One of the greatest concerns American’s have today is that the tech industry will take over everything, including our government. The evidence provided in the article Silicon Valley Learns Washington’s Language (and Vice Versa) explores that the tech industry is not taking over Capitol Hill, but becoming a part of it.
McGabe, the author, goes through a couple of different ways that the two driving forces of the United States are coming together. The first he says is the amount of lobbyists for every tech company is increasing. When tech giants have the opportunity to influence policies that make it easier for them to change the rules. Another example is that companies such as Google are hiring politicians when they leave office to their staff. Finally, he talks about how lawmakers now have the need to be technologically fluent as so many cases and policies revolve around technology, the largest recent case being the Zuckerberg case in 2018.
So what does this mean for us? I think this relates to our conversation on technology and values and if we think tech companies will eventually take over. I like to think of myself as a techno-optimist, but in this case, I may be a techno pessimist as I don’t like the amount of power tech companies are getting on Capitol Hill. While reading this article I thought about the Rat Podcast and was thinking: if we allow big tech to have power will we be the population that leaves Earth, or will we be the population that is wiped out before we get there? I think we would be the population that gets wiped out. I say that because a tech giant isn’t going to place all of their efforts on environmental control or military policy, and as I think they will have tunnel vision to only tech policies.