Congress talks a lot about tech companies
The past decade has been tumultuous for American businesses, with financial industry scandals and a bailout of the auto industry — but the industry federal lawmakers talked the most about was tech.
It’s another indicator of technology’s power and influence that a new analysis shows tech companies topped congressional mentions of Fortune 100 companies in the past decade. But tech also is on politicians’ lips because the industry is facing the growing possibility of increased regulation.
For example, of the Fortune 100 tech companies most mentioned by lawmakers, Facebook takes the crown with more than 14,000 mentions — or more than half of all mentions of tech companies, and more than the entire second-most mentioned industry. Facebook’s mentions skyrocketed recently, as it was scrutinized
over its Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before both houses of Congress in April. The social media giant was mentioned by more than 94 percent of the current members of Congress, according to the analysis.
Cambridge Analytica, a political data-mining firm, was able to access the information of up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission. That scandal sparked some legislative efforts to better protect online users’ privacy, including in California, which in June passed a bill that among other things calls for companies to disclose what user data they’re collecting.
Quorum, a Washington, D.C.-based software company, looked at a decade’s worth of news releases, floor statements, email newsletters and social media posts from June 2008 to June 2018 by current and former members of Congress. It found 26,609 mentions of tech companies during that time.
Google — together with its parent company Alphabet — came in second behind Facebook in mentions, with 5,948. The most mentions of the Mountain View company came in 2013, when news of the National Security Agency’s Prism spying program first came out — reports indicated that the government was using online information collected by Google and other tech companies to spy on foreign terror suspects and vacuuming up Americans’ data in the process — and then again this past February, amid talk of tax reform.
Apple was No. 6 on the list, with 2,281 mentions. Lawmakers talked most about the iPhone maker in February 2016, amid the investigation of the San Bernardino terrorist attack and Apple’s refusal to help the FBI get into one of the shooter’s iPhones, and then again earlier this year, in relation to tax reform.
Broken down by party, the Democratic and Republican lawmakers’ mentions of Facebook, Alphabet and Apple — and of Amazon — have been roughly equal. These tech companies all face scrutiny over taxes, privacy, security and consumer rights.
As for other industries, remember the outrage over AIG bonuses and Wells Fargo’s bogus-accounts scandal? The financial services industry was second in congressional mentions, with 13,577. Other oft-mentioned industries, in order, included the auto industry, retail, aerospace and defense, health care, transportation and telecommunications.