BIDEN USES HIS BIG TECH BILLIONAIRES TO CENSOR - WHAT DO THEY GET OUT OF IT?
The Danger in Kamala Harris Becoming President
HIGH TECH CENSORS, I.E., GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK TO CLEANSE ANY AND ALL
WE READ THAT ON JOE BIDEN'S FIRST DAY AS PRESIDENT, HE INSTRUCTED HIS HIGH TECH CENSORS, I.E., GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK TO CLEANSE FROM THEIR SITES ANY INFO THAT PERTAINED TO RFK,JR., JUST AS THEY WERE TO DO ON ALL POSTINGS THAT PERTAINED TO THE WHITE COLLAR CRIMES AND TREASON PERPETRATED BY JOE AND HUNTER BIDEN AND THE TWO LAWYER BIDEN BROTHERS!
Big Tech's Employees Were Big Contributors to Democrats
Google, Facebook and Amazon are already targets of antitrust investigations, and there is bipartisan support in Congress for measures that could diminish their clout. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are set to testify before a House of Representatives panel next month.
Mr. Biden has signaled that he supports rescinding the broad legal immunity that tech firms currently enjoy for information carried over their networks.
Employees of Apple, many of whom work at the company’s Cupertino, Calif., campus, were one of the top sources of money for President Biden’s campaign.PHOTO: SAM HALL/BLOOMBERG NEWS
As the Biden administration settles in, tech companies are awaiting key picks for the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division head. The appointments could determine how aggressively the government handles existing investigations or bringing about new ones, advisers to the companies said.
The Journal’s analysis is based on the latest Federal Election Commission data covering the 2020 election cycle for Mr. Biden’s campaign, two joint fundraising committees and individual donations to those committees made through the online donation platform ActBlue. The Journal examined campaign-finance data to compile a list of companies whose employees donated the most money.
The analysis relied on a standardized version of the self-reported employer information on each donation and should be treated as an estimate because some of the public records are incomplete or flawed.
Big tech employees rally behind Biden campaign
By Krystal Hur
Employees at big tech companies, including Google parent Alphabet and Facebook, funneled millions of dollars into Democrats’ campaigns during the 2020 election cycle — a move that could pay off for conglomerates hoping to stymie the implementation of internet regulation.
President-elect Joe Biden has yet to propose any tech-related legislation. But Biden previously took a staunch stance on the issue, calling for reform measures including revoking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which stipulates that big tech companies are not responsible for their users’ content. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for repeal of that section in his continuing dispute with social media companies.
Employees at big tech giants, including Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, donated millions to various Democrats’ campaigns in the 2020 election cycle. Employees at the five companies shelled out a combined $12.3 million to Biden’s campaign and millions more to Democrats in high-profile Senate contests, such as recently-elected Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). Employees of big tech firms ranked among the top donors to each of those Democrats.
With most donations coming from company employees, Alphabet contributed around $21 million to Democrats in the 2020 election cycle, with Amazon contributing around $9.4 million. Facebook, Microsoft and Apple contributed about $6 million, $12.7 million and $6.6 million to Democrats, respectively. The majority of each of the big tech firm’s contributions went to Democratic candidates, and excluding Microsoft, the Biden campaign was the top recipient with Ossoff and Warnock ranking in the top 10. Microsoft’s top recipient for contributions was the Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC affiliated with Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer. The Democratic National Committee ranked in the top three recipients for all of the companies.
Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said that while the Biden administration and new Congress won’t be completely “lax” with big tech firms, they will likely drag their heels over instituting big tech regulation so as to not alienate their biggest donors.
“The classic move is you slow stuff down, maybe you’ll hold the hearings later but you have people working on reports,” Gordon said. “And you hope something else moves into the news cycle so that slowing it down can mean you never get to it.”
He also said that despite the Democrats’ control of the Senate, they’re “barely in power.”
“If there’s much of a swing, even a tiny swing … they could be out of power again,” Gordon said. “They want the money, they want the favorable comments — they don’t want two years from now to lose the Senate again.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed support for reforming Section 230, suggesting measures such as enhancing transparency surrounding content moderation. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has also said he supports reforming Section 230, similarly emphasizing the need for increased transparency as well as user autonomy over content algorithms.
While key figures in Biden’s party such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) support legislation to regulate big tech companies, Biden has remained mum on the subject. Matt Hill, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, declined to comment on the Biden administration’s plans regarding the antitrust cases filed during the Trump administration, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have also confronted big tech firms on issues such as antitrust and allegedly holding anti-conservative biases, a claim that has been refuted by non-partisan groups. On Oct. 6, the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust released a report of recommendations to reign in big tech companies’ control following a 16-month investigation into competition in the internet industry, honing in on Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook.
Gordon said he expects the Biden administration and Congress to settle antitrust lawsuits filed against companies like Google and Facebook — but with compromises to avoid upsetting big tech donors without looking “softer on big business than the Republicans.” Legislation that’s more difficult to compromise on will likely move more slowly, he said.
“I think where you’re going to see the slow down is Section 230, because there isn’t a way of compromising your way out of that like there is in the antitrust thing where you compromise your way out [and] you look like you’re still tough on them, even though you’ve settled maybe for easier terms,” Gordon said.
On Nov. 30, a coalition of 33 consumer and advocacy groups urged Biden “to exclude Big Tech executives, lobbyists, lawyers and consultants” from his administration.
“Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft once promised innovation and opportunity, and while they continue to provide many remarkable products, they now represent serious threats to privacy, democracy, innovation, and Americans’ economic well-being,” the letter, signed by groups including Public Citizen and Progressive Democrats of America, said.
According to Reuters, some big tech executives are angling for senior roles in the Biden administration, including spots in the Commerce Department. Some of these firms’ employees already hold positions in Biden’s campaign. According to the New York Times, “one of Biden’s closest aides” worked at Apple prior to joining the campaign, and Biden’s Innovation Policy Committee “includes at least eight people who work for Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple.”
Despite this, Hill said in a statement to the New York Times that Biden remains committed to holding big tech firms accountable.
“Many technology giants and their executives have not only abused their power but misled the American people, damaged our democracy and evaded any form of responsibility,” Hill told the Times. “Anyone who thinks that campaign volunteers or advisers will change Joe Biden’s fundamental commitment to stopping the abuse of power and stepping up for the middle class doesn’t know Joe Biden.”
While Congress hasn’t passed a bill regulating big tech, big tech firms recently doubled down on moderating user content, resulting in public outcry from Republicans and sentiment from Democrats that such action was long overdue. After a pro-Trump mob violently stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, Twitter suspended Trump’s account for 12 hours, making the suspension permanent on Jan. 8. Facebook also suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely, at least until he exits office.
Other tech companies such as Twitch and Snapchat have since followed suit and disabled Trump’s accounts. Apple and Google shut down Parler, a social media platform notable for use among conservatives, on their mobile platforms while Amazon kicked the platform off their cloud storage. Facebook also said on Jan. 11 that it will ban the phrase “stop the steal” from its platform while Twitter announced a day later that it has permanently suspended over 70,000 accounts associated with QAnon content since Friday.
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Big Tech Employees Opened Wallets for Biden Campaign
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook made up biggest source of donations to Democrat among corporate employees
Employees of Microsoft have long been a top source of money for Democratic presidential candidates.PHOTO: QIN LANG/XINHUA/GETTY IMAGES
WASHINGTON—Employees of big technology firms were a key source of contributions for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, newly released campaign finance records show, eclipsing donations from employees at traditional Democratic fundraising sources such as banks and law firms.
Employees of Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc., and Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. were the five largest sources of money for Mr. Biden’s campaign and joint fundraising committees among those identifying corporate employers, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of campaign finance reports.
Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign received at least $15.1 million from employees of those five tech firms, records show. The companies declined to comment.
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The previous Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also received large contributions from tech company employees, but their top sources of employee donations extended beyond the tech sector.
Mrs. Clinton’s biggest sources of funds from those identifying corporate employers in 2016 included employees of the personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan and JPMorgan Chase & Co., along with Google, Microsoft and Apple, according to election records compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Four years earlier, Mr. Obama’s top sources of corporate employee contributions included Microsoft and Google but also Deloitte, Time Warner, now part of AT&T Inc., and the law firm DLA Piper.
While corporations are prohibited from giving directly to campaigns, their employees are free to give as individuals and in the aggregate provide a window into the leanings of workers who are politically active enough to donate across different industries.
The top sources of money from corporate employees to the Republican incumbent Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign were employees of American Airlines Group Inc., Boeing Co., Bank of America Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., according to the Center for Responsive Politics’s analysis.
The findings come as Republicans have asserted that the big tech companies are biased against them, including allegations that companies with online platforms such as Facebook and Google censor online content to favor liberal views.
“There is a disconnect between the tech industry and many Republicans,” said Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “We don’t like Silicon Valley—and they don’t like us.”
Facebook, Google and other tech platforms have in the past denied that the politics of their employees affects how they run their businesses.
Some Democrats believe that the companies have grown too large and that their platforms have permitted the spread of false political information that helped Mr. Trump.
Big Tech's Employees Were Big Contributors to Democrats
Google, Facebook and Amazon are already targets of antitrust investigations, and there is bipartisan support in Congress for measures that could diminish their clout. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are set to testify before a House of Representatives panel next month.
Mr. Biden has signaled that he supports rescinding the broad legal immunity that tech firms currently enjoy for information carried over their networks.
Employees of Apple, many of whom work at the company’s Cupertino, Calif., campus, were one of the top sources of money for President Biden’s campaign.PHOTO: SAM HALL/BLOOMBERG NEWS
As the Biden administration settles in, tech companies are awaiting key picks for the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division head. The appointments could determine how aggressively the government handles existing investigations or bringing about new ones, advisers to the companies said.
The Journal’s analysis is based on the latest Federal Election Commission data covering the 2020 election cycle for Mr. Biden’s campaign, two joint fundraising committees and individual donations to those committees made through the online donation platform ActBlue. The Journal examined campaign-finance data to compile a list of companies whose employees donated the most money.
The analysis relied on a standardized version of the self-reported employer information on each donation and should be treated as an estimate because some of the public records are incomplete or flawed.
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Because online donation platforms that itemize even the smallest contribution weren’t as widely used in 2016 and 2012, data for previous years include information only on donors who gave more than $200 to a campaign.
About two-thirds of the money in presidential races is donated to candidates from individuals, who could give up to $2,800 to a candidate for the recent election. Those who donate $200 or more are required to disclose the names of their employers.
While corporations are prohibited from making financial donations to candidates for national office, many companies operate political-action committees, or PACs, which are employee-funded accounts that companies use to donate money to favored candidates. Relatively little money in presidential elections comes from corporate PACs. Labor unions spend millions of dollars each election to support Democratic candidates.
Technology employees made donations to other political entities that worked to elect Mr. Biden and other Democrats, including Future Forward USA PAC, which spent millions of dollars on the 2020 election.
Mr. Biden’s campaign, according to the Journal’s analysis, received $3.7 million from employees of five of the largest Wall Street firms: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan. In prior elections, those firms ranked among the top sources of money for the Democratic presidential candidate, records show.
That was less than the total contributed to Mr. Biden by employees of Alphabet, who donated $5.3 million, making the tech company the No. 1 source of money, the Journal analysis shows.
‘There is a disconnect between the tech industry and many Republicans.’
— Doug Heye, ex-spokesman for Republican National Committee
Google employees were the top source of donations to Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the second-largest source of money for Mr. Obama’s 2012 race.
Employees of Amazon contributed a total of $2.8 million to Mr. Biden’s campaign. Amazon was the third-largest source of money among companies to Mr. Biden in the election. The company hadn’t been a big source of campaign money for prior Democratic candidates, records show.
Microsoft employees have long been a top source of money for Democratic presidential candidates. Microsoft employees donated $3.2 million to Mr. Biden in the election.
Facebook employees have emerged as a top source of money, donating $1.9 million to his campaign, records show.
Other top sources of money for Mr. Biden were employees of Lowercase Capital, Oracle Corp., Netflix Inc., Saban Capital Group and Morgan & Morgan, the data analyzed by the Journal shows. Lowercase Capital is a venture-capital firm that was an early investor in Twitter, Uber Technologies Inc. and Instagram, now part of Facebook.
Chad Day contributed to this article.
Write to Brody Mullins at brody.mullins@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
Ronan Farrow Documents Elon Musk’s ‘Shadow Rule’ over the War in Ukraine
In a recent article published by the New Yorker, Ronan Farrow outlines Elon Musk’s influence on the U.S. government and the Ukraine war through the use of his SpaceX Starlink internet hardware.
In an article titled “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule,” published by the New Yorker, Ronan Farrow details the influence of Elon Musk and his companies on the Ukraine war due to the Ukrainian military’s extensive use of SpaceX Starlink internet hardware to communicate on the battlefield.
Elon Musk’s Halloween costume (Taylor Hill /Getty)
In this Friday, July 27, 2018, file photo, Ronan Farrow, a contributing writer for the New Yorker, speaks with reporters at The Associated Press headquarters in New York. Farrow accepted a Mirror Award for media reporting from Syracuse University, Thursday, June 13, 2019, by paying tribute to journalists and industry leaders at a Manhattan luncheon for keeping the media honest and transparent. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)
In October 2022, Colin Kahl, then the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, called Musk to discuss SpaceX’s role in providing internet access across Ukraine.
Farrow writes:
The reason soon became apparent. “Even though Musk is not technically a diplomat or statesman, I felt it was important to treat him as such, given the influence he had on this issue,” Kahl told me. SpaceX, Musk’s space-exploration company, had for months been providing Internet access across Ukraine, allowing the country’s forces to plan attacks and to defend themselves. But, in recent days, the forces had found their connectivity severed as they entered territory contested by Russia. More alarmingly, SpaceX had recently given the Pentagon an ultimatum: if it didn’t assume the cost of providing service in Ukraine, which the company calculated at some four hundred million dollars annually, it would cut off access. “We started to get a little panicked,” the senior defense official, one of four who described the standoff to me, recalled. Musk “could turn it off at any given moment. And that would have real operational impact for the Ukrainians.”
Musk became involved in the Ukraine conflict after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin was launching cyberattacks on Ukraine’s digital infrastructure and Ukrainian officials and tech expatriates discussed potential solutions in group chats on WhatsApp and Signal. They identified SpaceX’s Starlink, a line of mobile Internet terminals, as a possible solution.
Starlink’s dishes, mounted on tripods, connect to a satellite network. The units have limited range, which was beneficial in this case, as it would be challenging for Russia to entirely disrupt Ukrainian connectivity, however, Musk could do so if he chose. Three individuals involved in bringing Starlink to Ukraine, who spoke anonymously due to concerns that Musk might withdraw his services if displeased, said they initially didn’t consider the implications of his personal control. One Ukrainian tech executive said, “Nobody thought about it back then. It was all about ‘Let’s go, people are dying.'”
However, Musk’s support appeared to eventually come to an end, Farrow reports:
Initially, Musk showed unreserved support for the Ukrainian cause, responding encouragingly as Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian minister for digital transformation, tweeted pictures of equipment in the field. But, as the war ground on, SpaceX began to balk at the cost. “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales told the Pentagon in a letter, last September. (CNBC recently valued SpaceX at nearly a hundred and fifty billion dollars. Forbes estimated Musk’s personal net worth at two hundred and twenty billion dollars, making him the world’s richest man.)
Musk was also growing increasingly uneasy with the fact that his technology was being used for warfare. That month, at a conference in Aspen attended by business and political figures, Musk even appeared to express support for Vladimir Putin. “He was onstage, and he said, ‘We should be negotiating. Putin wants peace—we should be negotiating peace with Putin,’ ” Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal with Musk, recalled. Musk seemed, he said, to have “bought what Putin was selling, hook, line, and sinker.”
Since that time, Musk has become selective about what Starlink can be used for in Ukraine. Breitbart News reported earlier this month that he denied access to Starlink for a drone attack:
According to a report from the New York Times, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, recently raised concerns over Musk’s influence over the war with Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, after the latest refusal to assist in a long-distance offensive strike against a Russian ship off the coast of Crimea.
The paper claimed, citing unnamed people “familiar with the situation”, that Musk has restricted access to Starlink on multiple different occasions during the war and that such decisions are the sole discretion of the SpaceX chief. In addition to blocking internet access to facilitate a sea drone attack against the Russian Navy, Starlink has also reportedly been blocked off for Ukrainian forces attempting to recapture territory from the Russians in the Donbas region with geofencing limits being placed around the area.
Earlier this year, Mr Musk said on Twitter: “We are not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes.”
Read more at the New Yorker here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
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