September 2017

[Commentary] As one of the few remaining members of the Kennedy administration who participated in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, I was an eyewitness to the crucial role that telecommunications played in averting nuclear disaster.

As chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at that time, we created a “hotline” with the Soviet Union in the belief that improved communications would help avoid conflicts between nations in the nuclear era. Today, telecommunications have improved in ways we could not have imagined. They are faster, stronger, clearer, more accessible and higher resolution. News on television, radio and the internet is far more comprehensive, multisourced and instantaneous. Some of those new technologies have undermined the very tools President John F. Kennedy needed to avert war. President Kennedy once gave me a top-secret assignment. The Russians had jammed the Voice of America. My job was to enlist eight American commercial radio stations whose signals reached Cuba to carry key messages from Voice of America to the Cuban people. Before confiding in the stations, I asked each station owner to swear that they would not share the information with their news division until the embargo was lifted. Every one of them agreed and kept their word, ultimately playing a useful role in averting nuclear war. Would broadcasters today be willing to do the same?

[Chicago attorney Newton N. Minow was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1961 to 1963]

(Aug 27)

Among its peers, Google is an unparalleled lobbyist. Between April and June 2017, Google spent $5.4 million lobbying the federal government, more than double the lobbying budget for Apple, a comparable global behemoth that also has to fend off regulatory scrutiny. The tech giant has also long funded a lengthy roster of think tanks, academics, and nonprofits that grapple with issues that could seriously impact Google’s bottom line, such as privacy, network neutrality, and tax reform.

So when the New York Times reported that the New America Foundation (a Google-funded think tank) severed ties with Open Markets (an antimonopoly group housed within New America) after complaints from a top Google executive (Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s parent company), it seemed like a rare glimpse at how Google wields its power behind the scenes. Emails between New America and Open Markets reviewed by WIRED and others also give greater insight into the way that funding from Google can influence a policy group's internal dynamics. The cornerstone of Open Markets’s advocacy work is the idea that consolidation of power erodes political liberties and democratic values. But the dustup shows how easy it would be for Google to manipulate public debate on national issues without leaving much of a fingerprint.

A Google spokesperson tells WIRED that its financial support does not interfere with any think tank’s “independence, personnel decisions, or policy perspective." But in emails, New America’s CEO and president Anne-Marie Slaughter comes across as more of a conduit than a firewall between New America’s donors and intellectual work of its scholars.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has sat dormant for more than seven months under President Donald Trump — but the Administration says it’ll staff up and resume its work soon.

Chartered in its modern form in 2000, PCAST long has operated as the White House’s main interface with academics, industry experts and others who can help shape the government’s approach on a wide array of complex, cutting-edge issues. Under President Trump, though, there’s no one on the council. It’s one of many science-and-tech advisory arms at the White House that’s still severely depleted in staff, a series of vacancies made all the more striking by the president’s previous push to cut federal research spending. In the meantime, PCAST’s charter, technically, is set to run out: Obama’s executive order authorizing the council expires at the end of September. Apparently, President Trump is on track to sign his own executive order re-establishing PCAST in September. The process of staffing it will then fall to the leader of the White House’s other research team, the Office of Science and Technology Policy. But that office, known as OSTP, still has no director, and the President has offered no timeline for when he’ll nominate someone for the job. Even then, filling the ranks of PCAST might prove especially difficult in the coming months.