This story is part of 2020 elections, CNET's coverage of the November vote preparations.
Towards the end of a hearing in the country's capital in April 2018, Senator Kamala Harris leaned into her microphone and offered Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg an open and unflattering assessment of his company.
"I have to tell you, I am concerned about how much Facebook values trust and transparency," the California Democrat told Zuckerberg. The CEO was grilled by lawmakers over a scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a data consultancy that has removed user information from the social network in support of Donald Trump's 2016 candidacy.
Then Harris, who is now the Democratic nominee for vice president, touched on a particularly troubling point: Facebook's failure to let users know that Cambridge Analytica did so misused their data. "Were you part of a discussion that led to the decision not to inform your users?" The senator asked Zuckerberg.
The CEO looked uncomfortable and replied, "I don't remember such a conversation."
Congressional hearings are always political theater, but the encounter gave a glimpse into the controversial stance Harris could take on Big Tech despite being a fan favorite in the industry for years. During her campaigns for the California Attorney General, Senator for California, and President, Harris received donations from major technology leaders including Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, former Apple design guru Jony Ive, and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. She has given speeches on Google and Facebook, and her brother-in-law Tony West is Uber's best lawyer. But as Silicon Valley is facing an intensive antitrust review In Washington, her history with the industry doesn't necessarily mean she'll let these companies off the hook, some experts say.
"She's a former prosecutor," said David Balto, a former attorney in the Justice Department's antitrust division, which now includes technology companies. "She has a keen understanding of the kind of balance that needs to be struck in technology."
On Wednesday, Harris, who is both the first black and first Asian American on a big party ticket, Vice President Mike Pence faced at a stage of debate in Salt Lake City. The debate, which opened with an exchange on the coronavirus pandemic that killed 211,000 Americans, followed news that President Donald Trump and several of his employees were diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease that causes the virus. Although Pence tested negative for the disease, the Presidential Debate Commission decided to put plexiglass barriers between the two candidates and the moderator for the event.
Less than a month before the election, the debate is unlikely to turn into a hand-to-hand combat like the clash between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden last week. But it will be an opportunity for Americans to see Harris articulate the guidelines of a Biden government that may be tasked with taming the big tech companies based near Harris' childhood home.
Unlike other senators who haven't touched the world of technology, Silicon Valley is their home. Harris was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked there for more than two decades. She is also close to several technical bigwigs.
"She has a keen understanding of the kind of balance that needs to be struck in technology."
David Balto, former attorney in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division
While Harris has endorsed digital privacy, online harassment, and gig worker protection laws on an app-based basis, analysts say she will likely not take a tough stance on Silicon Valley if she is elected vice president. Rather, it will strive to strike a balance between bringing together big tech companies while maintaining those relationships.
"I believe the tech companies need to be regulated," Harris said in an interview with the New York Times last year, despite not saying that the big companies should be closed. "My first priority will be that we make sure that privacy is intact and that consumers have the opportunity to make choices about what happens to their personal information."
The Biden-Harris Campaign, Facebook, and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment. Apple, Google and Uber declined to comment.
Silicon Valley ties
Harris began developing relationships with the tech industry years ago, long before Silicon Valley executives appeared regularly before Congress. While running for the California Attorney General in 2010, she made a pit stop at Google to speak to company staff.
She spoke of her "pride to be in California". Harris was in campaign mode and took on a cozy tone with the tech giant in their "backyard".
"This is a short drive to get here," she told the crowd. "We are a family."
Five years later, Harris visited Facebook headquarters shortly after announcing her offer to the US Senate. In addition to Sandberg, Harris spoke to a group of teenagers about online harassment and cyberbullying.
"Contributors want access to a politician who wins and takes their call."
Dean Lacy, Government Professor at Dartmouth College
The vice-presidential candidate's connections with Silicon Valley insiders don't end there. She is friends with Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist and widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and attended the wedding of Sean Parker, Napster co-founder and first president of Facebook. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist John Doerr raised funds for their presidential bid. A handful of former Harris employees now work at tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Airbnb.
"Tech companies seem to like Harris's political instincts, which are less regulatory than socialist Democrats and less tech-hostile than populist Republicans," said Dean Lacy, government professor at Dartmouth College. "Campaign posts are about access. Contributors want access to a politician who wins and takes their call."
Harris' connections have brought in a lot of campaign money for the campaign. According to OpenSecrets, the top 20 donors of their presidential campaign included employees from Google's parent company, Alphabet, as well as employees from Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. In total, Harris raised $ 40 million before retiring from the race in December.
At Biden announced Harris as his run mate Campaign donations were received in August. In the four hours following Biden's announcement, the ActBlue donation processing platform raised nearly $ 11 million. This was the biggest fundraising day in his campaign history at the time, according to the New York Times. It is unclear what percentage of the donations came from Silicon Valley.
Since then, the Biden-Harris ticket has raised tech money. Last month, employees from Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple donated more than $ 1.5 million to the campaign, according to a CNN analysis published last week. That's more than three times the $ 450,000 Biden raised from employees at these companies in July. By comparison, Trump's campaign has raised a total of just $ 106,000 from the same group since January.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley faces antitrust threats from lawmakers and regulators on multiple fronts. Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook are currently under investigation by the House Justice's Cartel Subcommittee. The heads of these companies attended a hearing before the subcommittee in July. All four companies are also being investigated by the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission. The DOJ is expected to file a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Google this week.
However, antitrust advocates are optimistic about curbing the tech industry regardless of who is in the White House.
"No matter who wins in November, this fight against Google, Facebook and Amazon, this antimonopoly movement, has reached a level of maturity," said Barry Lynn, director of the Open Markets Institute, a supporter of antitrust enforcement in the EU tech world. "There is almost nothing the Washington people can do to stop it."
