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While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook operations director Sheryl Sandberg were fighting against the Senate Intelligence Committee, Google was obviously absent after a heated exchange between management and the committee. The result was an empty chair for Google and a number of complaints from committee members.
"Sheryl and Jack, I'm glad you're here," said Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) in his opening remarks. "I'm disappointed that Google has decided not to send the right executive to what I really think is a fruitful discussion."
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) put the absence even harder. "There is an empty chair next to Google, they are not there," said Rubio. "Maybe it's because they're arrogant."
Google had proposed to send a chief legal officer and a senior vice president of global politics, Kent Walker, who submitted a public testimony before the hearing. But the committee refused the offer and refused to include Walker's testimony in the file. As President Burr explained to reporters"I told them I did not accept the senior vice president."
Committee management continued to call for a senior executive in the days leading up to the hearing. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) specifically called on co-founder Larry Page to appear, but no arrangements have been made.
At the hearing, Warner specifically called Google for failing to send a high-level executive to talk about the problem. "I am deeply disappointed that Google – one of the most influential digital platforms in the world – has chosen not to send its own leadership to engage this committee," Warner said in a statement before listing Google products. been involved in foreign interference.
I know our members have a series of difficult questions about structural vulnerabilities on a number of Google platforms that we will need to answer. From Google Search, which continues to have nonsensical conspiracy problems, to YouTube, where Russian-backed disinformation agents have propelled hundreds of divisive videos on Gmail, where state-sponsored agents are trying to get away with it. countless hacking attempts. Given its size and influence, I would have thought that Google executives would like to demonstrate how important it is to meet these challenges and lead this important public discussion.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) also criticized Google for giving up its collaboration with the US military in the Maven project, and announced that Google was developing a search engine friendly for censorship. in China.
"Maybe Google did not send a senior executive today because he recently took steps like ending cooperation with the US military (…) while continuing to cooperate with the party Chinese Communist, "said Cotton. "Perhaps they did not send a witness to answer these questions because there is no answer to these questions."
The willingness of technical officials to appear before government committees has become a subject of controversy in recent months, as US and European lawmakers have understood the broad influence of platforms on society. Mark Zuckerberg agreed to appear before Congress in March after months of increasing pressure on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but he refused to appear for similar hearings in the UK.
Update 12:10 ET: Updated with Sen's comments. Cotton.
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