Project 2025: Technology at the service of restrictive agendas By: Ingrid Motta

CEO at @BrainGame Central | Ph.D. in Communication and Strategic Thinking | IWF Board Advisor | Speaker | LinkedIn Top Voice | UNESCO Women4EthicalAI

Today one of the most controversial world leaders in history retakes power, who also seeks to implement Project 2025, an initiative promoted by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation that consists of 887 pages written in collaboration with more than 100 organizations and experts of right-wing politics, whose objective is to return republican values in the United States.?

This national project represents a conjunctural moment that intertwines the objectives of the incoming government with the agenda of large technology companies, configuring new narratives that will impact the civil and social rights not only of U.S. citizens, but of users globally. These technologies could become tools for controlling and forming public opinion biased to the interests of a few, or detonators of social movements in defense of fundamental human rights.?

Donald Trump has publicly commented on several occasions how Project 2025 is moving away from his government strategy; however, a large part of his advisors and close workers participated directly or indirectly in its drafting. Big Tech, on the other hand, with its sophisticated tools such as the main digital media has promoted great socially constructive changes, but they have also been vehicles for censorship, mass surveillance and the wholesale dissemination of hate speech. In the hands of restrictive agendas, these technologies can limit freedoms through the use of facial recognition to monitor and intimidate citizen actors. Recent examples include algorithms made official by Meta and X (formerly Twitter), used to block campaigns in defense of minority rights and other fundamental freedoms.

However, we live in the era of hyperconnectivity, where the strength of our communication channels is around digital platforms that, framed in the proposals of the 2025 Project, can influence the independence of international organizations. Such is the case of UNESCO, an institution for culture and science that has decreed 2025 as the International Year of Open Science and Technology for its role in promoting the exercise of sustainable development, human progress and the safeguarding of cultural heritage. However, Donald Trump's rupture of relations with UNESCO in 2017 weakens multilateralism, contrasts the ideals of international cooperation and the capacity for hyperconnectivity with values of inclusion and cultural preservation. Ideally, the new Trump administration should reevaluate the relationship with UNESCO and other international organizations.?

In response to narrative radicalization, technology companies have the responsibility to operate independently of government agendas with concrete actions that guarantee human rights through tools such as: algorithmic transparency that ensures that information is objective and unbiased; protection of critical voices for the free dissemination of ideas that promote equality and social justice; and the integration of voices from civil society and non-governmental organizations that ensure that content is open and free for the expression and consolidation of civil rights, in a responsible and ethical manner.? Citizens and users of digital platforms must actively intervene in the creation of a new narrative that guarantees that the ethical commitment of technology companies, international organizations and governments is carried out in a transparent and responsible manner. Our reason for being as humans transcends administrations, political agendas and corporate interests.

It is our responsibility to demand that technology and public policy prioritize the values of diversity, freedom of expression, and widespread access to technology to protect the legacy of current and future generations.? Our freedoms and dignity as people must not be sacrificed in favor of short-term solutions. Decision-making based solely on the economic interests of a few prevents us from fully understanding and harnessing humanity's heritage – our ability to build a future based on equality, freedom and mutual respect.

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