Understanding Power in the Digital Age

ALUMNI VOICES | BIG TECH | 5 MIN READ

Jochem de Groot '02 has spent the past 17 years moving through the worlds where technology, policy, and power meet—from his early diplomatic work on internet freedom to senior roles at Microsoft and Philips. Now the Head of Policy and Public Affairs at NLdigital and newly published author, he’s become a thoughtful voice on Europe’s digital autonomy and the influence of Big Tech in shaping our world. With his debut book Kolonisten van de Cloud, he pulls back the curtain on that landscape, and reflects on what it means for Europe to define its own digital future.

Looking back, how did a liberal arts foundation and your international experiences shape the way you now think about and approach complex issues like technology, power, and global influence?

I was always a generalist with a wide range of interests, so it was no surprise that I fared well studying at UCU. It gave me a wide range of perspectives, both because of my broad Social Science major and the strong diversity of students around me, many of whom I am still friends with. I think it was easier to wrap my head around the complexity of the issues surrounding technology, geopolitics, and corporate power that I wrote the book about because of that broad education and international perspective.

You’ve spent much of your career where tech, policy, and global affairs overlap. What made you want to write Kolonisten van de Cloud? Was there a point when you thought, this story needs to be told?

Truth be told: I had aspired to become a writer ever since I was 12. I tried starting a couple of novels throughout college and later, the first one even at UCU, though I never finished that one because my laptop was stolen (which was a good excuse to not start again: this was the time well before autosaving documents in cloud solutions!).

As my career organically unfolded, I always kept that ambition in the back of my mind, but it was only after I left corporate life after a decade and moved into an independent role that I realized I finally had the time and freedom to write a book. That it became non-fiction and focuses on my experiences as a Big Tech lobbyist at Microsoft has to do with the natural alignment of several factors: the growing societal debate about Big Tech’s influence, my own reflections on having been part of such a machine, and geopolitical developments, including Trump’s reelection, that heightened Europe’s need to become more independent from American technology. For Europe and the Netherlands to move in that direction, we first need to understand how these companies operate from the inside, how they have shaped our narratives about technology, and how we have come to lack a vision of our own because of that influence.

In Kolonisten van de Cloud, you describe how Big Tech has become a kind of geopolitical power in itself. From your perspective inside that world, what did you find most surprising or even unsettling?

What surprised me most is the fact that a company like Microsoft has become so powerful that it is worth more than the GDP of a large economy like Italy, and that it can leverage that power as if it were a state while remaining a non-state, private actor. As an example, Microsoft opened a “UN Representative Office” at the UN in New York, a de facto embassy of the company at a multilateral organization of which it is—and cannot become—a member because it is not a country. But it behaves like a country in many ways, in terms of how it influences, invests, communicates, and wields its power.

You write that Europe risks losing its ‘digital soul’. What does that idea mean to you personally, and what might it take for Europe to rediscover or defend it?

To me personally, it meant taking a step back and reorienting myself toward the American values, ideas, and narratives that influenced me over time—first in general, and later, working in tech policy, specifically in the digital realm. I went to an American high school, did an exchange semester in San Diego during my time at UCU, and was later a trainee in the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Working for Microsoft for eight years further immersed me in an American work environment. Being Dutch and European, I came to the conclusion that I not only grew up in an ecosystem shaped by American technology, but also in a world in which American tech values—efficiency, productivity, techno-solutionism—are almost invisibly imported as well.

For Europe to become more technologically independent, we must first recognize that immaterial, difficult-to-grasp influence on our thinking about technology, and begin creating our own ideas based on European values and the economic, public, and societal goals we want technology to serve in the first place, before deciding what technology we need to achieve them. Technology is a means, not an end, and in trying to become more independent from non-European tech, I sometimes fear that we too easily assume the reverse is true.

In your current roles, you see both how governments try to regulate tech and how the industry responds. What do you think is shifting right now, and what, if anything, gives you hope?

There is definitely a growing awareness of how political, geopolitical, societal, and other forces have made our dependency on non-European companies much more of an issue than before. The fact that it is so high on political agendas is good, but I think it is naïve to believe we can quickly abandon those American products and replace them immediately. That is not how it works: we absolutely need to invest in European alternatives, but we also have to work with the best technology in class—which is mostly American—to stay safe, productive, and innovative. It is a long game of gradually decreasing our dependencies while increasing our independence.

And lastly, many UCU alumni now work in or around tech, policy, and IR. What would you want them, and current students, to keep in mind about building a career that stays true to their values while engaging with the big systems and digital tools shaping our world?

I worked as a political advisor, at an NGO, as a diplomat, as a corporate lobbyist, and now as an advisor to a trade body. My career developed organically, and I was lucky to see technology policy from so many different angles. Staying true to your values means something different to everyone, but for me—as a generalist—I was grateful to have had the chance to understand how power is shaped and exercised from many different perspectives: in politics, NGOs, government, Big Tech, and companies more generally. 

If you understand how power works, you can use that knowledge to make the world better as you see fit. That is why I wrote the book, wanting to throw a stone into the collective pond. Sharing my knowledge of how corporate tech diplomats work, see, and influence the world is useful not only for helping us recognize that power, but also for trying to balance it.

And one book tip, if I may: The Power Broker by Robert Caro is 50 years old, but it’s a fantastic book for understanding how power works, written in some of the best literary non-fiction you will ever read.