About a week ago, Reid Hoffman, the tech billionaire and Democratic political donor, spoke out loud, openly suggesting that Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan should be fired if Kamala Harris wins the White House in November. Hoffman also sits on the board of directors of Microsoft, which has been the subject of an investigation by the agency led by Khan in recent years. Since making his controversial comments, Hoffman has been working overtime to convince the American public that what clearly seemed like influence tactics was not, in fact, the case.
Hoffman appeared on CNN yesterday and again tried to justify his statements. To do so, he offered his own psychological theory, which explains how people can create the appearance of a conflict of interest when in fact there is none. He says that there are actually several Reid Hoffmans. One of them is on the board of directors of Microsoft. Another acts as an “expert” with vague but apparently strong credentials. Another is a political donor. All these Hoffmans, he says, interact with the world separately and independently, and their interests never coincide.
“I completely agree with you about not buying influence,” CNN host Jake Tapper told Hoffman. How can he say that when financial donations seem to be predicated on future benefits?
Hoffman explained:
“I think that in my role as a donor, [as] I’m an expert. If you ask me my opinion as a donor, I would say I’m donating to Kamala Harris because I think she’s the best choice for a future president. But if you ask me as an expert, what do I think Lina Khan is doing and how do I think she’s benefiting or harming America, you know, mainly with regards to anti-unification policies? [there] Rather than filing a lawsuit, [being] “If there’s a really strong case to be made and I understand something that will help American businesses thrive at home and abroad, then I’ll offer my expert opinion. But I believe donors and experts should be kept separate, and I’ve never combined the two 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 might help explain why Hoffman appears to be telling Harris to fire Khan so that Microsoft, a company in which he has a huge financial stake, can continue to consolidate its power in the tech industry. Apparently, he hasn’t done so!
Midway through this ridiculous conversation, Tapper finally decided to meet the minimum standards necessary to call himself a journalist and pointed out the obvious to Hoffman: “There are not 100 Reid Hoffmans! It’s not like one of you is a donor, one has an opinion on Lina Khan, one is on the board of directors of Microsoft, and one is a venture capitalist. You’re all the same person,” he said.
Hoffman didn’t have much to say in response. He was clearly hoping that his theory on human character would upset both Tapper and the audience. He simply refuted: “I have never spoken to Kamala Harris about this,” Hoffman insisted.
Hoffman’s reasons for publicly suggesting that Harris fire Khan are clear to anyone with any knowledge of the FTC’s activities over the past few years. Under Khan, the FTC launched a multiyear effort to block the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger, arguing that the deal would have made Microsoft the third-largest gaming company in the U.S. Then last month, the FTC began investigating Microsoft’s ties to Inflection AI, an AI startup with which the tech giant formed a business partnership earlier this year. Hoffman and others at Microsoft apparently want the investigation dropped, and they believe the way to do so is to fire Khan.
Silicon Valley has played an unusually prominent role in this year’s presidential election. It’s common for tech executives to donate money to political candidates, but it’s less common for those executives to loudly and ostentatiously proclaim their support for one candidate over another. But in recent weeks, crypto moguls and red-pill billionaires like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen have publicly declared their support for Donald Trump, and a group of venture capital firms recently formalized as VCsforKamala have voiced their support for Harris.
Supporters of VCsforKamala include signatories from more than 100 companies, including Hoffman himself, as well as several people associated with companies that lobbied against the FTC’s intervention in the Microsoft-Activision deal. It’s just one more sign that tech titans feel they have a lot to lose (and perhaps even more to gain) depending on who’s in the White House next year.
oh Jacket Topper Ask billionaire Reid Hoffman about his big donations to Kamala Harris and his public call for the firing of Lina Khan, the antitrust enforcement officer investigating his company. It’s not going well for Hoffman. pic.twitter.com/X9xPys3iIg
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 31, 2024
