About a week ago, tech billionaire and Democratic Party political donor Reid Hoffman said the quiet part out loud and openly suggested that Kamala Harris fire Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, should she win the White House in November. Hoffman also happens to sit on the board of Microsoft, a company that—over the past few years—has been the target of several probes via the agency that Khan heads. Since making his controversial remarks, Hoffman has been working overtime to convince the American public that what sure seems a whole lot like influence peddling is not actually that.
Hoffman went on CNN yesterday and, again, tried to justify his remarks. To do this, he posited a unique psychological theory, one that seeks to contextualize how he can appear to have a conflict of interest while actually not having one. According to him, there are actually a number of different Reid Hoffmans. One of those Hoffmans is a Microsoft board member. A different Hoffman acts as an “expert” of vague but apparently potent qualifications. Another Hoffman is a political donor. According to him, all of these Hoffmans interact with the world separately and independently, and none of their interests ever converge.
“I totally agree with not buying levels of influence,” Hoffman claimed after CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked him if that’s what he was doing. Yet how can this be the case when his financial contributions seem predicated on a future favor?
Hoffman explained it like this:
“I separate my roles as donor and [as] an expert. So if you ask me my opinion as a donor, I say I’m giving money to Kamala Harris because I think she’s the best future President…but if you ask me as an expert—about what Lina Khan is doing, and where I think she is helping or hurting America, relative to your anti-merger policies, which are, you know, mostly [there] to bring litigation, versus, you know, [being] really solidly grounded in…what helps American business thrive here and overseas—then I give an expert opinion. But I think donor and expert should be kept separate, and I’ve never tied the two ever, in any conversation.”
Psychologists, take note. This unique theory of the human mind could upend everything we thought we knew about how and why humans behave the way they do. At the very least, it could help explain why Hoffman can appear to be telling Harris to fire Khan so that the company he has massive financial interests in—Microsoft—can continue consolidating its power in the tech industry, even though, apparently, that’s not what he’s doing!
Somewhere in the middle of this idiotic conversation, Tapper finally decided to meet the lowest possible bar required to call himself a journalist and pointed out the obvious to Hoffman: “There aren’t like a hundred Reid Hoffmans! It’s not like one of you is a donor and one of you has opinions on Lina Khan, and one of you is on the board of Microsoft, and one of you is a venture capitalist. You’re all the same guy,” he said.
Hoffman didn’t really have much to say to that. He had apparently been banking on the notion that his unique theory of the human personality would sway both Tapper and the viewers at home. He pivoted back to simple denial: “I’ve never had a conversation with Kamala Harris about this,” Hoffman insisted.
Why Hoffman has publicly suggested that Harris fire Khan is obvious to anyone moderately aware of the FTC’s activities over the past few years. Under Khan, the agency launched a multi-year effort to stop a merger between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard, arguing that it would make Microsoft the third-largest gaming company in the country. Then, last month, the FTC opened a probe into Microsoft’s relationship with InflectionAI, an AI startup that the tech giant entered into a business arrangement with earlier this year. Hoffman and others at Microsoft would obviously like the inquiries to stop, and they think the way to do that is to unseat Khan.
Silicon Valley has played an unusually prominent role in this year’s presidential election. While it’s routine for tech executives to contribute money to political candidates, it isn’t so routine for those executives to make loud, splashy proclamations of support for one candidate over another. Yet, in recent weeks, crypto moguls and red-pilled billionaires like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen have publicly announced their support for Donald Trump, while a bevy of venture capital firms, recently formalized as VCsforKamala, have come out in support of Harris.
The VCsforKamala crowd includes signatories from more than 100 different firms, including Hoffman himself, as well as several other figures tied to firms who previously lobbied against the FTC’s intervention into the Microsoft-Activision deal. It’s just another sign that the heavy hitters of the tech industry feel they have a lot to lose (and, potentially, even more to gain) depending on who ends up in the White House next year.
Wow @jaketapper asks billionaire Reid Hoffman about his big $$ donations to Kamala Harris and then his public request to fire Lina Khan, the antitrust enforcer investigating his companies. Doesn’t go well for Hoffman. pic.twitter.com/X9xPys3iIg
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 31, 2024
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