We Bow To No King: Big Tech in the Hot Seat, by Silicon Valley Sniper

I had the distinct pleasure of watching 4 wildly rich Tech executives get grilled by a quaint congressional committee yesterday. You know them, they run the ‘FAAG’ companies: Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google (Netflix was missing from the hearings, so I was forced into the acronym). As a tech person, I’ve seen CEOs of their ilk give lots of talks. Usually they are treated like royalty, they speak and people listen. Well not this week. They were cut off many times by people less important than them, saving countless hours of self-congratulatory BS. It was a most spectacular experience.

On to the matter at hand. We saw a rare display of bi-partisanship yesterday, almost everyone was not happy with big tech. Democrats generally focused on monopoly concerns, while Republicans were focused on national security and free speech. It’s pretty clear that the tech CEOs did not pass the sniff test. More to come for sure.

I will be following this closely as my livelihood is directly impacted. Right now it seems the only viable tech startup strategy is to get acquired (or acq-hired) by big tech. And Zuckerberg/Bezos confirmed it. Bezos talked about buying companies for ‘market position’. Zuck went a bit further in an email that surfaced, saying ‘the nice thing about competitive startups is that you can always buy them’. It’s sad that all a startup can aspire to become is a feature in a larger company. You end up catering everything you build towards what a Google or Facebook would want to buy.

It was also a blast to watch the CEOs respond to the question of whether they thought China was stealing tech from the US. Worth noting, Zuck (Facebook) and Bezos (Amazon) are entrepreneur founders, and the Google/Apple execs are CEO managers (who didn’t start the company they now run). The CEO managers were asked first, and Cook (Apple) came up with a limp statement about ‘not to my personal knowledge.’ The Google CEO manager was visibly relieved when he heard that, and immediately followed suit so as to not offend either China or the US. Then Zuck (founder CEO) was asked and said the obvious, that it’s well documented that China is doing this. Everyone was shocked that there wasn’t any spin (gold star to the founder CEO types). Bezos (founder CEO) also agreed that it was well documented this is happening.

A lot more was discussed. I won’t get into how much Google is partnering with the Chinese government on AI. Nor how Google may have improved the targeting software on China’s J-20 fighter jet. Nor will I get into how licensed Doctors are censored from sharing medical opinions that go against the WHO, while the leader of Iran gets a free pass when talking about strikes against the US. Definitely not getting into whether big tech has any 2020 electioneering plans. I’ll just leave you with one thought… the tech CEOs just got a comeuppance that would never have happened under Obama.

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About the Author: NC Scout

NC Scout is the nom de guerre of a former Infantry Scout and Sergeant in one of the Army’s best Reconnaissance Units. He has combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a series of courses focusing on small unit skills rarely if ever taught anywhere else in the prepping and survival field, including his RTO Course which focuses on small unit communications. In his free time he is an avid hunter, bushcrafter, writer, long range shooter, prepper, amateur radio operator and Libertarian activist. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via his blog at brushbeater.wordpress.com .

5 Comments

  1. Anonymous August 2, 2020 at 09:36

    5

  2. Dan August 2, 2020 at 11:56

    I don’t believe that the only viable tech start-up strategy is to get acquired by “big tech.” There are two reason’s for my belief. First is that I do not consider three of the four companies named to be “tech” companies. The second reason is that all of these companies work against the best interests of their user base.

    Apple has done superior engineering and design in both human interfaces and hardware but the primary driver of their success has been their marketing prowess. Apple has a cult like following. Google is a many faceted company but the only real technical innovation was to move to massively parallel processing rather than trying to scale up with supercomputers. Facebook provides crappy structured websites. Amazon does provide good cloud services they really just adapted things developed by others. The same is true with their other technology products Kindle and Alexa. Other than that their product search is very poor and their logistics are terrible.

    These companies are successful, not because of technological superiority but because they were first movers in opportunities created by the improvement of the internet and their extraordinary access to capital. These companies did not grow organically. They were fueled by essentially free capital.

    Google screws their users by providing search results that serve Google’s purposes rather than the users. They screw their users by selling their private information. Ditto Facebook. Amazon adds to the screw job by squeezing their sellers. Apple, while providing innovative technology puts the squeeze on every app provider and every content provider in their ecosystem.

    Before there was a Facebook there was Myspace. It collapsed virtually overnight. The same thing can happen to Facebook and Google and whether it happens will be the choice of the common people. If 20,000 people agreed to pay $5/month for a year a secure alternative to Facebook could be developed that protected your privacy while enabling secure sharing. It would be very much in the interest of UPS and FedEx to fund development of an Amazon alternative that provides better product search capability while the work on beating Amazon on logistics. Google search could be replaced by many domain specialized search engines. All it takes is for enough people to decide they do not want to be subject to the dictates of these “tech” oligarchs.

    Bipartisanship in congress is usually a bad thing. It means the people are about to get screwed. Regulation of industries isn’t done for the benefit of the people. It is done to solidify the position of the market leaders. The uniparty is in agreement here. These “tech” companies serve them and regulation will shut down the ability of alternatives to develop. There will be rules and due diligence requirements and reporting requirements that make it very difficult for a couple guys in a dorm or garage to build the replacements.

    An alternative strategy is crowd sourced replacement of these effective monopolies. A Facebook alternative that is funded by subscription revenue would not need to hire developers to maximize the monetization of privacy invasion. A Google search alternative can use idle cycles on users machine to process the indexing and distribute content in similar fashion. Instead of using Amazon use full-text searching of product datasheets and reviews to find both the exact product and the best price available deliver when you need it. Dump Amazon web services because “the cloud” provided by any of these deep state surveillance systems is just a bad idea and the functionality needed can be easily replaced by other internet hosts.

    The only thing stopping tech start-ups from doing these things is the commitment of people not to support their own enslavement by these companies. Pay a couple of bucks a month for the services you want or get them for free so long as you wear the chains.

  3. SVS August 2, 2020 at 23:48

    Awesome points Dan! Absolutely agree that a bunch of regulations would suck. GDPR came up as a recent example of regulatory friction hurting smaller businesses. Also good to remember what happened with AT&T, which was broken into the baby bells in the 80s. Long distance calls got a bit cheaper at the time, but later it slowed down the rollout of high-speed internet. And today the telcos have consolidated right back into a few major players. So what was the point?

    There are definitely companies out there building quality subscription products. One such outfit, Basecamp, was basically extorted by Apple recently for trying to get their new email app onto iPhones. But they are showing the way, so hopefully the underdogs continue to deliver wins. Another concern, I think too many people don’t yet understand the trade they are making on free products for personal data. It feels like a bait and switch to me.

  4. Machine Trooper August 3, 2020 at 02:09

    After watching the ridiculous theater in Congress regarding Big Tech, it’s obvious that the cavalry is never coming. The Republicans, even the few who I thought were honest, have sold us out. It’s like that quote by Lenin (or Kruschev or whatever communist shitbag) that the last capitalist on Earth will sell them the rope with which to hang him.

    And, of course, most Republicans are just controlled opposition anyway. They’ve always been playing for the other team and the joke’s on their constituents.

    • johnyMac August 3, 2020 at 08:17

      “Politics is theater for ugly people” – Jay Leno I believe.

      73 & God Bless

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