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Matt Stoller Profile picture
@matthewstoller
Apr 12, 2022 • 32 tweets • 11 min read • Read on X
1. Here's Apple CEO Tim Cook today arguing that antitrust laws against big tech are bad for privacy and bad for national security. In honor of his speech, I thought I'd do a little thread on just how bad these tech firms are for American security.
2. Let's start with Apple, which systemically transferred technology to Chinese firms after Tim Cook in 2016 made a $275 billion investment pledge to invest in China. theinformation.com/articles/facin…
3. Apple sourced "more components from Chinese suppliers, signed deals with Chinese software firms, collaborated on technology with Chinese universities" and "directly invested in Chinese tech companies." It helped bring "“the most advanced manufacturing technologies” to China.
4. In 2021, Apple and Google removed a voting app created by the Russian political opposition leader after pressure from the Russian government. Security! Prestige Worldwide! nytimes.com/2021/09/17/wor…
5. Apple lobbied on behalf of forced labor in China, seeking to weaken the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
6. Apple Maps nearly sent chef Jose Andres into sending me into Russian-controlled territory. It was an accident! Black leather gloves! Research and development! axios.com/jose-andres-be…
7. Apple's app store is so full of scams and garbage, and the firm is so inattentive, that one dude on Twitter - @keleftheriou - is constantly embarrassing Apple by showing their claims of protecting users are essentially fraudulent. theverge.com/2021/4/21/2238…
8. Apple handed over "priceless knowledge" to Chinese firms on how to build its products. This directly contributed and is still contributing to the rise of China's tech industry. Apple is *more* invested in China, not less. theinformation.com/articles/how-a…
9. "Apple and Facebook provided customer data to hackers who masqueraded as law enforcement officials, according to three people with knowledge of the matter."

So much security! Putting in the man hours to study the science. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
10. Facebook regularly helps scammers impersonate U.S. soldiers, and does nothing to stop it. nytimes.com/2019/07/28/tec…
11. Google's Android software accidentally gave away the location of secret military activities.

Last week we put liquid paper on a bee! It died.
washingtonpost.com/world/a-map-sh…
12. Still, it's not like Apple actually uses slave labor in China to make its products oh wait seven Apple suppliers are accused of doing that, um, Tim Cook cares about your privacy. theinformation.com/articles/seven…
13. Apple tried to refuse unlocking an iPhone to help solve a shooting at a Navy base in Pensacola. There was a court warrant, so this wasn't some glorious stand on privacy. cnbc.com/2020/01/14/app…
14. Google abandoned a contract to deliver the Pentagon drone AI technology, leaving the DOD with no alternative supplier. washingtonpost.com/news/the-switc…
15. While pretending to stand up for human rights as its rationale for not being in the Chinese market, Google secretly tried to develop a censored version of its search engine in China that would help the Chinese government surveil its citizens. theintercept.com/2018/08/01/goo…
16. Facebook profited from advertisements peddling illegal opioids. The ads remained on Facebook for months after an NBC News investigation, and weeks after U.S. officials declared opioid addiction a public health crisis. cnbc.com/2017/11/14/fac…
17. We need big tech research to compete with China, right?

" 10 percent of the collective AI research labs of Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft were housed in China by the end of 2020."

oops!

defenseone.com/ideas/2021/08/…
18. But what about TikTok? Don't we need someone to take on TikTok? Glad that you asked. Facebook is why we *have* a TikTok problem. promarket.org/2020/08/07/tec…
19. Amazon, of course, actively facilitated as much Chinese seller activity into the US as possible, thus spawning a wave of counterfeits and dangerous products. ImageImage
20. The economies of scale facilitated by firms like Amazon and Facebook are just great.
21. Naturally Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple do wonderful political work to protect us. Microsoft, for instance, lobbied on behalf of Chinese telecom firm Huawei. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
22. NYT: "Amazon ‘Reviewing’ Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items"

That seems bad! nytimes.com/2017/09/20/tec…
23. Not exactly a national security problem, but it's sort of adjacent.
24. It's not America, but Zuckerberg at one point tried to remove all newspaper content in Australia from Facebook, in order to threaten the government over a new antitrust law to help newspapers. nytimes.com/2021/02/17/tec…
25. Also, when Mark Zuckerberg talks up the importance of national security and how Facebook can help America stand up to China, remember that he once asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to name his child. nytimes.com/2015/10/27/tec…
26. Also once Zuckerberg actually blurbed Xi Jinping's book and made his employees read Chinese government propaganda. amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Gov…

qz.com/308023/faceboo… Image
Ok, what am I missing? Are there any big tech-related national security vulnerabilities out there I've forgotten? The answer is yes, but I can't remember them. So help me out.
27. I didn't know that Google and Chinese giant Tencent had a patent sharing agreement to engage on "deeper collaboration on innovative new technologies." How very IG Farben-Standard Oil of them. dw.com/en/google-and-…
28. And of course Apple doesn't bother to patch zero day exploits, which is to say it doesn't protect its products from hackers. intego.com/mac-security-b…
29. And another one, Facebook has no idea what happens with user data it collects. Economies of scale! vice.com/en/article/akv…
30. Google, Facebook, and Apple were all duped into releasing information used to harass and sexually extort minors. Economies of scale! bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
31. And another in the 'big tech is bad for security' files, via @ndcarson. Amazon is profiting from the sale of malware to users that can steal sensitive data.

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
Feb 20
The basic problem with America is that nearly all of our major institutions are led by vastly overpaid incompetent greedheads who all have agreed to not snitch on each other. It's easy to explain how to fix it once you get this basic diagnosis. Here are a few ideas.
1) Corporate boards are full of lazy kiss-assers who get $100k to show up to a meeting a few times a year. So how about this? No board members of a company can get paid while there's a strike going on at their company.
2) The Federal Reserve actually runs our economic policy. So how about saying that not all of the Fed board members can be millionaires? Some of them have to be borrowers and not just lenders.
Read 11 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 26
Deepseek is forcing the entire Silicon Valley ecosystem to recognize that Lina Khan was right, even if they won’t admit it.
Here’s the point. ftc.gov/system/files/f…
American big tech firms are bad at building things because their focus is not on building things, it’s on monopolization and political power. No different than Boeing. This has been obvious for years. thebignewsletter.com/p/national-cha…
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 25
So an insane story by @musharbash_b, a private equity roll-up of fire trucks is why more than half the fire trucks in Los Angeles were out of service during the catastrophic wildfires in the Palisades and Eaton. Image
Link: thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-privat…
I do a lot on economic termites, this one's a big deal. Cities all over the country have to pay twice as much for fire equipment as they used to because there's now what appears to be some sort of fire equipment cartel. Image
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 23
1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is bad because it was a way of taking the civil rights movement - which was about prohibiting economic discrimination at its core - and corrupting it to serve corporate interests. Here are some examples, starting with UnitedHealth Group. Image
2. Biglaw's Latham and Watkins bragged their team keeping poultry price-fixers out of jail was a historic 'all-women team' of defense lawyers. Image
3. Here's financier Brian Regan - who rolled up anesthesiology and radiology practices so he could price gouge - boosting the Women's Private Equity Summit. Equity is awesome! Image
Read 16 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 17
1. Want some fun news before the Monday inauguration that you won't have heard anywhere else? The antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over. Here's just part of what they did. Image
2. The FTC filed a monopolization claim against agricultural machine maker John Deere for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment, a suit which Wired magazine calls a “tipping point” for the right to repair movement. Image
3. They also released another report on pharmacy benefit managers, including that of UnitedHealth Group, showing that these companies inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion. Image
Read 21 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 6
There’s a nontrivial chance that Trump’s new term is the actual catastrophe that liberals imagined his first one would be. I don’t mean authoritarian, I mean economic, military and social collapse.
Here's why I think there's a nontrivial chance of a serious dislocation under Trump. It's not because of him, per se, but structural things he won't fix.

Here are a few. The U.S. net international investment position is negative $23 trillion and sinking rapidly. That's crazy. Image
That doesn't mean the U.S. will go 'bankrupt,' that concept can't apply to nations. It means the U.S. is trading our entire productive capacity for finance. For instance, we're now a net food importer by value. What? Our farmland is awesome. And yet... Image
Read 13 tweets

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