Media: Press Release

IAP Research Shows Former Intelligence Officials Fighting Antitrust Bought Off by Big Tech

September 16, 2021

WASHINGTON —Yesterday, Axios reported that former intelligence and national security officials are claiming that antitrust efforts against Big Tech could damage the United States in our race against China for global technological advancement. A significant number of the 12 former officials who wrote the letter have established or potential financial ties to Big Tech and much of the substance of the letter mirrors industry talking points. 

Among all of the officials mentioned in the document, Dan Coats is now a senior policy adviser at King & Spalding. Not only is Google a client of King & Spalding, the firm also represented Google before the House Subcommittee on Antitrust. Susan M. Gordon now serves as a consultant for the Center for a New American Security, who is funded by Google and Amazon, along with serving as a board member for Pallas Advisors, who has a technology venture capital fund.

“This gaslighting needs to stop. There are many DC policy wonks who rely on the Big Tech platforms financially. They don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. We get it. On behalf of the rest of the conservative movement, however, we say this to them: you may not want to bite the hand that feeds you but, in so doing, you are in reality failing to bite the hand that’s starving us all. It’s time for conservatives to have an honest conversation about Big Tech. And this conversation must be grounded in reality.  If the past is prologue, Big Tech is not on Team America when it comes to our national security — and likely never will be,” said IAP Founder and President Mike Davis.

Learn more here.

IAP is a nonprofit conservative advocacy group that holds Big Tech accountable for engaging in egregious business practices like snooping, spying, political bias against conservatives, employee abuses and anticompetitive conduct. Davis previously served as Chief Counsel for Nominations to Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary and led the Senate confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and a record number of circuit court judges. More information on Davis and IAP can be found here.

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