Google has effectively become an extension of the US State and Defense Departments, promoting Washington’s policies under the guise of being a harmless and ‘hip’ tech company, according to Assange’s upcoming work, “When Google Met Wikileaks”. If true, then this nexus represents the next frontier of foreign policy and would have profound implications for the world and the context in which people consume information.
The book, due out on December 1, is composed largely of a 2011 interview that Assange held with Google’s Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt, interspersed with his polemics on political and technological developments.. Considering the magnitude of what he alleges, it’s worth carrying his thoughts out further and exploring exactly how Google acts as America’s foreign policy cheerleader.
The Closest Google Circle
From tech to government and back again – it’s the new revolving door between the West and East Coasts and the private and public sectors. Some Google employees have intricate government ties, while certain individuals staffing influential government posts come directly from the Googleplex. Here are but a few of the more high-profile examples.
Jared Cohen:
The current Director of Google Ideas owes his beginnings to the State Department’s Planning Policy staff and worked under both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, before leaving to the government-connected Council on Foreign Affairs think tank.
Michele R. Weslander Quaid:
Google’s Chief Technology Officer of the Public Sector had a robust intelligence career working with the National Geospatial Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense before she came to Google.
Megan Smith:
The White House’s chief technology officer used to be the vice president of Google X, the company’s secretive research branch responsible for Google Glass, self-driving cars, and other futuristic ideas.
Google is so close to the US government that its DC location is known as Google Federal and, as could be guessed, it’s significantly staffed with former government employees from the diplomatic, military, and intelligence communities and their affiliated contractors. This revolving door relationship between Google and the government shows that they’re quickly becoming one and the same, especially on the managerial level, leading to copious contracts between the two.
Searching For Politics
With so much interaction between the government and Google, it was only a matter of time before Google started getting involved with foreign policy. Two instances highlight the fear that the company may already have been used as Washington’s latest foreign policy instrument:
Cohen and Egyptian Regime Change:
The 2012 Stratfor leaks show that senior Google officials communicating with the private intelligence agency voiced their concern that Cohen was promoting regime change in Egypt during the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ unrest on behalf of the White House. He met with Wael Ghonim, also a Google employee, hours before the Egyptian was detained for having administered an anonymous Facebook page credited with organizing the anti-government movement.
On The Warpath:
Taking the Google-government relationship even further into the open, the company advertised a Google Hangout session with John Kerry on their front page in September 2013 during the height of the Syrian Crisis. This was right before Congress’ proposed vote on going to war against the country and the day of Kerry’s public call for the world to take the US’ lead in doing so. Assange claims that Google used one of the world’s most far-reaching advertising platforms to shift global opinion in support of an American war, although the company flat-out denied the accusation.
Choosing A New Home Page
It doesn’t seem like this revolving door relationship between Google and the government is going to change any time soon; if anything, it will only strengthen. This means that Google’s suspected foreign policy coordination with the State Department is only expected to deepen in the coming years, from assisting with Color Revolutions to waging information warfare against America’s perceived ‘enemies’. Aware of these threats, various governments are now taking measures to protect themselves and their citizens from this danger:
National Internets:
This relatively new idea is for countries to create the domestic infrastructure needed to host their own portion of the internet. It would avoid any fear of being unilaterally cut off by the US in the event of hostilities or soft war.
Domestic Search Engines:
Another initiative is for states to create their own search engines to get around Google’s ‘gatekeeper to the internet’ role, which has been suspected of censoring or promoting various search results to certain audiences.
Local Information Storage:
Finally, some countries like Russia are requesting that Google and other tech companies store the servers that process their citizens’ data in-country instead of abroad. This also includes the information that the companies have about their users in that country.
