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Credit to Author: Garrett M. Graff| Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2020 12:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Garrett M. Graff<\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n A former telecoms entrepreneur, the Virginia senator says that saving the industry (and democracy) might mean blowing up Big Tech as we know it.<\/p>\n In mid-November,<\/strong> as his House colleagues on Capitol Hill were consumed with questions about Ukraine and impeachment, Senator Mark Warner took to CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box<\/em> to discuss what he saw as one of the most important problems facing the country: Fitbit.<\/p>\n Or, more specifically, the danger of allowing Google to swallow up the personal fitness and health-monitoring gadget and its terabytes of consumer data. \u201cThe Fitbit deal needs a high, high level of scrutiny,\u201d the Democratic senator from Virginia told anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin. \u201cLarge platform companies have not had a very good record of protecting the data or being transparent with consumers. I can\u2019t totally blame them. If Congress doesn\u2019t set rules of the road, asking them to self-regulate is, frankly, just not a viable option.\u201d<\/p>\n Across the board, we as a country need to be hitting pause on the advances of Big Tech, Warner argued, channeling his inner trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt. He sees warning signs flashing all around, like Facebook\u2019s fledgling attempt to launch a digital currency, Libra, and Google\u2019s move into banking. Too much is happening without competition and government oversight, he said. \u201cWe have these giant tech platforms entering into new fields before there are some regulatory rules of the road,\u201d Warner told CNBC\u2019s viewers. \u201cOnce they get in, the ability to extract them out is going to be virtually impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n The words coming out of Mark Warner\u2019s mouth throughout 2019 would surely have stunned the Mark Warner who joined the Senate in 2009, amid the wave of techno-optimism that marked Barack Obama\u2019s presidential victory and the early years of his administration. Back then it seemed everyone in Washington, Warner chief among them, thought tech was the solution, not the problem.<\/p>\n Yet more recently, in Donald Trump\u2019s Washington, Warner has evolved into Capitol Hill\u2019s most reluctant and thoughtful tech critic, grilling Facebook, Twitter, and Google executives, lashing out in private and public over their intransigence, and pressing the companies to confront the role their platforms have played in undermining democracy.<\/p>\n As the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he\u2019s also become one of Capitol Hill\u2019s most vocal advocates urging the country to take foreign technology threats seriously, both the possibility of kinetic real-world cyberattacks (such as disabling power plants or water systems) and already-underway information influence operations like the ones that upended the 2016 presidential election, as well as the looming challenges next-generation technologies pose to national security.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, even as the president\u2019s impeachment trial loomed for the Senate, he introduced\u2014along with the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, North Carolina\u2019s Richard Burr\u2014new legislation<\/a> aimed at closing the United States\u2019 gap in 5G technologies with China by investing in Western alternatives to Huawei.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery month that the US does nothing, Huawei stands poised to become the cheapest, fastest, most ubiquitous global provider of 5G,\u201d Warner said in announcing the new bill. \u201cWidespread adoption of 5G technology has the potential to unleash sweeping effects for the future of internet-connected devices, individual data security, and national security.<\/p>\n Together, his views, advocacy, and legislative work over the past three years have put Warner at the intersection of the biggest stories in American politics\u2014foreign interference in US elections, the evolving consensus that Big Tech is out of control, and the growing tech rift between the US and China<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an unexpected role for a onetime venture capitalist who made a nine-figure fortune helping to usher in the technological age in which we all now live. And the 65-year-old senator remains enmeshed in the culture and politics of technology. His state is one of the top destinations for tech companies outside of the Bay Area (Amazon\u2019s new HQ2 is being built in Arlington). He wears Allbirds\u2014the official sneaker of startup bros\u2014sports an Apple Watch, and dabbles in winemaking. Warner\u2019s dotcom-billionaire friends compare their new Teslas and their private helicopters even as Warner\u2019s political career has thrived thanks to his commitment to the same rural Americans who supported Trump.<\/p>\n Now, as the man who represents one of the country\u2019s most defense-heavy states\u2014home to the Pentagon and the headquarters of 10 of the nation\u2019s 17 intelligence agencies\u2014Warner is pressing his colleagues and the US government to reckon with a new age of asymmetric warfare and information operations, a geopolitical landscape where America\u2019s massive Air Force wings, naval fleets, and Army tanks are of little help against Twitter trolls, Facebook bots, deep fakes, and all manner of emerging threats.<\/p>\n As Warner reminds people in almost every set of public remarks, Russia surely spent less on its 2016 election attack than the cost of a single US F-35 fighter jet. \u201cWe\u2019re buying 20th-century military stuff, when the conflict in the 21st century is going to be disproportionately in the realm of cyber and misinformation, disinformation, the ability to take down someone\u2019s water system,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n While his current role certainly isn\u2019t where he expected to end up, there\u2019s a deeply familiar aspect to his evolution as someone who has invested in hundreds of startups as a venture capitalist: His experience in the tech world, after all, taught him the art of the pivot. Warner is the first to say that he\u2019s never invested in an entrepreneur who succeeded with their original business plan. \u201cIt\u2019s the ones who can shift that succeed,\u201d he told students at his alma mater, George Washington University, while recounting his days in the business world.<\/p>\n He\u2019s followed his own advice in politics too: His recent legislative success and leadership on Capitol Hill occurred only after several aborted attempts to carve out his future in politics. After all, it wasn\u2019t too long ago that Mark Warner\u2014who lately is spending his days as one of the jurors sitting in President Trump\u2019s historic impeachment trial\u2014probably ranked as the most miserable and frustrated man in the Senate.<\/p>\n Warner says the US is fighting a new age of warfare with the wrong weapons: "We\u2019re buying 20th-century military stuff, when the conflict in the 21st century is going to be disproportionately in the realm of cyber and misinformation, disinformation."<\/p>\n Warner has long been<\/strong> an intensely political\u2014and social\u2014animal. Raised in a working-class family in Indiana, he came to Washington to attend GWU; he interned on Capitol Hill, and became valedictorian and the first in his family to graduate college. He attended Harvard Law School, where he excelled more outside the classroom\u2014as his class\u2019 unofficial social coordinator and the official women\u2019s intramural basketball coach\u2014than in.<\/p>\n Politics, not law, was always his goal. But first he opted to try to make a financial success in business. Working at the Democratic National Committee in 1980, he found himself haunted by the plight of an unsuccessful Connecticut congressional candidate who finished his race $300,000 in debt. He promised himself that he wouldn\u2019t enter politics until he could afford to lose. Amazingly, after two ventures that failed quickly and brought him to near-ruin\u2014friends recall him couchsurfing with just a 1963 Buick to his name\u2014he succeeded wildly.<\/p>\n With help from a former Atlanta Hawks player, Tom McMillen, Warner realized in the early 1980s that the government was all but giving away radio spectrum that would prove key to the emerging technology of cellular phones. At the time, the licenses were distributed by lottery\u2014but many winners had no real ability to use the spectrum they\u2019d won, so Warner positioned himself as a crucial connector and middleman in what emerged as a market for licenses, perfecting a model where he assembled teams of investors and navigated the license bureaucracy, keeping parts of each deal for himself. In 1987 he helped a business associate found a company called Fleet Call, which grew into Nextel.<\/p>\n Money would never be a concern again.<\/p>\n Freed from financial worry, he turned back to politics, helping to run then Virginia lieutenant governor Doug Wilder\u2019s campaign for the state\u2019s top office, a race Wilder won narrowly, becoming the nation's first elected African American governor. Wilder made Warner the head of the state Democratic Party, and by 1996 he felt ready to challenge the state\u2019s veteran senator, Capitol Hill powerhouse John Warner (no relation). He poured $10 million of his own money into the challenge. Campaign signs that year read \u201cMark, Not John,\u201d a message that didn\u2019t resonate with every voter: One driver stopped on the side of the road and asked candidate Mark: \u201cExcuse me, sir, is that a biblical reference?\u201d<\/p>\n Mark lost the election, leading to his second stroke of business luck: He was unemployed just as the dotcom boom started. Closely tied into the Northern Virginia tech world\u2014his friends were busy founding a company called America Online\u2014Warner helmed a venture capital fund and was a key figure in an elite social group known as Capital Investors, which brought together the area\u2019s tech leaders for monthly startup pitches. (As much an adult frat as an investment club, one club social at Warner\u2019s house featured AOL\u2019s Steve Case jumping on his bed.) Warner also kept an eye on his political profile, using his tech money to help build job-training and computer skills programs for southwest and Southside Virginia, the commonwealth\u2019s rural regions that had been hit hard by the collapse of the tobacco and textile industries.<\/p>\n That commitment to rural Virginia\u2014which has long been part political strategy and part genuine, sincere cause\u2014proved key to his 2001 run for governor, which he undertook at a moment when Democrats did not control a single statewide office in the commonwealth. Warner, though, bonded with a redneck political consultant named David \u201cMudcat\u201d Saunders, who built a campaign that paved a path for Democrats in a red state\u2014recruiting sportsmen and hunters in rural Virginia, sponsoring a NASCAR truck, and even penning a bluegrass song that emphasized how Warner, who is rarely seen out of a button-down shirt and khakis, \u201cunderstands our people, the folks up in the hills.\u201d<\/p>\n The song promoted Warner\u2019s determination \u201cto keep our children home,\u201d a message that he would deliver jobs to rural communities used to seeing their most promising graduates leave for opportunities in the big city. He even convinced the NRA to stay out of the race, promising he\u2019d take care of gun rights. Warner won, handily. \u201cWe had a good horse,\u201d Saunders told me, years ago. \u201cYou can\u2019t win the Kentucky Derby with a mule.\u201d<\/p>\n Warner, though, actually did deliver for rural Virginia\u2014building more than 700 miles of broadband cable that brought the internet to 700,000 Virginians (and, for good measure, closing the $3.8 billion budget deficit he inherited). He pitched \u201cfarm-shoring,\u201d or the idea that rural America could be cost-competitive to emerging offshore tech hubs like Bangalore, and brought the state\u2019s jobless rate to the second lowest in the country.<\/p>\n I first met Warner in 2005, as he was preparing to leave office as Virginia\u2019s governor\u2014the commonwealth has a unique, single four-year term limit\u2014and mulling a run for the presidency, a job he had already coveted for a while. On our first day together\u2014the first of many, as I followed him for months on the campaign trail, to New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and a host of other stops\u2014I accompanied him as he took a victory lap through rural Virginia, helping to lay broadband cable outside Appomattox.<\/p>\n Warner\u2014wherever he is\u2014is a talker, the life of the party, and that day he was only supposed to ride the cable-laying bulldozer a few yards. But he got to chatting with the \u2019dozer crew, and as the press, local officials, and assembled schoolkids watched, the governor and the bulldozer got farther and farther away, eventually disappearing over the hill, cable steadily unspooling behind. When he finally returned, he sighed. \u201cThe truth is, if I had another go-round [at being governor], I\u2019d take it. There\u2019s a lot of unfinished business.\u201d<\/p>\n Warner set out on the presidential campaign trail in 2006 with a message ahead of its time, talking about how globalization was reshaping work and how towns and cities skipped by broadband would be more economically disadvantaged in the 21st century than those bypassed by the railroads in the 1800s. He said the social safety net needed to be reimagined for an age when workers hopped across jobs and professions.<\/p>\n As he explained at every stop, America\u2019s political differences weren\u2019t between Democrats and Republicans; they were between those who wanted to reclaim the glories of the industrial 1950s versus those who understood the coming technological upheaval: \u201cIt\u2019s not about left versus right,\u201d he was fond of saying. \u201cIt\u2019s about future versus past.\u201d His hopeful and full-throated embrace of the future was, in many respects, the precise opposite of the backward-looking \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d message that would propel Donald Trump to the presidency a decade later.<\/p>\n As he criss-crossed the country testing the presidential waters, Warner brought along a built-in party\u2014and not the political kind. By nature gregarious and fun, he almost always had one of his wealthy tech friends along for campaign swings. At the end of a long day on the trail, in whatever small place he found himself after another day of \u201cfuture versus past\u201d speechifying, he was ready to party.<\/p>\n The entourage would drop their bags at the hotel and then find a nearby bar, rolling in for a night of drinking and pool. The evening excursions were a reporter\u2019s dream, as his wealthy friends would compete to pick up the tab. Warner seems to view almost every human interaction as a chance to make a new friend. \u201cSome days I say, \u2018Aren\u2019t our current friends enough?\u2019\u201d his wife, Lisa Collis, told me years ago. (Apropos for the party-loving Warner, the couple met at a keg bash in 1984.)<\/p>\n His cell phone fortune became a stump speech punch line on the campaign trail\u2014he\u2019d joke with crowds that he was fine if people left their phones on while he spoke. \u201cMost people consider them an annoyance, but I just hear \u2018cha-ching, cha-ching,\u2019\u201d he\u2019d tease. (Today, he\u2019s the fourth-wealthiest<\/a> member of the Senate\u2014behind Georgia\u2019s Kelly Loeffler, Utah\u2019s Mitt Romney, and Florida\u2019s Rick Scott\u2014with a net worth of about $90 million.)<\/p>\n Ultimately, though, Warner passed on the presidential race. Over dinner at a Virginia restaurant with friends in fall 2006, he walked through the pros and cons and decided he\u2019d rather spend the next years present with his family; his three daughters were growing up fast, and he didn\u2019t want to miss their childhood.<\/p>\n So instead of the White House, Warner pivoted and set his eyes on Virginia\u2019s 2008 US Senate race; a red-state success story, he delivered the keynote at the 2008 Democratic convention, the same slot that Barack Obama had used in 2004 to catapult himself to national notice. Warner trounced his opponent, helping to deliver Virginia\u2019s electoral votes to Obama along the way.<\/p>\n Among the keepsakes in his Senate office, Warner treasures a hat commemorating the USS John Warner<\/em>.<\/p>\n Warner became a member<\/strong> of the institution known as the world\u2019s greatest deliberative body in January 2009\u2014and quickly discovered that he hated almost every single minute of being a senator. By experience and predisposition he was an executive, not a legislator. He liked disruptive ideas, sweeping change, and quick action\u2014not long negotiations marked by tiny advances. \u201cOne of the conclusions that I\u2019ve unfortunately come to is that so many of the issues have been litigated and relitigated and relitigated\u2014from tax policy to the deficit to health care to education. One party or another might make some incremental progress, but short of some massive election swing, we\u2019re still fighting in the same place,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n At first, Warner\u2019s interests trended toward finance, but he didn\u2019t get the slot he coveted on the Finance Committee and he chafed under the Senate led by Nevada\u2019s Harry Reid. In the summer of 2010, he and Georgian Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, got to chatting on the Senate floor and saw an opportunity for a big breakthrough on fiscal issues: They gathered a group of moderates into what became known as the \u201cGang of Six\u201d to attempt a grand compromise on the nation\u2019s debt and deficits.<\/p>\n By negotiating on taxes, spending cuts, Social Security, and deficits, they saw a path to saving the treasury $3.7 trillion. The grand bargain failed. Only later did Warner realize that entrenched leadership on both sides of the aisle had little interest in such an effort. \u201cThe forces of the status quo on both sides came crashing down,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n It was a dark time for Warner, who felt he was suffering through what should have been a dream job. \u201cI was frustrated, but I was also self-aware enough to know that I get to do this job on terms very few people get to do,\u201d he says. \u201cI needed a better attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n So the one-time entrepreneur turned his attention to the gig economy, championing legislation known as the Startup Act, and confronting questions he summarized as \u201cCan you make capitalism work a better way? What\u2019s the new social contract?\u201d<\/p>\n Changes in the US economy and on Wall Street, he saw, meant that workplace instability was rising. He talked about how business incentives now favored short-term results over long-term investments\u2014in both humans and capital. \u201cI\u2019m not sure the American post\u2013World War II business environment could have been created if it had all started in the year \u201995 or 2000,\u201d he says. He notes that celebrated companies like Google and Facebook featured different classes of stock that have protected them from short-term-ism.<\/p>\n He was confronting what he calls \u201ca growing feeling that modern American capitalism is not working for enough people.\u201d As he says, \u201cThat is a pretty radical statement from somebody who\u2019s been an entrepreneur.\u201d He helped launch a new \u201cFuture of Work\u201d initiative, housed at the Aspen Institute (where I also work on a separate, unrelated cybersecurity initiative), and proselytized about how to reshape the employer-employee relationship for the 21st century. In almost every conversation on the subject, he cites research from the Kauffman Foundation that found that since 1990 almost all net new jobs in the US have come from startups.<\/p>\n Until 2016, Warner thought that reforming the gig economy through legislation would be his life\u2019s new cause. \u201cI had found something I thought could suck up my energy, time, and curiosity,\u201d he says. \u201cAs an old venture capitalist, I felt like I was in a brand new space.\u201d<\/p>\n A couple of years ago, I ran into Warner at a glitzy party at the French Embassy in DC and teased him about how he was still using the same stump speech talking points\u2014not left or right but future versus past. He argued, forcefully, that the world was finally catching up to where he knew things were heading. The theoretical problems he\u2019d been talking about in 2006, the looming problems of automation, the workforce, and the gig economy, were now all coming clear a decade later. \u201cCome on now, there\u2019s some meat on those bones,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n But Warner\u2019s career was set for one more big pivot.<\/p>\n Warner says he’s confronting \u201ca growing feeling that modern American capitalism is not working for enough people.\u201d<\/p>\n Another memento in Warner’s Senate office: a custom walking stick he received as a gift.<\/p>\n In 2016, Donald Trump<\/strong> won the office Warner had long coveted for himself, helped along by a Russian cyberattack and campaigning on a message about economic insecurity that raised many of the issues Warner had been talking about for a decade.<\/p>\n As the nation reeled\u2014both from Trump\u2019s surprise electoral college victory and the unprecedented attack by Russia on the foundations of American democracy\u2014Warner, through a reshuffling of committee assignments, found himself the new vice-chair of Senate Intelligence, the top representative of the Democratic minority on the committee that would lead the body\u2019s inquiry into Russia\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n Warner had never meant to end up on the Intelligence Committee. But his old Gang of Six partner Chambliss had chaired the committee and recruited him into it during the previous congress. Warner was encouraged by his old campaign adversary, John Warner, to embrace the new assignment. (The two one-time opponents have become good friends and Mark proudly keeps a USS John Warner<\/em> hat in his Senate office.)<\/p>\n Chambliss says he had wanted Warner\u2019s expertise on the committee in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations<\/a>, as telecommunications policy moved to the center of the intelligence community. The body needed someone who knew telecoms, Chambliss thought, especially the constellation of communications satellites that represent the committee\u2019s single priciest line item in an annual intelligence budget of $60 billion. \u201cHe understood satellites, and nobody else on the committee understood them beyond them being very expensive,\u201d Chambliss recalls. \u201cIn the intelligence world, we deal with the telecom industry every day.\u201d<\/p>\n After the 2016 election, as Warner and the new Republican chair, North Carolina\u2019s Richard Burr, started their own investigation into Russia\u2019s attack, the two senators made a pact: We\u2019re not going to agree on everything, but no surprises.<\/em> As the parallel investigation by the House Intelligence Committee devolved in a circuslike partisan farce under its Republican chair, Devin Nunes, the team behind the Senate inquiry worked tirelessly to maintain at least the veneer of bipartisanship. \u201cIt was obvious they were going to be the adults in the room,\u201d says Chambliss, explaining that he gave Burr and Warner a firm message together at the start of their probe: \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s too important for the country for y\u2019all to do this together and have a document that you can both sign.\u201d<\/p>\n The committee\u2019s bipartisan we do everything together<\/em> approach wasn\u2019t always easy, but, incredibly, Warner and Burr\u2019s deal held. Whereas Nunes parroted Trump talking points and ultimately published a \u201cfinal report\u201d that Democrats refused to accept, exonerating the administration while ignoring and never examining large swaths of the swirling questions about Russia\u2019s role in the attacks, Burr and Warner forged ahead with an in-depth examinations of the information influence operations by the Internet Research Agency and GRU. In the end they published two massive reports detailing precisely how Facebook trolls and Twitter bots amplified divisive messages, spread propaganda, and seeded disinformation into social media platforms.<\/p>\n Those reports remain a touchstone of the reality-based political establishment today, even as the president and his supporters continue to cast doubt on Russia\u2019s involvement in election interference, preferring instead to cast blame on Ukraine\u2014an obsession that led directly to Trump\u2019s impeachment.<\/p>\n \u201cMy Republican colleagues knew I was not going to be a partisan flamethrower,\u201d Warner says. \u201cI\u2019m proud of that traditional behavior in a world where there\u2019s very little traditional behavior. The fact that that looks so good\u2014that the bar had been set so low\u2014was rewarding but a little surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Russia probe continued, the problem the country faced expanded in Warner\u2019s mind from \u201cjust\u201d a Russia problem to broader questions about the roles and power of the big tech platforms. \u201cThe Russian disinformation efforts opened the door to a whole host of Warner concerns about social media,\u201d says Rachel Cohen, one of his senior staff. \u201cPeople were telling him this wasn\u2019t a disinformation problem\u2014this was a platform problem.\u201d<\/p>\n A particular turning point for Warner came when he hired as his senior policy adviser Rafi Martina, a one-time corporate tech lawyer who was beginning to argue for a radical rebalancing of tech\u2019s power. As Warner explains, \u201cBefore all this unsavory behavior was starting to take place, he was already pointing out to me behavior by Google and Facebook and Twitter that was not great policy, not being fair to users. He was opening my eyes.\u201d Then came the scandals over Cambridge Analytica\u2019s use of Facebook data, broadening Warner\u2019s concerns to not just the platforms and their algorithms but their use and retention of private user data too.<\/p>\n It was a moment of reckoning for someone who had long championed the new economy. \u201cI was probably pretty naive,\u201d Warner says. \u201cI bought the story that these are only forces for good and are going to help everyone communicate better and build new communities. But in retrospect I think I'm probably pretty naive to not have thought through that anything that\u2019s this big, there\u2019s going to be a dark underbelly.\u201d<\/p>\n Warner\u2019s growing sense that major reforms and new legislation were needed to govern the tech landscape only grew last spring when Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Senate hearing<\/a> horrified him\u2014both because of the lack of contrition from the Facebook cofounder and because his Capitol Hill colleagues fumbled even basic tech questions.<\/p>\n By last summer, he had come to believe that both Facebook and Twitter had been less than forthcoming to his committee, downplaying the extent of Russian efforts in the election\u2014efforts made all too clear in special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s 2018 indictments of the Internet Research Agency and Russian military intelligence officers from the GRU. \u201cThey were just not straight with me for a long time,\u201d Warner says.<\/p>\n Warner\u2019s frustration with the tendency of the platforms to misuse and abuse their growing clout was evident in a groundbreaking 20-point white-paper<\/a> released by Warner\u2019s office in 2018. It decried the power amassed by Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms and aimed at reforms to combat disinformation, protect user privacy, and promote competition.<\/p>\n Blandly titled \u201cPotential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,\u201d the document actually represented one of the most serious attempts to outline a regulation regime for tech ever to come off Capitol Hill. As the 23-page paper\u2014drafted by Warner and Martina\u2014argued, \u201cThe speed with which these products have grown and come to dominate nearly every aspect of our social, political, and economic lives has in many ways obscured the shortcomings of their creators in anticipating the harmful effects of their use.\u201d<\/p>\n The paper reflected Warner\u2019s rising concern that there\u2019s a fundamental rot at the center of the major sites dominating today\u2019s online life: \u201cThese maybe were not only forces for good,\u201d he says. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other big players may trumpet how they\u2019re changing the world, but, Warner argues, they don\u2019t operate in the public interest\u2014to inform people, to protect users\u2019 privacy, to further our freedoms. They\u2019re engineered to be addictive.<\/p>\n As he says, \u201cYou don\u2019t follow a story about a bloody car wreck with a story about how somebody\u2019s promoting good driving techniques. You follow it with something that\u2019s slightly even more gruesome. That's what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n In his paper, Warner speaks about the \u201cduty\u201d of tech platforms to police bots, calls for new disclosure requirements on online political advertisements and audit-able algorithms, proposes new powers for the Federal Trade Commission to regulate privacy, and calls for comprehensive European-like legislation in the US.<\/p>\n He cites tech thinkers like Tristan Harris, Wael Ghonim, and Tom Wheeler, all of whom are part of the informal network of advisers Warner regularly consults. He endorses a concept floated by Yale Law professor Jack Balkin for tech platforms to become \u201cinformation fiduciaries,\u201d service providers with a special duty to protect and manage user data.<\/p>\n The irony of Warner leading the crackdown on the tech platforms is that he\u2019s really a free-market capitalist at heart, viewing policy challenges often as market opportunities. During a visit to Norfolk, Virginia, he once pivoted from talking about the danger of flooding caused by climate change to suggest that the market for sump pumps looked bright. Similarly, he talks excitedly about how giving people stronger ownership over their own data online might open the way to new \u201cdata middlemen\u201d who help negotiate prices and access with the platforms and advertisers.<\/p>\n The commitment to these wider questions, from deepfakes to quantum computing, are part of what has made Warner\u2019s efforts in tech stand apart in a body that too often seems populated by Luddites. (In one particularly egregious example<\/a> a year ago, Google\u2019s CEO Sundar Pichai had to explain to one congressmember that Google didn\u2019t make iPhones.)<\/p>\n When I tagged along on one of Warner\u2019s visits to a home state tech company in Arlington, Warner enthusiastically lectured me on the insanity of the federal government\u2019s internet of things procurement policies.<\/p>\n The senator, who seemingly can\u2019t contain his own energy even when he wants to, mixed the tech talk with turn-by-turn directions for the aide driving our car. He\u2019s been pushing the government to raise the security bar for incorporating IoT devices into federal networks and installations\u2014he\u2019s worried that too many technologies and devices are racing ahead of the government\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n The federal government, he said, has proven it can\u2019t even get many of the basics of cybersecurity right when it comes to securing databases and personnel information, so why, he asks, is it racing to incorporate IoT devices into government infrastructure? \u201cIf I worked at a rational place, we wouldn\u2019t be increasing the attack surface exponentially,\u201d he said, then he interrupted himself to tell the aide to move over to the middle lane.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise he knows the road better than the aide\u2019s Google Maps. Warner, after all, is a creature of the capital\u2014he\u2019d never call it a swamp\u2014and has made the region home nearly since he attended GW. His annual Pilgrim\u2019s Lunch\u2014a rowdy day-before-Thanksgiving gathering of the region\u2019s elite at DC\u2019s fading power lunch spot, The Palm, where the meal stretches to five hours or more\u2014has been a tradition in the capital for decades. He watched the Pentagon burn on 9\/11 from the roof of his gubernatorial campaign headquarters, and unlike most of his congressional colleagues who commute in from their districts on Mondays and race home on Thursdays, his house in Old Town Alexandria isn\u2019t far from his workplace. \u201cTo misquote Sarah Palin, I can see the Capitol from the third floor of my house,\u201d he jokes.<\/p>\n Warner\u2019s own evolving views<\/strong> on technology have proven to be in the vanguard of a sweeping sea change in the way tech is seen on Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail. The idea\u2014all but unthinkable just a few years ago\u2014that Big Tech is, well, too big, dangerous to our democracy, and dangerous for our health as consumers, has spread rapidly.<\/p>\n In May, one of Warner\u2019s Senate colleagues, Missouri\u2019s Josh Hawley, labeled platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter a \u201cdigital drug<\/a>\u201d in a USA Today<\/em> op-ed, arguing, \u201cMaybe social media\u2019s innovations do our country more harm than good. Maybe social media is best understood as a parasite on productive investment, on meaningful relationships, on a healthy society. Maybe we\u2019d be better off if Facebook disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n Other measures on Capitol Hill have tried to rein in just-around-the-corner technologies like facial recognition. The current 116th Congress has seen Senate efforts both to regulate corporate use of facial recognition<\/a> as well as to put limits on its use by police<\/a>.<\/p>\n In some ways, Warner\u2019s views\u2014as unexpected as they are for someone of his background and as radical as they would have sounded even three years ago\u2014now represent the moderate view of his party.<\/p>\n As she\u2019s campaigned for president, his Senate colleague Elizabeth Warren has gone even further, calling for the outright breakup of Amazon, Facebook, and Google<\/a>. As she wrote in a post on Medium in March, \u201cToday\u2019s big tech companies have too much power\u2014too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They\u2019ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.\u201d Senator Bernie Sanders has backed similar ideas, and one of the main lines of attack on Pete Buttigieg has been his friendship with Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n Yet even as it seemed that most of his fellow Democratic senate colleagues\u2014Warren, Sanders, Michael Bennet, and, until recently, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker\u2014are running for president and even as Mike Bloomberg and Deval Patrick leapt into an ever-shifting field of candidates, Warner\u2019s name never surfaced for president in 2020. He has long harbored presidential ambitions, but today they appear all but on ice.<\/p>\n Instead, Warner has committed himself to remaining in the Senate, where he\u2019s happier than he\u2019s ever been, even amid the administration\u2019s daily chaos and the negativity that pervades the capital.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s given me the new lease on energy and enthusiasm about the job has clearly been the Russian issue,\u201d he says. \u201cEven if I\u2019m not successful in these other areas, getting [the Russia probe] right, at least for the time being, is probably the most important thing I\u2019ve done, which I don\u2019t say lightly considering all the aspirations I\u2019ve had my whole career.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s those big geopolitical questions\u2014and their intersection with technology and its intersection with national security\u2014that most animate Warner. One of the oddities of work on the Senate Intelligence Committee is that much of the heavy lifting is done by the members themselves\u2014the classified nature of the work severely limits how much work can be delegated to staff\u2014and so he\u2019s spent many hours sifting through the evidence of Russia\u2019s attack in 2016, listening to briefings from government officials on emerging threats, and examining how and where the US government is spending its resources. He\u2019s clearly not happy with what\u2019s he\u2019s learning.<\/p>\n As much as his work publicly has focused on the Russia probe, he says that what he\u2019s hearing behind the closed doors of the Intelligence Committee\u2019s workspace makes him worry as much, or even more, about China. \u201cRussia is a more malicious actor. China is a more insidious actor,\u201d he tells me. \u201cMy views on China are radically different than what they were three years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s another area where he\u2019s found common bipartisan ground, working closely on China and 5G issues with Florida\u2019s Marco Rubio. Together, they asked the intelligence community in early March for a report on how China was exerting pressure and influence on international standard-setting bodies related to 5G, noting \u201canecdotal concerns\u201d that China is undermining what have long been \u201ctechnological meritocracies.\u201d He\u2019s also been cohosting, with Rubio, classified briefings for tech leaders and venture capitalists to hear about the threat from China and discuss how the US should counter China\u2019s efforts in areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing.<\/p>\n He fears that the US is moving too slowly to counter China\u2019s march in tech, repeating mistakes the government made in failing to recognize legitimate fears about embracing Russian technology. \u201cWe would sit in the intel committee and hear for years about Kaspersky Labs. It took us three or four years to push the intelligence community to say, \u2018You can\u2019t just tell us. You\u2019ve got to get the stuff off the damn GSA acquisition list.\u2019 You take that times 20 with the Chinese,\u201d he says. \u201cIf we don\u2019t do more of this, people will look back on Congress and the intel community and certain business leadership and say, \u2018What in the hell were you people thinking?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He sees his new 5G legislation to combat Huawei\u2014known in the always-acronymized style of Capitol Hill as the Utilizing Strategic Allied (USA) Telecommunications Act\u2014as a step on that path. The proposed bill also comes with the backing of Republican senators Rubio, Bob Menendez, and John Cornyn (plus Colorado\u2019s moderate Democrat Michael Bennett), all of whom serve on the body\u2019ss intelligence or foreign relations committees. It attempts to counter Huawei\u2019s perceived lead on 5G by earmarking at least a $1 billion in investments in Western alternatives and encouraging the development of an open-architecture model to allow companies to bite off smaller pieces of the 5G network.<\/p>\n Not even the heated, partisan impeachment trial can distract Warner from raising the alarm: The day after Chief Justice John Roberts swore Warner and 98 other senators in as jurors, Warner again took to the airwaves to push his effort to confront China\u2019s technological advances. His message was clear: \u201c5G and the issue of Huawei has been over the last year been a bipartisan issue,\u201d he told<\/a> Bloomberg TV in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building. \u201cThis is one area where there are a lot of us who are in agreement with the administration.\u201d<\/p>\n One reason Warner says he\u2019s so committed to regulating Big Tech is, paradoxically, the need to preserve tech as a uniquely American strength. As Warner sees it, America\u2019s failure to act has ceded its traditional leadership role to others\u2014to Europe on consumer privacy and to the UK and Australia on content restrictions.<\/p>\n In the absence of federal action, individual states like California are now taking the lead on regulating tech, a potentially troublesome precedent that Warner fears could lead to a patchwork of laws that slow innovation and retard growth. Letting others\u2014whether Europe or China\u2014set the rules of the road for technology is dangerous, he says, both in terms of American values and economic growth. In Warner\u2019s mind, saving tech as an economic driver for the United States might mean blowing up Big Tech as we know it.<\/p>\n He hopes that his work will help lead the nation forward into the next tech age. Warner tells me that he\u2019s already seen the conversation shift, dramatically even, as the country has reckoned with the twin scandals of the Russia attack and general abuse of the tech platforms. \u201cOn the Hill, there\u2019s very much a mind change. We can\u2019t continue to be victims all the time online,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can\u2019t keep getting pummeled.\u201d Or, to put it another way, the senior senator from Virginia may have found his next bulldozer to ride over the hill.<\/p>\n