Corporations are pouring money into the vice president’s campaign coffers. What will they expect in return?
Kamala Harris has benefitted from a cozy relationship with Big Tech. Now, that relationship is being tested with a quid pro quo from major Big Tech donors: If you take our money, you must fire FTC Chair Lina Khan.
Harris has raked in the campaign cash from Big Tech. Throughout her political career, these companies have doled out millions in contributions. Alphabet has donated $842,212. Microsoft has shelled out $575,043. Amazon, Apple, and Meta have also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaigns.
Recently, the Democratic megadonor and founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman announced he will give $7 million to a super PAC supporting Harris. But the donation reportedly came with strings attached: Harris must terminate Khan, who has been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts.
Almost immediately, a chorus of Big Tech donors made the same demand—and media personalities are now predicting she will make good on it. Another Democratic megadonor, Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC and Expedia, demanded the firing of Khan in an interview with CNBC. Diller has said he plans to max out to Harris and has encouraged his fellow billionaires to do the same. CNBC’s Jim Cramer predicted that if Harris were to win, she’d fire both Khan and Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general with the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.
Hoffman has a particular interest in seeing Khan fired. He sits on the board of Aurora, a self-driving car company that is partially owned by Amazon. Khan is currently taking action against Amazon for monopolistic practices. He also sits on the board of Microsoft. Khan sued Microsoft to block the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. And it doesn’t end there. Hoffman is also associated with PayPal, a company that faced an antitrust class action lawsuit, and OpenAI, another company investigated by Khan’s FTC. Hoffman thinks that Khan might be hurting his bottom line by enforcing the law, so he wants her gone.
All this pressure means something. In countless articles speculating on whether Harris would fire both Kanter and Khan, the Harris campaign has been silent. The most the campaign has provided was a noncommittal answer to CNN: A Harris campaign aide told CNN that there have been “no policy discussions” about replacing Khan at the current time. “She has been the presumptive nominee for three days,” the aide added. All of this raises the question: Is Kamala Harris preparing to go soft on antitrust and instead do the bidding of her Big Tech overlords?
The Biden administration has tasked Harris with the role as Artificial Intelligence Czar, overseeing the administration’s policy agenda on AI. What has Harris done in this role? She has championed “fairness” in algorithms, disparities in training data, and countering “harmful” biases. Essentially, Harris has served to just make artificial intelligence more woke; doing nothing to push forward innovation and ensure America’s success in the artificial intelligence race against China.
Compare this to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Trump has continued to rail against Big Tech companies for being “too big” and “too powerful.” Both Trump and Vance have supported a crackdown on Big Tech. Vance has voiced his support for Khan’s actions on multiple occasions.
During the 2020 election, Google suppressed stories on the Hunter Biden laptop, Twitter restricted pro-Trump PACs from tweeting, and Facebook banned various campaign ads from pro-Trump super PACs. These actions were solely to benefit the Biden-Harris campaign, and were instrumental in getting Biden elected.
The former president has pledged that if he were to win, he’d block federal money from going to these tech companies and their anti-disinformation efforts—and fire federal officials who aided and abetted censorship. Trump’s plans include both executive orders and legislation, which he has proposed under his “Free Speech Platform.”
If Harris were to win, what would she do with regard to Big Tech? Say what you will about Joe Biden, but it’s hard to argue his administration has been very friendly to the tech companies. Would Kamala Harris continue that legacy? Or would she push the Democrat Party in a direction more favorable to her Big Tech paymasters?
If the past is any predictor of the future, Kamala Harris is likely to become our most pro-Big Tech president ever if she wins. It appears very likely that she would indeed fire Lina Khan at the request of those who have funded her career. And that would be terrible news for the American people who are sick of a few powerful Big Tech companies controlling the free flow of information and thus our elections.
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