Tech’s “big enchilada” moment
The antitrust push meets civic tech’s ascendence
Silicon Valley has long run circles around Washington when it comes to tech. But two sets of happenings here in D.C. this week merged to show how that’s shifting.
The first is that a House committee late in the week approved, with varying degrees of bipartisanship, six bills that would remake the antitrust landscape in ways big and small. Will these particular bills go anywhere? Eh. Maybe, maybe not. For one thing, there’s this thing called the Senate. But lawmakers in Washington are developing a skill set on legislating on tech. The second: that people committed to the idea that government needs to get a handle on tech to benefit Americas are moving into positions of real power.
First, the bills. The House Judiciary committee approved five of them — to boost the FTC’s budget through filing fees, to allow state attorneys general to hang on to jurisdiction in antitrust cases, to increase data portability, to restrict the acquisitions and mergers of some competitors, and to limit company’s self-preferencing of their own products — and then what Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (yes, that Matt Gaetz) admiringly called during its markup Thursday “the big enchilada,” a bill banning internal conflicts of interests of online platforms that could lead to the breakup of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Amazon.
(Gaetz also contributed the instant classic, “Free Britney, I yield back.” But that’s neither here nor there right now.)
The politics of these bills are all over the place. Democrat Zoe Lofgren, who represents parts of Silicon Valley, called the breakup bill an extreme remedy — like tossing a “grenade” into the middle of the American tech industry. Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, meanwhile, kicked off the hearing on his side of the aisle with a speech warning that the bill would give the Biden administration the power to do “central planning.” But what was striking was how quickly Jordan and Lofgren were ignored by the rest of the committee, which then set off on hours of actual legislating.
There was debate over fundamental questions of how American antitrust should work. Are structural remedies, like requiring companies to divest whole divisions, a lighter touch than dictating specific changes in how companies behave? Or do they instead “put government smack in the middle of business decisions,” per Ohio Republican Steve Chabot?
And there were extended back-and-forths about the break-up bill’s specifics. Why require the FTC to go through a formal process of designating which companies are covered by the bill?, asked Rep. Dan Bishop, who engaged in a lengthy discussion on that question with Washington State Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who co-sponsored the bill with Texas Republican Lance Gooden. California Republican Darrell Issa chipped in to argue it’s not the role of Congress to decide the fate of specific companies: “I didn’t see any of us go through Senate confirmation successfully and become federal judges.”
(As an aside, the “successfully” was a poignant touch from Issa, who’s had his own struggles getting through the Senate.)
At that point, Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, a one-time constitutional law professor, was roped in to offer an opinion on whether preemptively naming the affected companies would constitute a bill of attainder, and thus be a no-no. Raskin said he didn’t think so.
A fascinating debate also emerged between Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz and New York Democrat Mondaire Jones about whether the so-called consumer welfare standard — which gives companies a lot of credit for lowering prices — is still, if it ever was, a smart way to think about whether a company is deserving of the government’s attention.
“This is very good,” said Arizona Republican Andy Biggs at one point, clearly thrilled to see Congress crafting a bill.
It was hours and hours of members of Congress figuring out how to legislate on tech. This isn’t about the cake; it’s about learning how to bake. And when it comes to tech, Washington’s learning how to bake.
Second, there’s this week’s ascendence of civic tech. The idea that there’s a lot of good that technology can do in the hands of government got a boost in the Obama era, particularly with the creation of the U.S. Digital Service and 18F, the branch of the General Services Administration that exists to help federal agencies better buy and build technology — a development of expertise helps Washington reclaim a bit of power from Silicon Valley.
New FTC chair Lina Khan, who got the job in part because of her deep understanding of Amazon’s complex and interlocking business models, appointed a FTC chief technologist from deep in the government tech movement.
That’s Erie Meyer, who helped stand up both USDS and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a pre-Senate Elizabeth Warren. As her chef’s-kiss Wikipedia bio puts it, Meyer is a “serial public entrepreneur.”
Agency CTOs are generally, yes, important, but not hugely policy consequential. That’s not the case here; the FTC chief technologist’s whole reason for being is help the agency understand the technology it’s supposed to oversee.
Also, Robin Carnahan was confirmed this week as the administrator of GSA. Carnahan, a former Missouri secretary of state, helped stand up the state and local practice at 18F. Carnahan has spent the last few years at Georgetown’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, attempting to figure out how to get state officials to get the mission-critical software they need by sharing it.
The federal government has a straight-up enormous technology budget, and redirecting some of it to different kinds of technology that’s built in different ways could be one of the more lasting changes a public servant can make to how the country operates.
And as GSA administrator, Carnahan could have more money to work with. Senate Democrats Ron Wyden and Patty Murray are pushing a measure that would sign over $120 million a year to the agency to, per NextGov, “provide state, local and tribal governments new means to modernize their IT systems and hire their own digital service teams.”
And lastly, Harvard this week stood up a Public Interest Tech Lab. “Public interest tech” was, as an idea, incubated at the D.C. think tank New America during the Trump era, in part driven by Obama administration expats from USDS and 18F. It’s akin to trying to get high-performing college kids to consider the Peace Corps instead of reflexively heading to McKinsey, a push back against “the best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” Interested in tech? Skip Google and go work for the VA, the thinking goes.
So getting an outpost for the public-interest tech movement at Harvard — arguably still ground zero for the creation of what counts as ‘elite’ culture in the United States — is a coup. It will be headed by Latanya Sweeney, a professor of both government and tech (and, briefly, a one-time FTC chief technologist).
What’s else
Bypassing Biden to go after Fauci
Joe Biden doesn’t seem to be turning out to be the same sort of juicy social-media target that Presidents Obama and Trump were for their critics, and so Anthony Fauci looks to be stepping into the breach. “[T]he more extreme they get, the more obvious how political it is. Fauci is like Hitler. Fauci has blood on his hands. Are you kidding me?,” The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in a podcast interview with the New York Times’ Kara Swisher.
Twitter wants to let you set boundaries
Speaking of social media pile-ons, Twitter is testing out a way an “unmention yourself from this conversation” — especially helpful for when the Twitter hordes come for you. It’s a design tweak that’s meant to make Twitter less useful for bullying, and remove some of the incentive for any of us to bully.
The lagging state of broadband on tribal lands
PBS News Hour looks at the challenges of attempting to get an education at a tribal college in the U.S. when the Internet is spotty and you have to drive to an open parking lot to get a cell phone signal, with a specific look at New Mexico’s Navajo Tech. The segment’s about eight minutes long and worth a watch.
Slow down. Okay, not that slow.
We spend a lot of time talking about how Silicon Valley employees want their leaders to be more thoughtful, but the New York Times’ Daisuke Wakabayashi reports that in the case of Google, some of the company’s top people, at least, worry that Sundar Pichai’s lean-back style is holding the company back. “The executives, some of whom regularly interacted with Mr. Pichai, said Google did not move quickly on key business and personnel moves because he chewed over decisions and delayed action.”
One final note: Wakabayashi writes that “at least 36 Google vice presidents have left the company since last year, according to profiles from LinkedIn.” Let’s stop for a moment to consider that Google is big enough a company to quietly shed three dozen vice presidents in a year.