Anjali Katta and Alina Utrata talk about the Big Tech issues a Biden Administration will inherit, from the FTC and DOJ anti-monopoly cases against Facebook and Google to the DoD’s cloud computing contract JEDI. They also discuss links between many Biden Administration officials and the tech industry. To sign up for the email newsletter of the Anti-Dystopians, click here.
CORRECTION: When talking about the Microsoft antitrust case, Alina meant to say "Netscape" instead of "Netflix."
Articles and books mentioned in this podcast.
The American Prospect’s big feature on “How Biden’s Foreign Policy Team Got Rich” focusing on Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken and Michele Flournoy. More on WestExec strategic consultants (including ODNI nominee Avril Haines and potential CIA nominee David Cohen) by Politico and the Revolving Door project. Plus some progressives wrote an article arguing against Michele Flournoy for Secretary of Defense in the Project On Government Oversight .
Director of National Intelligence nominee Avril Haines’ link to Palantir, along with reporting about NYPD and NHS contracts with Palantir.
Fantastic ProPublica reporting on the JEDI cloud computing contract and links between DoD and Amazon. Plus an excellent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on Cloud Computing security, and a report by Rishi Sunak on how critical undersea cable networks are incredibly insecure.
The extraordinary amounts of money Uber &co spent to avoid giving benefits and protections to drivers, and how Jake Sullivan ended up (sort of) working for Uber. Plus Cory Doctorow on Saudi investment in Uber, and Vox on how Silicon Valley is awash with money from Saudi Arabia and China.
The FTC/AG suits against Facebook and their Mark Zuckerberg email quotes might explain why Google employees have been instructed not to talk about antitrust in their emails, or ever.
Public Citizen’s investigation into FTC’s revolving door problem with Big Tech, plus the FTC officials who work at Facebook now. And, of course, all the Facebook folks on the Biden transition team.
Biden’s new coronavirus czar Jeffrey Zients (who was acting director of Office of Management and Budget and a former Facebook Board member) Wikipedia page mysteriously deleted that he “fell in love with the culture at Bain & Co” after joining the Biden campaign.
Finally, the Biden agency review teams has lots of tech players, Kamala Harris’s campaigns’ links to big tech and Chiara Cordelli’s new book The Privatized State on how government contracting/outsourcing is not good for us.
Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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