Big Tech, Policymaking, and Leadership: An Interview With Journalist Kara Swisher – Harvard Political Review
Kara Swisher is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times, the host of the podcast Sway, the co-host of the podcast Pivot with Scott Galloway, and an editor-at-large for New York Media. She has interviewed hundreds of leaders in tech, politics, and culture, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerburg, Stacey Abrams, President Barack Obama, and Anna Wintour. Her interviews have gained her the reputation of “Silicon Valley’s most feared and well-liked journalist.” She previously co-founded Recode with collaborator Walt Mossberg, and has written for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Harvard Political Review: What are you most optimistic and most concerned about for the technology sector right now?
Kara Swisher: Well, I’m optimistic that the Internet didn’t break during the pandemic, I guess. The things that kept working, which was important for people at home, were basic things like delivery and communications. That was not the case when tech tried to intervene or to do things around the pandemic itself — vaccine distribution systems, tracking COVID cases. But that’s not really tech’s fault. That’s the government’s fault. We did become more jacked into the system. The pandemic just accelerated our dependence and our use of technology, and that made me worry. At the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a piece talking about how I thought that tech companies would be bigger and more valuable than ever because we depend on them more than ever, especially when we’re in an unusual situation like a pandemic, which has lasted quite a long time. So what I’m super worried about is the power and the strength of tech companies that have grown during this time. There’s been no regulatory efforts to fix it at all.
HPR: To the point of doing a better job regulating these systems, if you could wave a magic wand and train lawmakers to do that, what would you want to see and how would you want to do it?
KS: That’s a super complex issue, and there really is no magic wand. There’s a lot of stuff that people need to be doing. One is doing anything — there’s been no legislation that has hindered tech at all, and taxation has been an issue in terms of dealing with very wealthy people and powerful companies. That’s not a fresh thing for lots of big powerful corporations, but we’ve continued to allow tech to operate relatively unfettered for a long time. As they get richer and richer, they have more lobbyists, they have more power, they operate like semi-governments in many ways and make big decisions related to our society that perhaps they shouldn’t be making on their own — including things like cutting off the President of the United States from social networks. Whether you like them or not, that was a decision made by two people. Whether you think it was a good decision or not — I think it was a good decision — it still is troubling that two people made that decision.
So that’s one issue, that there’s been nothing happening. And then there’s the question of what to do. We have had no data or privacy regulation. That’s necessary on a federal level, not just on a state level, as there’s been state efforts but not enough. And then there’s issues around Section 230 — there’s liability for these companies. There’s been a tiny little scratching at it around some issues like sex trafficking, but in general, liability has not been there for tech companies.
And then there’s antitrust issues, which are being argued all over the place, whether it is states’ attorneys general, the Justice Department, or the Federal Trade Commission. What are the monopoly issues here, and how should we change monopoly and antitrust law? These companies were allowed to grow to enormous proportions during the Obama administration, which did almost nothing to stop them, then continued to grow during the Trump administration (although they were the ones to put in the antitrust case, which was interesting, even though they were completely ridiculous on everything else related to tech). And so we’ll see what happens in the Biden administration. They’ve appointed some people that are pretty tough on tech, and there’s some senators like [Amy] Klobuchar and others who have some experience in that. While the government has a lot to do right now because of COVID and other things, and it’s a real slow going — which is to the advantage of these tech companies — it’s still hard to imagine the government not doing anything. But even the tech companies now are saying just do something, the uncertainty is kind of killing us. Although it really isn’t killing them.
HPR: Is there a way to make Congressional hearings on these issues less performative and declarative, and instead actual catalysts for action?
KS: No, they’re just theater. David Cicilline put out a report that was rather comprehensive, which was interesting. It was certainly a beginning spot to get off of for investigation. But no, that’s what those hearings are for. Sometimes they work; they don’t particularly work in the pandemic age online. At this point, it’s like, let’s just get on with it and do something and work with them, too — we do have to work with them.
HPR: Arguably, there is a bit of a Gen Z and millennial subculture that idolizes a lot of these tech billionaires. How do we do a better job of not idolizing and idealizing things that shouldn’t be and actually training to be better than that?
KS: Well, I don’t know. Don’t idolize them. My kids recognize the power these companies hold and really understand that with big power comes big responsibility, but given the wealth and power these companies have assembled, a lot of them aren’t doing the same for society. There’s studies that show trust in the press isn’t high, but neither is it in tech now, which previously was always popular. It’s declining because of some of these incidents. Everybody’s eyes open eventually about lots of things.
Which isn’t to say that tech isn’t great in some ways. The issue of being an adult is being able to take two opposing ideas in our heads at the same time and managing to survive it. So you can understand the power that a lot of this has — look at what happened to the Capitol. It wasn’t totally caused by tech, but it certainly was amplified and weaponized by tech. And so what do we want to do about it? Adults can discuss those issues and if you want to be manipulated and moved around the world by a tech company, more power to you.
But you really do have to think about it just like you have to think about what you’re consuming or what you’re using in a car. You know, you have to have some agency for what’s happening to you. It’s a question of who do you want to have full power? Do you want to have transparency around the data? The attempt to addict you should be very clear to people, because it’s a systemic thing. That’s the one thing that’s really important to understand about the tech: it’s systemic. There are benefits to it, just like there are benefits to electricity or benefits to cars, but as everyone understands now, electricity and cars still have a problematic carbon footprint.
Everyone plays a part in whatever the issue is, whether it’s climate change or tech addiction, which relates to polarization, reductive thought, and sort of a twitchy populace. Certainly, social media is the medium of the age, and therefore someone like Donald Trump uses and abuses it. Why wouldn’t he, if he can take a medium, have an unfettered access to his base, and drive everybody else crazy? It’s a more dangerous version of Kennedy using television or FDR using radio. Those can be possibly good things, but then again, Hitler used newsreels in a very similar way. Hitler didn’t need Instagram to do what he did, and Mussolini didn’t need Twitter. He just used the technology of the day to get his word out. And so what happens with these technologies beyond newsreels or TV or radio — they have an amplification quality that’s massive in comparison. There’s nothing like the ability to send millions of messages to individuals, tailored to those individuals. It’s really quite a piece of power, and so in malevolent hands, these tools become really dangerous and radicalizing.
HPR: How do we do a better job of getting and retaining more women in tech and in leadership roles at large?
KS: Hire more women. We really have more of a mirror-tocracy than a meritocracy. They like to pretend it’s a meritocracy, but it’s not — they have to facilitate and help each other. How do you stop sexual harassment from happening? It keeps coming up. You have the Governor of New York, you have Matt Gaetz, and it goes on and on and on. Misogyny is something that has been a problem on this earth forever.
There’s also a lack of vision because they’re leaving behind talent that could come from anywhere, whether it’s people of color, geographically located, or gender-based. So then it’s a question of are you going to force or shame or legislate them into doing it? It’s really hard because people tend to gather with other people like them. And then you have continually proofing cases that white guys are successful, even though they’re really born on third base and think they hit a home run. That will just keep happening. And I don’t really know how to stop it, but I guess hire more women and make it a priority of CEOs. Make sure at the beginning you have that baked into your system, not as a token kind of thing. There’s also plenty of qualified people for boards, and yet they remain persistently white and male. People say unconscious bias, but it’s just flat out bias. They like to hang out with other dudes.
They also don’t understand danger. A lot of white men have no idea what danger is, or they don’t feel unsafe for much of their lives. Once an executive at Twitter got attacked online for the first time, and said, oh, this is brutal. And I was like, welcome to the world of gay people, women, people of color — are you kidding me? That’s the danger of letting them design everything. Because they’ll design [and digitize] laundry services and delivery of food. They aren’t going to do things that really matter, and it’s then left to people of color and women, primarily, to say, let’s do the justice things [that matter more]. … This culture, it puts people in boxes that are just ridiculous and stupid for this country. Racism and sexism hold us back — it’s a ridiculous waste of time, if you want to make that economic argument about the cost of this to the people in power.
HPR: What conversation that you’ve had recently has made you most hopeful for the next five or so years?
KS: I had a good interview with Brian Chesky of Airbnb. I think he’s thinking about these issues quite a lot. He’s not always successful, but it’s all certainly part of his calculations. Some of the stuff going on in entertainment is pretty cool, like the delivery of entertainment to the home. I think it’s really interesting, and you’ve seen an explosion of all different types of programming. There’s so much more on television, and it’s so diverse on television, comparatively. It’s not perfect — for example, there’s so much more diversity on Netflix than anywhere else, and that’s a good sign. It’s fascinating to watch what’s happening with all the different types of creators.
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