Leah Feiger: Silicon Valley Is Coconuts for Kamala Harris in the Light of Donald Trump’s Assassination
Leah Feiger: The Democrats have been lagging behind their Republican counterparts since the presidential debate. Then the assassination attempt on Donald Trump brought some right wing Silicon Valley donors into Trump’s camp, but with a new candidate set to take Biden’s place, will left-leaning Silicon Valley donors open their checkbooks again? David Gilbert will be on the show to explain how the right wing thinks this is a coup. The two WIRED senior writers, Lauren and Makena, are reporting on the democratic fundraising situation in Silicon Valley. Hello, Makena, welcome back.
Vice President Harris said that she is running and that she and the rest of the people will win the election.
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What We Know (and Don’t Know) About Kamala Harris and Tech Policy: Why Tech is Important (and How) it Can Be Formed
After Harris left the Senate, many of the legislative efforts to rein in the power of the largest tech companies gained steam. She was never one of the most outspoken politicians on antitrust policy. During the 2020 election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was the candidate out front calling for the breakup of big tech companies. Harris was asked by The New York Times whether firms like Amazon, Facebook, andGoogle should be broken up. She chose privacy regulation as the topic of the conversation instead of simply giving a direct answer.
Harris has personal connections in the tech industry. Her brother-in-law, for example, is Uber’s Chief Legal Officer Tony West. She also attended the wedding of Napster co-founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker, according to The Washington Post.
Having spent most of her political career either in California or representing it, tech and entertainment companies were among the top contributors to Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks political donations and groups together organizations’ political action committee (PAC) spending and employee donations, the University of California was the top contributor to her campaign at $209,00. Harris collected more than $150K from Alphabet, Disney, and AT&T.
The right has already zeroed in on Harris’s tenure as so-called “border czar,” even though her actual role was focused on diplomacy with Central America. Immigration is more than a border issue, and Harris would likely continue Biden’s policies with regards to legal immigration and visas. A key interest of the tech sector is in maintaining or expanding the H-1B visa program, which lets high-skilled workers remain in the country to work in highly specialized jobs. A press release states that the senator worked with a senator to introduce a bill removing caps on green cards for high skilled immigrants. She said in her statement that more could be done to eliminate discrimination and facilitate family unity so that immigrants can stay in the U.S. and contribute to the economy. She hasn’t spoken about the issue in a while.
Source: Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about Kamala Harris and tech policy
A Voice for Silicon Valley: The Case for Kamala Harris, the U.S. Senate Minority Leader and the Maker of Climate Change
Nevertheless, the US is still not on track to meet climate goals it set under the Paris agreement of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by the end of the decade. Donald Trump could try to wipe existing climate policies off the books.
The bill was the biggest investment in clean energy and climate ever made in the US. And the Environmental Protection Agency under Biden and Harris has introduced sweeping new pollution regulations for cars, power plants, and industrial facilities. All in all, the measures could transform the way Americans get around, how their homes are built, and how they get their energy.
Harris is being asked to address root causes of immigration from Central America. In that role, she focused in part on strengthening the economics of the region and secured private sector commitments from companies including Meta to help train entrepreneurs and small business owners there, and help women build their online presence and access financial services. The Department of Homeland Security has increased their use of border technology under the leadership of Biden.
Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have indicated they would be willing to open a less regulated environment for cryptocurrencies. This deregulatory attitude has reportedly attracted $160 million in campaign contributions to the Republican party from the crypto industry, as well as public backing from the likes of prominent venture capitalists Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz. Their firm has a $4.5 billion fund.
Vice President Kamala Harris is all but certain to become the Democratic presidential candidate. She was suddenly catapulted to front-runner status for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her for the position, and now key power brokers in the party have publicly backed her. If elected, Harris would be a president with roots in California’s Bay Area — the heart of the tech industry.
We know where she stands on climate, we have some sense of how she feels about privacy, and we have a whole array of tantalizing statements about AI, but there is a wide range of key questions that she has yet to be asked or has successfully avoided answering. She remains an enigma when it comes to tech antitrust and the TikTok ban. She has yet to speak about the issues that worry the moneyed donor class of Silicon Valley.
“I think this is a big opportunity for the Democratic Party to do a little bit of introspection and say — where have they lost certain communities?” Box CEO Levie said he donated to Democratic candidates a lot. The party missed opportunities with the tech and business community, like failing to update the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers, and pushing for taxes on unrealized gains. Ultimately, he hopes for “a bit of a reset on some of either the policy initiatives, or just the the tone and the message from the party.”
Source: Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about Kamala Harris and tech policy
What We Know (and Don’t Know) about Kamala Harris and Tech Policy (and What we don’t know) about Facebook
She has not ruled out the possibility of enforcement. She told CNN that we have to seriously take a look at breaking up Facebook. She also called the platform “essentially a utility that has gone unregulated.”
The issue of antitrust has divided Silicon Valley, so she will find some friends in the area. (The most direct beneficiaries of antitrust policy, after all, are the rival companies.) “There’s not a dinner that I’ve been at where three people can agree on an antitrust policy,” Levie said. I have friends that are ardent supporters of capitalism and who also like what Lina Khan is doing to keep tech in check.
Non-consensual images and sex trafficking are not the same thing. Section 230, a legal liability shield for online platforms, is at issue because of legislative and prosecutorial actions. Section 230 of the law does not prevent individuals from spreading nonconsensual images or sexually exploiting someone, but at the level of the platform, the most powerful action is to intervene. The same model is used to create carve-outs to Section 230 for both nonconsensual images and sexual exploitation.
Her work in this area predates her entry to Washington, DC. Harris was the attorney general of California when she secured a guilty plea over the hacking scheme.
As vice president, Kamala Harris was tasked with being a point person in the administration on AI policy, leading roundtables for both leading companies in the industry, and labor and civil rights leaders.
The risks associated with advanced artificial intelligence, which could lead to the creation of Artificial General Intelligence, are prompting regulatory scrutiny for companies working on the technology. Sam Altman, the founder of Open Artificial Intelligence, wants the government to regulate the technology.
I wonder if a flood of A.I.-enabled mis- and disinformation isn’t an issue for democracy when people cannot discern truth from fiction. Harris was at the U.K summit.
Source: Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about Kamala Harris and tech policy
Biden is not the only one looking at TikTok: How do you feel about the SEC? An open challenge for the senate
The U.S. enacted a law that could ban TikTok as soon as January if ByteDance does not sell it off. Harris told reporters that a ban was not the goal despite President Biden signing the bill.
Harris declined to discuss her thoughts on TikTok in an on-stage interview at The New York Times DealBook summit last November.
Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was the reason why the Biden administration had a less-than-rosy relationship with the industry. Even if she uses her own SEC chair pick instead of Gensler, then Harris will improve relations with the sector, even if she does not use her own chair pick.