With help from Lee Hudson and Rebecca Kern
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Morning Tech wont publish from Dec. 24 to Dec. 31. Well be back on our normal schedule on Tuesday, Jan. 4.
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Jockeying for the new JEDI: Oracle and Google are lobbying for their pieces of the Pentagons new multibillion-dollar cloud contract.
Tick-tock of IA: Well walk you through what caused the dissolution of the Internet Association, once Silicon Valleys most important trade group.
Laying into Lofgren: Progressives want Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) to recuse herself from oversight of the DOJ and FTC, due to her ties to Silicon Valley.
HAPPY TUESDAY AND WELCOME TO MORNING TECH! Im your guest host, Emily Birnbaum. I wish I could say its beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but really its just looking quite gray out there.
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Technical standards like 5G and Wi-Fi have the power to transform industries, fuel the economy, and create high-quality jobs. But that only happens if owners of patents essential to standards honor their commitments to license all innovators to use those patents on fair and reasonable terms. A new draft Administration statement restores the balance vital to standards adoption and job creation. Support the Administration to promote American manufacturing and limit product bans on standard-essential patents.
REACHING FOR THE CLOUD: A month after the government announced that Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle are eligible to bid on the successor to the Pentagons ill-fated JEDI cloud computing contract, the lobbying has begun.
Oracle last Tuesday sponsored a luncheon at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va., where Pentagon officials discussed their vision for the new Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability competition, POLITICOs Lee Hudson reports. The following day, a Google representative attended an Aerospace Industries Association happy hour. (ICYMI, the company last month proclaimed its a renewed commitment to doing business with the Pentagon.)
The Pentagon has already said it plans to award one JWCC contract to AWS and a second one to Microsoft, the department said in a notice to industry. But whether Google or Oracle will also receive awards depends on meeting Pentagon requirements. The government extended a formal invitation to the four cloud providers Nov. 19.
The feds hope selecting multiple vendors will prevent a repeat of the bid protests that doomed JEDI, a winner-take-all contract worth up to $10 billion that the Pentagon awarded to Microsoft in 2019, in the wake of heavy criticism of Amazon from then-President Donald Trump. Challenges by Amazon and Oracle tied up the contract, which the DoD ultimately abandoned in July. The Pentagon plans to make up for lost time by awarding contracts for JWCC no later than April.
BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE INTERNET ASSOCIATION: The Internet Associations decision last week to dissolve was driven by money, five people with knowledge of the groups inner workings told your host: The biggest tech companies just werent willing to put up more cash for a group they thought no longer served their interests.
IA had asked Microsoft to significantly increase its dues in the fall, according to one person familiar with the request, who spoke on condition of anonymity to relay private conversations. After that request, Microsoft executives looked into the companys return on investment and determined that the group, dominated by Microsofts major rivals, was no longer worth it. Microsoft, after all, has been increasingly agitating against Meta, Amazon and Google on issues ranging from antitrust to content moderation to news publishing.
Microsofts departure in November left a significant gap in IAs budget, according to two people familiar with the groups financials. IA had already been struggling financially, and was facing a shortfall of around 10 to 15 percent when Microsoft left, one of the people said.
At that point, IA leadership approached all the associations member companies to ask for more money especially Google, Meta and Amazon, the groups biggest funders. The Microsoft departure created a hole in the funding, which companies could have made up if they had decided it was worth funding the organization, said one person involved in the internal deliberations. But Google, Meta and Amazon decided the group wasnt worth the price, either.
Google and Amazon had been frustrated about IAs decision to stay out of the antitrust debates embroiling the industrys biggest players, and Meta has separated itself from its big tech peers with its proposals to change Section 230, while Google has remained more staunchly in support of its current form. Historically, IA has been a place where the platforms Google, Facebook and Amazon were able to dictate the agenda, said one person who has been involved with the association for years. Then, there was a reexamination of all of that. The companies used to having their way could no longer have their way. Google declined to comment; Amazon, Meta and IA did not respond to requests for comment.
Some big tech allies allies have complained that Microsoft dealt the final blow to its competitors major trade group. But the bad blood at IA goes back much farther the association has struggled from internal disputes over its direction for years.
FIRST IN MT: PROGRESSIVE GROUP PUSHES LOFGREN: In a letter to Democratic leadership, the watchdog group Revolving Door Project is demanding Lofgren recuse herself from oversight over the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission because of her financial investments in large tech companies, as well as recent reporting from the New York Post that her daughter works on Googles legal defense team. (Lofgrens daughter works on contract law at Google.)
Lofgren owns up to $15,000 in stock in each of several tech companies, including Googles parent company, Alphabet, as well as Apple and Meta, according to her 2020 financial disclosures. (Those investments are in joint stocks with her husband.)
Over the past decade, most Democratic lawmakers have become increasingly critical of Big Tech, the letter reads. Lofgren, however, has defied this trend and maintained a track record of opposing federal scrutiny of Big Tech, further calling into question her ability to be impartial in overseeing the DOJ or FTC. Lofgren is one of several California lawmakers who have opposed antitrust legislation aimed at the tech giants that passed out of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year.
Lofgrens response: Lofgren in a statement to MT said that she makes decisions according to what is in the best interests of her constituents in California. It is sad, yet telling, when outside groups and/or colleagues turn to personal attacks and fear-based tactics when they cannot advance a policy matter, Lofgren said. When it comes to tech policy, I share the same desire as many of my colleagues to reform digital markets and increase competition, however, most of the bills that passed the House Judiciary Committee back in June are poorly-drafted, extreme and go beyond legitimate, real-world concerns with big tech companies.
Democratic California Reps. Anna Eshoo and Ro Khanna also came to Lofgrens defense, sending a joint statement to MT calling on the sponsors of the House Judiciary antitrust bills to immediately disavow the ad hominem attacks made against Representative Zoe Lofgren by outside groups.
FIRST IN MT: FALLOUT FROM RAIMONDOS COMMENTS CONTINUES: Twelve advocacy and anti-monopoly groups in a letter today are asking President Joe Biden for answers about whether his administration supports the European Unions big tech antitrust rules. Confusion arose about Bidens stance on the European Unions Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act after Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo criticized the proposed regulations and the U.S. warned they could threaten companies' intellectual property and trade secrets. Biden has supported similar antitrust efforts in the U.S.
The groups, including Demand Progress and Public Citizen, argue that the EU rules align with Bidens competition executive order and his administrations stance so far toward the big tech companies. They are asking for Biden to release administration documents shared with the EU about tech rules; confirm that Raimondos comments do not reflect administration policy; and renew his support for a whole of government approach to competition and antitrust policy.
META SUES OVER PHISHING: Meta has sued a series of unnamed defendants over phishing campaigns that try to lure users into sharing their credentials on fake versions of login pages for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, the social media company announced in a blog post Monday.
The defendants referred to as John Does in the federal lawsuit filed in California created more than 39,000 fake login pages, the filing asserts. Meta said the accused worked with one another knowingly to operate the phishing scheme. The company doesnt know how many people are involved or where they are located, but the suit is aimed at finding out, a company spokesperson told Rebecca.
A message from Save Our Standards:
The FCC today announced that it is committing $603 million in its latest wave of Emergency Connectivity Fund program support, which the agency said will connect over 1.4 million students in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
The underbelly of online gossip: School-gossip Instagram accounts are providing a new forum for teen cyberbullying, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Meta pays up: Facebook is paying new employees what amounts to a brand tax to retain them, due to the companys troubled reputation, according to Business Insider.
E&C zeroes in: The House Energy and Commerce Committee is requesting briefings from search engines, web hosting companies, companies that run content delivery networks, and relevant social media platforms about websites encouraging suicide.
Haugen vs. Zuckerberg: Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen chatted with New York Times tech reporter Kara Swisher.
A message from Save Our Standards:
Support US Jobs. Stop SEP Abuse.
A new draft policy statement on standard-essential patents (SEPs) committed for licensing on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms was released jointly by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Justice. The draft statement provides guidance on appropriate remedies in cases involving the use of these patents, and presents an approach to SEPs that strives to balance the interests of patent holders with the broad range of U.S. industries that use standards to protect the future of innovation.
Save Our Standards is a broad-based coalition working to end abusive practices in SEP licensing. We welcome the draft statement and support the Biden Administration for their leadership protecting U.S. competitiveness in charting out this balanced approach. Comments are being accepted through February 4. Support the Biden Administration to stop SEP abuse.
Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([emailprotected]), Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected]), Emily Birnbaum ([emailprotected]), John Hendel ([emailprotected]), Rebecca Kern ([emailprotected]), Alexandra S. Levine ([emailprotected]) and Leah Nylen ([emailprotected]). Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [emailprotected]. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.
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Return of the JEDI cloud lobbying wars - Politico