart was pounding.

And they came back again every week, every other week. So I decided that I needed to do something about it. And what I decided to do was to figure out how I could control my heart. Not spiritually, not intellectually, but physically control my heart. So I decided to put together this drill. I would do push-ups, burpees, jumping jacks. I would take my heart rate to 80, 90 percent, and then I would sit down. Sit still, breathe and try to take my heart rate as low as I could, as fast as I could. The agents came back to my cell many times. But every time they came, I felt control. Because I had found my own internal key to self-control and to freedom. And [in] that same way I was able to find that self-control and my own internal key, you have the choice to have your keys to your sovereignty in the 21st century and in the digital age.

(Applause) But keys need a purpose. My purpose, for years, has been the freedom of my country, Venezuela. I hold my keys very closely, but I hold them with the purpose. And for me, the purpose is the freedom of my country, Venezuela, and the freedom of every country that today is living under autocratic regimes. And technology can be a source of freedom if everyone is able to find their own keys to identity, their own keys to their own freedom. Thank you very much. (Applause)