Mandel Gunn/AFP/Getty Images
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is leading a national movement calling for the Biden administration to push anti-regulation policies for Big Tech companies around the world — and his wife could benefit. This is despite the fact that he owns up to $3 million worth of shares in leading tech companies), according to financial disclosure records.
Mr. Wyden is a longtime collaborator in the technology industry, and his wife is extremely wealthy.Ethics experts speak rolling stone We argue that while this situation does not violate the law or Congressional ethics rules, it does create a potential conflict of interest.
A spokesperson for Wyden disputed this idea, claiming that Wyden and his wife have separate finances and “do not discuss their work.” He argued that Wyden has been a vocal critic of Big Tech companies and their approach to privacy.
Last fall, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the U.S. withdrew its support for a proposal to include an anti-regulatory framework favored by the tech industry in international trade negotiations, saying the language could impede debate over domestic tech policy. Then he announced. Mr. Wyden pressed President Joe Biden to reverse the move, calling it “a victory for China, plain and simple.” Officials on Mr. Biden’s National Security Council also joined Mr. Wyden’s cause.
A fuzzy but high-stakes policy battle is unfolding as world trade leaders prepare for the World Trade Organization’s 13th Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi next week.
Critics say the so-called “digital trade” framework promoted by Big Tech will help the industry stay ahead of tougher regulations on data privacy and security, artificial intelligence and app store competition at a global level. claims. They argue that the language, first proposed by the Trump administration, would eliminate the possibility of new technology rules in the U.S. and override regulations already in place overseas. There is.
said Lori Wallach, director of the American Economic Liberties Project’s Rethink Trade Program. rolling stone Big Tech “internationally sought to insert binding rules into trade agreements that pre-empted and shut down domestic regulations, and Sen. Wyden was a leader in that effort,” he said.
“If the current position of the Biden administration reverses and goes back to the Big Tech agenda,” she says. Because all of the content the platforms use has been reproduced in a bill in the US Congress with bipartisan support that would target countries as illegal trade barriers that must be removed or face sanctions. Because it will happen. ”
Screening service Yelp made a similar argument in a letter to Biden, saying, “Big tech companies seek to use international trade negotiations… to preempt domestic policies prohibiting anticompetitive conduct.” I wrote.
Wyden’s wife, Nancy Bass Wyden, owns up to $1 million in Apple stock, according to his latest financial disclosure. $1 million to Microsoft. $500,000 on Amazon. and $500,000 to Google.
Bass Wyden, owner of New York’s famous bookstore The Strand, is extremely wealthy. According to some sources, she is worth at least $46 million. rolling stone A review of her husband’s 2022 financial disclosures and local property tax records for New York City buildings she owns. Most of her wealth is kept in the property, a city landmark that houses The Strand, which her family has run for almost a century.
Even with that $39 million worth of real estate, Bass Wyden’s Big Tech stock represents a small but significant portion of the couple’s total assets. Excluding that building, her Big Tech holdings account for one-fifth of her disclosed assets.
The shares are held in an account managed by Fidelity, according to the senator’s latest financial disclosure. They don’t seem to be trusted blindly.
Wyden is one of a handful of Senate Democrats who signed a bill banning stock trading by lawmakers and requiring them, their spouses and dependent children to sell their stock holdings or place them in a blind trust. isn’t it.
“The investments and virtually all of the assets you list are owned by Nancy Bass Wyden,” Wyden spokesman Keith Chu said in an email. “Sen. Wyden and Ms. Wyden keep their finances separate, including filing their taxes separately, and do not discuss their work.”
He added: Wyden has harshly criticized Big Tech companies, introduced legislation to outlaw their major business models, and called on the FTC to investigate Apple and Google’s role in collecting and selling Americans’ personal data. Additionally, other bills are being drafted as follows: He approved a prison sentence for Mark Zuckerberg for repeatedly violating Americans’ privacy, among other things. He also introduced bipartisan legislation that would limit the export of Americans’ personal data to unfriendly countries like China. ”
Separately, Chu said that the USTR’s abandoned digital trade proposal would not only benefit the tech industry, but that “a wide range of voices, including human rights activists, small tech companies, diplomatic experts, and groups like the United Nations… This raises concerns about this decision.” The American Publishers Association, the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Retail Federation compete with Big Tech and rarely share policy goals. ”
“There is broad agreement among experts in the field that USTR’s actions harm U.S. interests and further China’s efforts to dominate the Internet,” he wrote.
rolling stone We spoke to five ethics experts about Mr. Wyden’s defense of Big Tech’s trade challenges and his wife’s investments. They all agree that this situation raises ethical questions.
“Why should she hold on to up to $3 million worth of tech stocks while he’s making these decisions?” George W. Bush’s chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter says. “Why didn’t she sell it and invest in a broader range of mutual funds?”
Craig Holman, an ethics lobbyist at Public Citizen, said the situation “certainly raises a conflict of interest.”
“Whether or not that has influenced Ron Wyden’s public actions is speculative, but it clearly presents the appearance of a conflict of interest,” he said, adding that “Sen. I’m a little surprised that he would put himself in that position,” he added. . I have a lot of respect for that senator. And he collaborates with me a lot on ethical issues. ”
In late November, Mr. Wyden issued a press release calling on Mr. Biden to overrule his trade representative and embrace Big Tech’s digital trade policies. Wyden and his letter’s co-signers said doing so would “enable the free flow of information across borders, protect against the forced transfer of U.S. technology, and protect U.S. creators and companies from exporting.” “It will promote an open market for digital products.”
He organized a bipartisan letter opposing Tai’s decision, signed by 14 of his Democratic colleagues.
House Democrats pushed back against Wyden’s campaign. Earlier this month, 88 of them sent a letter to Biden supporting Tai and his move to rescind the digital trade proposal.
“It is a credit to the Presidency that the Thai Ambassador is respecting Congress’s role in domestic policymaking and moving things forward in a way that respects the goals of digital competition, privacy, and artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance. also supports this,” they said. “We are concerned that trade negotiations regarding certain digital rules could proceed ahead of Congress’s domestic policy decisions,” he wrote.
Wallach, the director of Rethink Trade, said Big Tech is using binding trade rules to ensure that big tech is protected through binding trade rules similar to the intellectual property rules secured by big pharmaceutical companies that have prevented the sharing of vaccine recipes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It claims to be trying to enact industry protections. .
“Big Tech’s gambit is to do what Big Pharma has done: rig trade deals to achieve things that cannot be achieved in the sunlight of public policy making. “That’s what it is,” Wallach said. “In the case of Big Tech, it’s about usurping trade deals to impose restrictions.” [on]Prohibits signatory governments from enforcing common forms of online privacy, antitrust, AI, algorithmic indiscriminate surveillance, and right-to-remediation policies, if not outright bans. ”
Much of the conversation surrounding the Thai trade representative’s decision to withdraw U.S. support for digital trade policies for the tech industry has revolved around whether the move will benefit or hurt China.
In a press release in November, Wyden said the USTR’s decision was “a victory for the Chinese government’s efforts to provide unrestricted access to U.S. data and to bully small countries into following China’s model of internet censorship.” It’s a victory for China’s tech giants and a victory for China’s Great Firewall, which keeps out American companies and locks Chinese citizens into a repressive system of government surveillance.”
of american prospect Wyden’s ideas are “totally backwards,” he said, arguing that “Tai’s decision to rescind Trump-era language on the free flow of data means that the U.S. will not be able to protect data in China from tech companies like Google.” “We can and have made it clear that we intend to restrict the whereabouts of
Wallach argues that the discussion about China is beside the point.
“Honestly, this is not about foreign policy or geopolitics at all,” she says. “This is a story of corporate power. Will big tech companies control your data, or will governments set the rules for data privacy and security? Will we be allowed to overhaul algorithms for forms of discrimination and proactively screen dangerous AI, or will they be secret and governments barred from meaningful oversight? Competing companies Are there competition policies to protect the economic freedom of workers and workers, or are those competition policies arbitrarily called illegal trade barriers? All of this is linked to corporate power, democracy, small business, It’s a civil rights, it’s a consumer issue, and it has implications not just here at home but globally.”