A look at the tight links between employees at big tech companies and Joe Biden's campaign, despite his criticism of the Silicon Valley giants
While Joe Biden has criticized the largest tech companies, his campaign and transition teams have welcomed allies of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple onto its staff and policy groups. Tweets: @awinston , @ron_miller , @econ_marshall , @nytimes , and @ddayen Tweets: Ali Winston / @awinston : “Avril Haines, a former Obama national security and intelligence official who is helping to lead Mr. Biden's transition team, was a consultant for the data-mining company Palantir” https://www.nytimes.com/... Ron Miller / @ron_miller : The two are not mutually exclusive. Also big companies, tech or otherswise, have always played both ends against the middle when it comes to politics. https://twitter.com/... Marshall Steinbaum / @econ_marshall : Unfortunately there's not a lot to be optimistic about in a Biden administration, in terms of antitrust and Big Tech. Similar to the Obama admin's treatment of finance: all the big decisions were made in the heat of crisis, by insiders. https://www.nytimes.com/... @nytimes : Joe Biden has been critical of Big Tech. But his campaign and transition teams have welcomed allies of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple onto its staff and policy groups. https://www.nytimes.com/... David Dayen / @ddayen : 8 FB/Google/Amazon/Apple employees out of a 700-member policy committee would be a remarkable dilution of Big Tech's influence https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands inside a rift the coverage has tracked since at least 2019, when reporting documented the growing split between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party as presidential candidates began voicing sharp worries about Big Tech. The personnel story runs parallel to the money story: Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt, Dustin Moskovitz, and Laurene Powell Jobs had already mounted major efforts to boost Biden's candidacy earlier in 2020.
What changed here is the mismatch becoming visible in staffing itself: Avril Haines, helping lead the transition team, had consulted for Palantir, and allies of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple sit on campaign and policy groups even as Biden attacks those companies publicly. Whether the hires soften the policy or the criticism hardens anyway is exactly what the later coverage tests.
First-order effects
- Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple gain informal channels into a campaign whose candidate campaigns against them — their alumni now shape policy groups and the transition Haines is helping lead.
Second-order effects
- The tension forces a live test inside the operation: Biden staffers' own experience with Facebook during the election left them treating the company as an electoral threat months after this report, pushing against any softening its alumni might deliver.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the Democratic posture toward Big Tech is set by appointees' governing record rather than personnel ties — consistent with the later read that the influx of tech veterans did not stop Biden from being tougher on tech than his predecessors, even as the transition roster stayed stocked with Amazon, Airbnb and Uber employees through November.
The trend: The Democratic Party is decoupling its antitrust and platform-policy stance from Big Tech's personnel and donor presence, judging the companies by conduct rather than by who sits on the transition team.