August 2017

In a recent perspective, I reviewed a report authored by Dr. Christopher Hooton of the Internet Association on the impact of Net Neutrality regulation on broadband infrastructure investment. My earlier review of the IA Report focused mainly on Dr. Hooton’s difference-indifferences (“DiD”) model, which from an empirical perspective is the only analysis he offered that could plausibly quantify the effects of the regulation since it involves a counterfactual.

In this perspective, I return to Dr. Hooton’s analysis. My interest in further analysis stems from Dr. Hooton’s claim that his evidence leans in the direction of a positive investment effect in that his “regression coefficients of interest were positive in all but one case.” (That negative case being his primary DiD analysis.) Closer inspection of these “positive” cases reveals errors as severe, if not worse than, the errors plaguing his DiD analysis, including the fabrication of much of his data.

America's largely romantic view of its giant tech companies — Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. —is turning abruptly into harsh scrutiny. Silicon Valley suddenly faces a much more intrusive hand from Washington, based on rapidly accumulating vulnerabilities. Today's conditions — populist rage in the country, combined with growing suspicion of corporate behemoths — closely mirror those that gave us Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting of oil and steel at the turn of the 1900s, and the progressive reforms that ushered in today's antitrust protections.

When I showed a draft of this item to my tech colleagues at Axios, they pointed out that many of the giants have been trying to recalibrate their Washington operations for the Trump era: Facebook hired a former top Senate aide to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Google, with long Democratic ties, did "an about-face" to woo Republicans after the election. Amazon hired a lobbyist with close Trump ties, Brian Ballard. A key executive at one of the targeted companies told me: "It's the attitude and the mood of the country, underscored by the election. It's hit in so many different directions, including the institutions of news and the institutions of higher learning."

It’s not easy being the first and only Fox News host in Silicon Valley. But Steve Hilton, a tech entrepreneur who was once chief adviser to former Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, added that role to his résumé in June. Now every week, Hilton flies from the home he shares with his high-profile tech executive wife, Rachel Whetstone, in Silicon Valley’s billionaire enclave of Atherton (CA) to Fox’s studios in Los Angeles to host “The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton.” Fox News markets the Sunday night program as exploring “the impact of the populist movement.” All of which makes life complicated for Hilton in overwhelmingly liberal Silicon Valley, where supporters of President Trump are nearly nonexistent and few think populism would improve their lives.