Swamp Watch: Google and Lapdog Professors
/Swamp Watch: Technology giants
Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are, in some ways, more powerful than our federal government
Adapted Transcript
No industry wields greater influence than the tech sector.
Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are, in some ways, more powerful than our federal government. The tech giants decide what information we see - and what we don't. Their decisions can close down whole industries. And their powerful bosses are now getting involved in politics directly.
For many years, they stuck to sunny California. But today they're a huge presence in the Washington swamp, spending millions to make sure legislation goes their way, providing a lucrative revolving door between industry and government. And they're even secretly funding lapdog professors to make their arguments for them.
Big tech is tonight's Swamp Watch.
In June, European Union antitrust regulators hit Google with a 2.7 billion dollar fine for skewing search results in favor of its own services-- like shopping and travel-- and against its competitors. Immediately after the announcement, US antitrust expert Barry Lynn posted a short memo online celebrating the verdict and calling on the US to do the same, writing, quote,
"Google's market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today... We call upon US enforcers, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and state attorneys general to build upon this important precedent."
It's the kind of response you'd expect, considering Lynn's own "Open Markets Initiative", has been investigating the abuse of market power in the telecoms and tech industries since 2002.
But this time, there was a problem.
Barry Lynn's initiative was operating as part of the Washington DC think tank, 'New America Foundation', which has received more than 21 million dollars from Google, its executive chairman Eric Schmidt, and his family's foundation. Schmidt did not appreciate the memo... and hell hath no fury like a tech leader scorned. A few days later, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the New America think tank's president and by the way, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton in the State Department, summoned Lynn to her office to berate him for upsetting one of New America's biggest donors. She later told Lynn in an email:
"Just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others" and that "we are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points."
Email from Anne-Marie Slaughter to Barry Lynn dated June 30, 2017
Don't you love the way these swampy people slime around in euphemisms to avoid admitting their own money-grubbing ways? "trying to expand our relationship with Google" indeed - she means: "we're trying to get more money out of Google so we can't go around criticizing them"
Sure enough, a few days later, she sent another email, saying: "the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways"
Ms. Slaughter says that Lynn was terminated because he refused to, quote, "adhere to New America's standards of openness and institutional collegiality."
Peas in a pod
Oh for goodness sake. Why can't this swamp creature ever be straight with people? Wait - we know why. She learned at the feet of the master - hanging out with Hillary at the State Department while she exploited her public office to channel cash into the swampy Clinton Foundation. Meanwhile, Barry Lynn says he was axed - obviously - because he dared to criticize New America's financial backer. He added,
"Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings. People are so afraid of Google now."
He's right. Google and its parent company, Alphabet, have steadily increased what they spend on lobbying. In 2002, they spent just 50 thousand dollars on lobbying. In 2016 they spent 15 and a half million dollars... And so far this year, they've already spent 9.5 million.
Influence is not just money, of course. As in so many other sectors, in tech there's now a well-oiled revolving door between government and business. Hundreds of people have spun through the revolving door between Google and the federal government, including America's former chief technology officer, multiple deputies, and the assistant director of the office of science and technology policy.
But all this access to the levers of power is so much more effective if you have objective scientific data to back up your arguments. And if it doesn't actually exist - well, you can just pay for it. That's why, over the past decade, Google has financed hundreds of academic papers, paying professors between 5 and 400 thousand dollars apiece. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that, scandalously, some of the academics did not disclose Google's backing. Others shared their research with the company prior to publication
Deven Desai, then a researcher in law and technology at Princeton, spent over two million dollars of Google's money on conferences and research papers, paying authors between 20 to 150 thousand dollars for their work on issues like intellectual property. He said part of his work was to put together lists of the top intellectual property academics, so Google's lobbyists would know whom to target.
Then, in September 2012, the Federal Trade Commission was preparing to decide on whether to charge Google with antitrust violations, the biggest antitrust investigation since the landmark case against Microsoft in the nineties. To ward off an unfavorable decision, Google's law firm sent the FTC Chairman a letter and attached those Google-funded supposedly-independent research papers in support of its arguments.
They obviously did the trick. Google pledged to change its business practices and didn't face a fine. I guess it helps to have some of the nation's top academics in your pocket.
To be fair to Google, all this really shows is that they've grown from a quirky start-up whose motto was "don't be evil" into a massive global corporation just like all the others. They compete in a swamp where propaganda like industry-funded research papers is the norm. Microsoft, which owns the far less popular search engine, Bing, paid Harvard business professor Ben Edelman, who criticized Google search for being biased in favor of its own results. And tech and telecom companies Verizon, AT&T, and Qualcomm have all funded academic papers supporting their side in various fights with Google.
Make no mistake: industry-funded research from top academics delivers business results... In fact, a well-crafted argument backed by hard data is probably even more effective than political donations. Many congressional staffers and regulators in Washington are young, underpaid and simply don't have the knowledge, expertise or even the time to push back
The transformation of academics and think tanks into corporate stooges is one of the most insidious and under-reported scandals in the DC swamp. And you can be sure that we will expose the industries, the companies, the think tanks and the professors who participate in this particularly elevated form of corruption.