[24924] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my national radio report yesterday on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Tue Nov 10 11:04:22 2026
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2026 07:42:02 -0800
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
Message-ID: <20261110154202.GA30372@vortex.com>
Content-Disposition: inline
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"
Errors-To: privacy-bounces+privacy-forum=mit.edu@vortex.com
This is the script of my national radio report yesterday discussing
effects of the recent election on Big Tech firms. As always there may
have been minor wording variations from this script as I presented
this report live on air.
- - -
Yes indeed, obviously the midterm election has had some historic
results and it's going to take time to fully understand all of the
ramifications, but one aspect that politicians in both parties seem to
largely agree on is that the rather free ride that Big Tech has seemed
to have up to now not only when it comes to AI and data centers, but
also regarding privacy and security issues and more, is likely to be
significantly curtailed, something that the large majority of voters
in both parties have apparently said that they want to have happen.
This is likely to be felt in various ways all over the country to one
extent or another. One example is in Texas, where the now voted-out
governor has been -- until very recently -- full speed ahead on
massive data center projects, which are now likely to be significantly
curtailed there.
It's also very probable that we'll also see major new efforts around
the country to address user privacy and security concerns associated
with how these firms operate, and other aspects of their operations
that affect ordinary people.
It's going to be very interesting, and perhaps even amusing in a dark
kind of way, to see how these Big Tech firms and their often
billionaire CEOs react publicly to all this. Reports are that they
collectively spent an enormous amount of money on the election
attempting to maintain their status quo, money which appears to have
been essentially wasted, with results being pretty much the opposite
of what the firms appear to have hoped for. Word is that even BEFORE
the election some Big Tech firms were already putting out feelers to
try forge new contacts with the politicians that they suspected could
be elected who would likely not be aligned with the largely hands-off
regulatory approach that the firms have been enjoying up to now.
Big Tech is almost certainly already working overtime to strategize
numerous ways to newly ingratiate themselves with the sensibilities of
not only politicians but also the public in the wake of the election,
through rebranding efforts and other attempts to divert attention
usually from what's actually going on.
But of course the election was just a week ago so while we can make
predictions about Big Tech firms and the wide range of
technology-related issues that we'll all be living through in this new
reality, we can't be sure about any of this right now, except that we
can be pretty sure, that it isn't going to be boring.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
_______________________________________________
privacy mailing list
https://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy
