WASHINGTON – Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been critical of Big Tech, accusing Facebook of misinformation and saying Internet companies should lose central legal protection.
But his campaign has quietly welcomed on its staff and policy groups people who have worked with as for Silicon Valley giants, and worried about the critics of the sector that the companies are trying to co-opt a potential Biden administration.
One of Mr.’s closest associates Biden participated in Apple’s campaign, while others held senior roles at companies consulting for large tech companies. And a volunteer group of nearly 700 people advising the campaign, the Innovation Policy Committee, includes at least eight people working for Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple, according to documents verified by The New York Times. Other committee members have close ties to the companies, including economists and lawyers who have advised them, and officials at think tanks funded by them.
The members of the group also include some leading progressives who argue for stiffer regulation of tech. But the presence of industry allies in Mr Biden’s policy apparatus and campaign and transition teams – and his campaign’s effort to ensure the confidentiality of their policy process – has alarmed an increasingly influential coalition of liberals who say the tech titans endorse competition, users ignore privacy and fail to adequately scrutinize hate speech and disinformation.
They hope to discourage Mr. Biden, who has not made tech spending a major focus of his campaign, following the example of his former boss, President Barack Obama, whose embrace of tech companies helped them to become in darlings in Washington.
Today, tech giants are trying to protect new regulations or antitrust laws. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have spent more than a year investigating Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple for possible violations of competition law. During a House hearing last month, lawmakers from both parties lashed out at the CEOs of all four companies over allegations that their dominance hurt consumers, competitors and small businesses, and what they did to police false information.
“The environment is very different now,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of a think tank funded in part by Google, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. ‘When Obama took office, you know, tech was some kind of thing. Everyone loved it, and people did not see the problems that some now see. “
A co-author of “Big Is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business”, a 2018 book, is Mr. Atkinson among Big Tech’s allies in the Innovation Policy Committee. While he said the members represented “a fairly diverse set of views”, he predicted that a potential Biden administration would face significant pressure from leftists to stress the big tech companies.
Matt Hill, a spokesman for Mr. Biden, said in a statement that the former vice president would not take it lightly on Big Tech.
“Many technology giants and their operators have not only abused their power, but abused the American people, damaged our democracy and evaded any form of responsibility,” he said. Hill. “Anyone who thinks that volunteers or advisers of the Joe Biden campaign will change his fundamental commitment to stop the abuse of power and step up to the middle class, Joe Biden does not know.”
The Technical Policy Committee, which is divided into smaller specialty groups, is part of a large network of thousands of policy advisers put together by the campaign. The policy teams do not have ultimate authority over the proposals of the campaign or advise Mr Biden directly. But lobbyists and activists are watching closely for signs of Mr Biden’s approach to problems and his possible hiring pool if elected.
The campaign and transition team of Mr. Bids include advisers with ties to tech companies and other industries that concern liberals. Avril Haines, a former Obama national security and intelligence officer official who assists in leading the transition team of Mr. Biden, was an advisor to the data mining company Palantir and WestExec Advisors, a company that represented a large tech company that it did not identify.
WestExec co-founder and Obama State Department official Antony J. Blinken is leading the Biden campaign’s foreign policy campaign. WestExec has been working with the philanthropy started by Eric Schmidt, the former Google chairman, and with Google’s incubation unit, Jigsaw. But Mr Blinken and Mrs Haines did not take part in that work, according to the Biden campaign, which said both advisers were leaving WestExec this month.
Cynthia C. Hogan, a former White House attorney for Mr. Biden who helps lead his selection process for vice presidencies, was a lobbyist and executive at Apple. She announced her resignation of the company in April, according to the Biden campaign.
A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that employees worked with campaigns in their personal capacity and not as representatives of the company. Apple said it was an employee who participated in the Biden policy process that took place on its own time on nights and weekends. Facebook declined to comment on the commission, but pointed to a policy that allows employees to participate in political activities in their personal time. Amazon declined to comment.
Among the participants in the big committee for tech policy are Facebook’s director of global competition policy, Anant Raut, and Matt Perault, who testified as director of public policy for the company during a congressional anti-trust investigation last year before he went to academy .
Another member is Howard Shelanski, a partner at the law firm Davis Polk who represents Facebook in the Federal Trade Commission’s anti-trust investigation into the company. He does not work with the group of committee members who deal with questions about the tech platforms, said a person familiar with his involvement, who would only speak anonymously.
Even more members work for organizations, such as Mr. Atkinson, which receive funding from the companies as well as economists who have consulted for Amazon, Google and Apple. Mr Atkinson himself is not a member of the antitrust group.
The commission is divided into smaller groups that focus on issues such as anti-trust policies, artificial intelligence, broadband access, disinformation and data privacy. The antitrust group includes people with tech ties such as Mr. Perault, Mr. Raut and Mr. Shelanski. But it also includes some people who have pushed for more control of the tech giants, including employees at rival companies, as well as activist Sarah Miller and Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, leading critics who have asked for more vigorous anti-trust enforcement. (Mr. Wu is also a contributing opinion writer at The Times.)
The Biden campaign identified two employees, Bruce Reed and Stef Feldman, as more direct advice from the former vice president on technology issues. The campaign said Mr Blinken did not advise the campaign on domestic technology policy. It emphasized that members of its policy committees were not in a position to represent their employers or clients, and that lobbyists – with the exception of those representing trade unions – were prevented from participating.
After The Times asked members of the tech policy volunteer group about their work, some of them received a message “to remind everyone that the work we are doing here is to develop policies that are healthy and in the best interest. of the candidate and his election as president. “
The report noted that there was “a variety of rumors circulating” about how “the campaign manages conflicts of interest and lobbying by corporate and other interests.” And recognizing that while “it is sometimes difficult to separate personal views from those of employers or clients,” members should do their utmost to ensure that the ideas you offer and the contributions you make are consistent. are with what is best for the candidate and not what is best for you as your clients or your employer. ”
A list of rules provided to policy group members, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, instructs participants not to disclose their participation “on social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn or in your professional bio.” It also warns them not to discuss or disseminate names of other committee members, content of committee discussions, emails of the committee or to chat with the news media.
“Simply talk, do not talk to the press,” reads the document, emphasizing “do not talk to the press” in bold form.
Several members of the tech committee followed that guidance, and decided to decide on their involvement and referral investigations into the campaign. But some members of the anti-trust subgroup expressed optimism that a Biden administration would adopt a more rigorous approach to the law.
“We are really working to have some very, very strong leadership on anti-trust and competition, and some strengthening of the laws,” said Diana L. Moss, a member of the anti-trust subgroup and president of the American Antitrust Institute, whose think tank has accepted funds from Amazon and Google.
“We have been handling this for 40 years and all the damage to prove it,” she said, emphasizing that she is speaking for herself and not for the Biden Policy Committee.
