Tech sector goes from the White House to the doghouse in Trump’s Washington
WASHINGTON— Google once had Ba rack O ba ma’ s ear, served as a revolving door for White House staff and saw its political agenda advance. In Donald Trump’s Washington, some conservatives say it’ s gotten so powerful it should be regulated like a public utility.
Google is not alone in a fall from grace. Tech companies — including Facebook and Amazon.com — that were previously lauded as innovators are facing increased scrutiny over their size, their hiring practices and whether online news feeds skew liberal.
“The mood in Washington, at least on the right side of the aisle, is more critical of companies like Google and Amazon,” said Fred Campbell, a former Republican FCC aide and director of Tech Knowledge, which promotes market-based policies.
The shift int one comes as Congress and the Trump administration consider changing tax, energy and immigration policies important to Silicon Valley. A regulation that protects data flows is already slated for gutting by the Federal Communications Commission, and, in Congress, a law has been proposed that would bring internet companies under a privacy regulator. Another would increase legal liability for website operators as a way to combat online sex trafficking.
Meanwhile, tech’s made no secret of its distaste for Trump policies. Alphabet’s Google, Apple and Facebook issued critical statements after the presidentban on trans gender people in the military, stepped away from the Paris climate accords and issued a ban on travel from majority Muslim nations.
The Aug. 12 street violence in Charlottesville, Va., provoked another rift. After the president said “both sides” shared blame for the fighting, Apple CEO Tim Cook told his staff he disagreed with Trump. So many executives, including Intel CEO Brian Kr za ni ch, quit White House advisory councils in protest that Trump ended up disbanding them.
Amid the turmoil, Trump unloaded on Amazon, tweeting that the company is hurting other retailers, and causing shares in the online retailer to fall.
“Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt — many jobs being lost!” Trump said in the tweet.
It was the latest conservative broadside on the technology companies over their size, influence and promotion of social policies on immigration, transgender rights and other matters.
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., the chairman of the Energy andCommerce Committee, challenged tech and broadband executives to appear next month as his committee considers undoing the Obama-era net neutrality rules that Silicon Valley backs. In what could be interpreted as a snub, executives didn’t respond to the invitation by the deadline. It has been extended.
“Republicans have always been fine with most of tech, because Republicans have usually defaulted pro-business,” said Bruce Mehlman, a Republican lobbyist and former Commerce Department official said in an interview. “This is less about any one issue and more about the new populist wing of the Republican Party — populism is suspicious of bigness, and the biggest companies now are tech .”
In this atmosphere, publicpolicy asteroids can strike suddenly and dent tech’s image in the capital. Google dismissed James Damore, an engineer who wrote about gender differences and said the company had a “left bias” that silenced dissenters. Washington noticed.
“The mistreatment of conservatives and libertarians by tech monopolies is a civil rights issue,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said in a tweet. The California Republican is concerned tech giants may be excluding top talent for political reasons, said his spokesman, Ken Grubbs.
Trump adviser Kelly anne Conwaytweeted an op-ed that Dam ore wrote in the Wall Street Journal about his firing, in which he called Google “ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument.”
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson said Damore’s dismissal showed Google couldn’t be trusted, for instance, in ways its algorithms determine where to rank fake news when returning search results.
“Google should be regulated like the public utility it is, to make sure it doesn’t further distort the free flow of information to the rest of us ,” Carlson said on show.
Amazon has become a target at least in part because of its size. The company with about 30 percent of all U.S. e-commerce drew criticism from Trump that had started on the campaign trail when Trump said in February 2016:“Believe me, if I become president, do they have problems.” Trump’s also objected to coverage by the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon CEOJeffBezos.