«Italy is a great democratic country and I must reiterate, with the words used on another occasion, on 7 October 2022, that it “knows how to look after itself in compliance with its Constitution”. Anyone, particularly if, as announced, about to take on an important government role in a friendly and allied country, must respect its sovereignty and cannot take on the task of giving it prescriptions”.
With these few words, dry, but as usual very clear, the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella replies to Elon Musk’s free tweetsSouth African entrepreneur, owner of Tesla and they have to go.” While today he took things further: «This is unacceptable. Do the Italian people live in a democracy or is it an unelected autocracy that makes decisions?”.
Elon Musk is currently still formally a private citizen, albeit very powerful in his economic capacity and influence, as the owner ofwhich, in September 2023, Vera Jourova, commissioner for values and transparency of the European Union, had publicly defined it as “the platform with the highest number of posts with incorrect information or disinformation”. But Trump’s announcement that he wants him to head a new body with consultancy tasks regarding cutting federal agencies’ expenses now shifts his weight not only in terms of influence – already enormous and having a strong impact on democracy due to the possibility of moving a mass of more or less oriented information – but also political, in a formal sense.
Musk’s words that question the quality of Italian democracy, while the world questions his cumbersome and almost constant presence alongside Donald Trumphad generated a heated debate in recent days, not only due to the interference in Italian affairs and the Albanian question, but also due to the silence of the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who did not respond to Musk’s words on Italian sovereignty, while less than a week ago he wrote on his official Instagram page next to a photo of their recent meeting in New York: «In the past few hours I have spoken to my friend Elon Musk. I am convinced that his commitment and vision can represent an important resource for the United States and Italy, in a spirit of collaboration aimed at facing future challenges.”
Only a few hours after Mattarella’s note, sources at Palazzo Chigi made Giorgia Meloni’s statement known: «We always listen with great respect to the words of the President of the Republic».
Already a year ago Mattarella spoke about the risk of technology in few private hands
What the President of the Republic’s concerns and awareness are regarding the impact of technological potential on democratic institutions has been known for some time: «It must be considered»Mattarella said last December 20th on the occasion of welcoming the institutions for their end-of-year greetings, «that the management of the most advanced technologies is, in fact, the exclusive heritage of a few large multinationals that, orIn addition to holding a huge amount of personal data – sometimes artfully stolen – they can influence the markets, including what they usually define as the political market. It is probably inevitable that the dominant operators in this sector are large because those activities require skills, data, technical infrastructures and economic resources that only an extremely small number of entities can ensure but there is a need for rules – not obstacles but rules to guarantee citizens – to prevent a few groups from influencing the lives of each of us and democracy”.
He warned of the risks that we see materialize today: «Through a distorted use of technology, it is already possible today to alter, in a way that is difficult to notice, statements, videos, films, isolating sentences, illegally re-editing. With artificial intelligence it is possible to produce apparently credible but totally deceptive virtual scenarios. There is a real risk of finding ourselves living in parallel dimensions in the future, in which reality and truth are indistinguishable from falsehood and manipulation: the critical spirit would be overwhelmed. And, with it, the freedom that lies at the basis of everyone’s rights. The phenomenon must, therefore, be regulated, necessarily and urgently, in the interest – I repeat – of people, of citizens, but we know that this fundamental need encounters difficulties due to the size and conditioning power of operators in the sector. Whose presumption of becoming protagonists who dictate the rules, rather than being recipients of regulation, has already manifested itself on several occasions”.
These are words that are perfectly suited to today: «The recent initiative on Artificial Intelligence launched by the European institutions goes in the right direction, posing the decisive problem of protecting the privacy and freedom of citizens. Let’s imagine for just a moment, applying the scenario described in George Orwell’s book “1984”, what a distortion in the use of these technologies in the service of a twentieth-century dictatorship could have meant. The prerequisites of citizens’ sovereignty are at stake.”
