Inside Venezuela's uncertain path to freedom | Leopoldo López

What Prison Taught Him About Freedom

Leopoldo López spent seven years as a political prisoner under dictator Nicolás Maduro. Held in solitary confinement, every detail of his daily life—mealtimes, visits, access to sunlight—was decided by others. That experience, he says, gave him a visceral understanding of what freedom actually means. Now living in exile, he is channeling that understanding into international action, including co-founding the World Liberty Congress, a network spanning more than 60 countries.

The Pragmatic Alliance of Dictators

The central concern López raises is that authoritarian regimes are coordinating with one another far more effectively than the defenders of democracy are. The Chinese Communist Party, Russia's nationalist government, Iran's theocracy, and Venezuela's corrupt regime have almost nothing in common ideologically—yet they cooperate pragmatically around two shared objectives: staying in power and resisting democratic pressure. The document signed by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin ten days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine made this explicit, including joint language about countering what they call "color revolutions." Against this structured coordination, López argues, democratic movements have historically remained fragmented and ineffective.

The Digital Battlefield

López chose technology as his TED topic partly as a joke—"T stands for technology"—but the substance is serious. Authoritarian governments are using AI to generate deepfakes that smear dissidents; López himself has been a repeated target. Internet shutdowns have become routine: he cites cases in Uganda and Iran where Starlink access was cut off simultaneously. Whether or not the companies involved had political intentions, López says the deeper problem is structural—the mere fact that someone can decide whether to grant or revoke connectivity. He argues that internet access is now one of the most important human rights, and that its routine interruption must be recognized as such.

Building "Sovereign AI" for Activists

The concept that has generated the most interest inside the World Liberty Congress network over the past six months is "sovereign AI." When activists rely on commercial AI providers, their strategies and plans are at risk of exposure to the authorities. It is not hypothetical: there are already cases where conversations with AI tools were introduced as evidence in court, leading to convictions. In response, López and his colleagues are helping movements build independent AI environments that run on their own servers and allow activists to choose which large language model they use. Open-source technology is central to the approach—the explicit goal is technology that no single entity controls. Workshops are already under way, and a "Freedom Technology" conference bringing together activists and developers is planned for San Francisco in November 2026.

A Message for People in Democracies

López is careful to frame the gatekeeper problem as universal, not confined to life under dictatorship. Whether the subject is money, communications, content, or AI, the question of who holds the keys—you, or a corporation, or a government—applies just as much to citizens in democratic countries. Privacy, he argues, is fundamentally the right to decide for yourself how much information about you reaches the world. We now live simultaneously in a physical space and a digital space, and for many people the digital space already consumes more of their time. Protecting freedom in that dimension is therefore everyone's problem, not only the problem of those living under authoritarian rule.

On Venezuela itself, López is cautiously optimistic. Speaking in October 2026, he describes the country as being in a transition period—one that has shifted substantially over the five months prior and that he expects will look different again five months from now.