How to use tech to outsmart dictators | Leopoldo López

0:03TED: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. For seven years, the sounds that Leopoldo Lopez heard most in solitary confinement were the sounds of locks. Nine of them, one after another, separating him from every other human being. He had a lot of time to think about what locks mean and what keys are capable of. 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.

0:46TED: Leopoldo, a Venezuelan opposition leader and former mayor of Caracas, spent seven years as a political prisoner under Nicolas Merduro before escaping into exile. In this talk, he takes the fight for freedom into the digital age. He shares how open source technology, things like decentralized communication, Bitcoin and sovereign AI, are becoming the new frontier of that same struggle. He warns that whenever there's a gatekeeper, there is conditional freedom. His argument is simple and urgent. The key to freedom is owning your own keys. Keys need a purpose. My purpose for years has been the freedom of my country, Venezuela.

1:32I hold my keys very closely, but I hold them with a purpose. 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.

1:49TED: And stick around after the talk. We caught up with TED curator Whitney Pennington Rogers, who shares more about what really surprised her in working with Lopez and why this talk feels so urgent now. That's all coming up right after a short break.

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4:06TED: And now, our TED Talk of the day. 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 the 3rd. And maybe the fact that my house was only blocks away from Delcy Rodriguez's interim dictator of Venezuela. For my family and I, the journey of persecution has been very long.

5:02I was elected mayor in 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.

6:16I started to think about locks and the framework that 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 for 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.

7:11So 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.

7:58And for 12 hours, we took complete control of that prison. After that, things became even more lonely and more difficult. I went into 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.

9:03Exile 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. and I came out in 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 met a very good friend, and he told me, listen, man, the most important thing that happened while you were away were Bitcoin and AI. Bitcoin, because it's open source, decentralized money that you can hold by having your own keys.

9:58And AI, because it's going to revolutionize everything, the way we use, 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.

10:47But 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. Sixty countries are represented.

11:1160 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$100 monthly support.

11:59But we had a problem. The financial system was taken by the regime. It was surveilled by the regime. So we turned to stable coins and Bitcoin, and we were able to support more than 70 ,000 medical doctors and nurses without the intermediation of the regime.

12:23It 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, Anjan. Anjan 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 turned to Noster. Noster is to communication what Bitcoin is to money. It's an open source protocol that nobody owns, that you can have your own information, you can have your own followers, you can publish your information, and no one can delete that information.

13:22Last January, there was an election in Uganda. My very good friend Bobby Wine, member, 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 Bobby, I said, my friend, there is something called BitChat. BitChat is an open source protocol that you can connect phones without internet, without cell towers, just by Bluetooth mesh network, you are able to connect people.

14:09So for 21 days, Bobby posted about BitChat, and by election day, 1.8 million people in Uganda had downloaded this protocol. And this protocol... 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 starlings 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.

15:05And 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?

15:52You hold the information or a corporation holds that information. Fortunately, in the same way that Bitcoin is working for money or Noster for communication or BitChap 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. I 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 out to my head.

16:40And several men in the cell just staring everything apart. I was very scared. And the way that fear was 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%, 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.

17:37the 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 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.

18:10But 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 a 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.

18:56TED: That was Leopoldo Lopez at TED 2026. And as you've probably noticed, we've been experimenting with something different on the show called Curator's Corner. Throughout the year, you'll hear from Ted's curators, the people who actually find and work with the speakers on the show. They'll share more about the idea you just heard and the behind-the-scenes of how the talks came to life. And now here's Ted curator Whitney Pennington Rogers. She shares more about what drew her to bring Leopoldo back to the Ted stage after his first talk in 2024 and why his perspective has completely shifted the way she thinks about technology.

19:33TED: Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to Leopoldo Lopez's talk. So Leopoldo joined us as a speaker in 2024 to give a talk about the rise of authoritarianism globally and the work that he's been doing to stamp that out. And we invited him to come back in this moment because he had a really interesting perspective on the role technology can play in helping to build movements against autocracy and authoritarianism. And we felt like as a space where we're talking constantly about tech and the benefits and the drawbacks, to sort of have this perspective from a place of democracy building felt so important.

20:13TED: And his take and his proximity to that work really added a perspective that felt so valuable right now. So Leopoldo is honestly one of the most inspiring, powerful speakers you'll ever hear. He definitely is for me. He's from Venezuela. And of course, this year there's been a lot of news out of Venezuela. And we were eager to sort of hear his perspective on that. And what he brought us was something that was not just specific to what's happening in Venezuela, but things that are happening all over the world that felt meaningful and useful for people no matter where you are. on the planet. And, you know, I think that more than anything that felt like a message that transcends just this moment or just one news story, but it's something that we can use this year and far beyond.

21:02TED: So we were really surprised when we spoke with Leo to hear that the thing he wanted to talk about was technology and the impact that technology has had on the work that he's been doing to build democracy globally and also the work of so many of his colleagues. And I think we have lots of conversations at TED about tech benefits and the promises and the dangers. And what he shared offered a new lens through which to view all of this. For me, it changed the way that I think about, you know, some of the benefits of tech that I think sometimes are sort of presented in a really negative light or is often looked at as dangerous or scary, that there really are dual uses for a lot of these things.

21:44TED: And sometimes those uses are invisible to a lot of us if we're not operating in spaces where we could use them in some of the ways that Leopoldo talked about in his talk that really benefit communities that are vulnerable in ways that maybe a lot of us listening may not be. So, so much of the conversation around tech is centered around this idea of the companies and the corporations who own that tech and the intentions behind why it's being created, how it's being used. And a lot of what you heard Leopoldo mention was this idea that if we have tech that is open source, where there is not one person or a few people sort of pulling the lever, the opportunity it presents for us to use it in ways that benefit us.

22:30TED: And so I think the big question is just how much do we want to own these products and how much do we want to own our own technology is a question that I'm left with. And I hope that you all are thinking about that, too.

22:46TED: If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo Christopher Faze Bogan Valentina Bohanini Banban Chang Brian Green and Lainey Lott learn more at podcasts.ted.com I am Elise Hu I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet thanks for listening

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25:58TED: way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.