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Far more tech company executives than outspoken tech critics were named to President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team on Tuesday, offering clues as to who will decide to fill the key roles and ultimately influence him. his administration’s thinking for years to come.
US President-elect Joe Biden departs after spending the day at the theater that serves as his transitional headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, November 10, 2020. REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst
WASHINGTON: Far more tech company executives than outspoken tech critics were appointed to the transition team for U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday, offering clues as to who will decide to fill key positions and, in Ultimately, it will influence your administration’s thinking for years to come.
Tech companies have been trying to strengthen their relationship with a future Biden administration to ensure they have a voice in a barrage of federal and state investigations into their business practices.
Biden’s transition team released a list of agency review teams on Tuesday.
Tom Sullivan of Amazon.com Inc, an executive on the public policy team, will be part of Biden’s group that will review appointments to the State Department. Similarly, Mark Schwartz of Amazon’s cloud computing arm, who is also a former Obama administration official, will make decisions for the Office of Management and Budget.
Nicole Isaac, senior director of policy for Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, is part of the team that decides appointments at the Treasury Department.
Nicole Wong, a former deputy chief technology officer under Democratic President Barack Obama and vice president and general counsel for Alphabet-owned Google, found a place on the National Security Council review team.
By contrast, tech critics like Gene Kimmelman, a senior adviser at Washington-based Public Knowledge, which focuses on areas like antitrust policy, will be on the Justice Department’s review team and Sarah Miller of the American Economic Liberties was chosen. Project. for the group that evaluates decisions on appointments in the Treasury Department.
Both Kimmelman and Miller have pushed for increased antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech’s business practices.
Kimmelman declined to comment. Miller did not respond to requests for comment.
Executives from relatively smaller tech companies like AirBnB, Uber, Lyft and Stripe were also named to these agency review groups.
Amazon declined to comment. The other companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There will also be a team reviewing appointments from the consumer watchdog, the Federal Trade Commission, which includes Bill Baer, former director of the FTC’s Office of Competition and former chief of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, who recently called for a stricter antitrust law.
The Baer Justice Department filed a lawsuit to stop two insurance company mergers on the same day in 2016.
The FTC team also includes Laura Moy, who teaches at Georgetown Law and is an expert on consumer privacy, data security, and net neutrality. The team leader is Heather Hippsley, a three-decade veteran of the agency.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose, David Shepardson and Diane Bartz in Washington and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Edited by Dan Grebler and Rosalba O’Brien)
