How to use tech to outsmart dictators | Leopoldo López

Elise Hu (0:04)

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For seven years, the sounds that Leopoldo López 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.

Leopoldo López (0:27)

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.

Elise Hu (0:46)

Leopoldo, a Venezuelan opposition leader and former mayor of Caracas, spent seven years as a political prisoner under Nicolas Maduro 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.

Leopoldo López (1:22)

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 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.

Elise Hu (1:49)

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 López and why this talk feels so urgent now. That's all coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED Talk of the Day.

Leopoldo López (2:14)

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 Nicolas Maduro that led to his capture on January the 3rd. And maybe the fact that my house was only blocks away from Delci Rodriguez's interim dictator of Venezuela. For my family and I, the journey of persecution has been very long. I 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 protest, peaceful protest. 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 that the things were taking 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. 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 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. 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.