Dueling impulses

Trump administration's dueling impulses rattle tech giants

By STEVEN OVERLY

Google headed to the White House on Monday for a summit on how industry can work with the Trump administration to advance the next generation of quantum computing.

On Tuesday, the company will be the topic of a much different conversation, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions scheduled to confer with state attorneys general over complaints that Google, Facebook and other internet companies are suppressing conservative views.

The whiplash is the latest sign of the Trump administration's mixed message on technology — trumpeting U.S. dominance in the industry while bashing many of the most dominant U.S. tech companies.

President Donald Trump is increasingly echoing accusations by other Republicans that the nation’s largest internet companies are suppressing conservative voices or maneuvering to undermine his policies — an issue, he said recently, that may put Google, Facebook and Amazon in a "very antitrust situation."

But many administration officials also view the U.S. tech industry as a critical engine of the economy and aim to encourage its continued growth as a bulwark against China — even if Trump’s trade war threatens havoc for their business models.

"To me, it’s a tale of two Trumps," said one Republican lobbyist who asked not to be named to describe client discussions.

“The whole tech sector at the leadership level is of two minds about the administration, because there's some good stuff and some bad stuff," the lobbyist said. "I don't think people know yet really what to make of it all."

Things started off amicably Monday afternoon, as officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy gathered with industry experts and academics to discuss ways to foster quantum computing, a next-generation technology that promises to process information in much faster and more dynamic ways than current computers can. The field has sparked hopes of rapid technological breakthroughs across a range of industries, from medical research to cybersecurity. Google, Microsoft, Intel and IBM participated.

It's part of a larger White House effort to highlight emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles, drones and artificial intelligence where Silicon Valley plays a central role. On Friday, the White House holds another session on the future of super-fast 5G wireless networks.

“We are relentlessly pursuing a pro-tech agenda," White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios, who's been running OSTP since the start of the Trump administration, said last week at a tech policy conference in California held by the right-leaning Lincoln Network.

But Sessions has a chillier message on Tuesday. The attorney general is throwing the government's weight behind conservative allegations of Silicon Valley censorship, taking on an issue that the tech industry initially viewed as little more than Republican posturing ahead of the midterm elections.

A DOJ official described the meeting with state attorneys general as a "listening session" about consumer protection and the tech industry, though the agency previously said Sessions and the other AGs would “discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.” Officials from 13 states and the District of Columbia are expected to take part, including attorneys general from Alabama, California, D.C., Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee and Utah.

Trump and other Republicans accuse the biggest internet companies of downgrading content that runs counter to Silicon Valley's left-leaning views, alleging that Twitter, for example, engages in "shadow banning," or reducing the visibility of, conservative accounts. Far-right website Breitbart added fuel to the fire this month when it posted a video showing Google executives at a company meeting bemoaning Trump's surprise victory shortly after the 2016 election.

Google, Facebook and Twitter have all denied charges of systemic bias, and the companies will be watching the Justice Department meeting closely for signs that they might be subject to new investigations at the federal and state level. The companies declined to comment.

It's another indication of the turbulence the industry faces under Trump. The president has attacked tech companies for various perceived slights and started a trade war with China that could hurt their bottom line, but he also presides over an economy that has lifted tech stocks to new heights and delivered long-desired tax cuts to the industry.

Some experts don’t see anything out of the ordinary in the Trump administration’s varying messages about technology policy.

"Every administration is with the tech sector on some issues and at odds with them on others, and the Trump team is no different," said Bruce Mehlman, a former assistant secretary of Commerce for tech policy under President George W. Bush and a lobbyist whose firm represents companies like Twitter, HP and Yahoo.

Trump's escalating tariffs on Chinese-made goods, though, have the potential to be another tech industry nightmare. The administration went easy on Apple and other makers of smartwatches and bluetooth devices in its latest round of $200 billion worth of tariffs, which went into effect Monday, but the duties will still affect components like routers, antennas and switches used to store and process data.

And the industry fears that China could retaliate by making it more expensive or challenging for companies to ship their parts or products out of China — a move that would have a broad economic impact.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel at a POLITICO event last week called the latest Trump tariffs "a terrible thing for the future of 5G," saying they hit the "most essential networking equipment" needed for building the next-generation wireless networks.