In September 2010, Kamala Harris visited Google’s headquarters for the first time. Then the district attorney of San Francisco and the first woman to hold that job, she aimed to become California’s attorney general. Her stop at the Mountain View campus served to extend a hand to the tech giant, presenting herself as a moderate who opposed state actions that would hinder the growth and development of companies. Within days, the firm and its lead attorney contributed 13,000 dollars to her campaign, the maximum allowed at the time. Despite polls that favored her opponents, Harris won the November election by a narrow margin of 0.8 percent.
Closer than a decade later, Harris stands as the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States. The historic decision by President Joe Biden to step down from a bid for reelection has placed the vice president in a unique position to become the first woman to lead the nation from the White House. While the current administration has strengthened antitrust policies to curb Silicon Valley’s power, Harris’s close ties to California’s tech industry raise concerns that a blue victory could translate into a softer, more conciliatory approach toward sector abuses.
Friend of Silicon Valley
Harris has spent her professional life engaging with California’s elite political and business circles. The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, she built a career beginning in 1990 as a prosecutor deeply connected to San Francisco’s high society, a path that helped propel her political ambitions. Although she did not come from extreme wealth, she quickly emerged as a familiar figure in a small circle dominated by a few powerful families. This access to the inner circle made fundraising easy and helped her move to the Senate in 2017.
In California, that network is tightly linked to Silicon Valley, a region long aligned with Democratic causes. Over her long career, the absence of a tough stance toward the tech sector has opened doors to donations from billionaires such as Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder; Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer of Facebook; Jony Ive, former chief design officer at Apple; John Doerr, early investor in Google; and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. Even Steve Jobs’s widow, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, organized a fundraising event for Harris in 2013 in her backyard. Her camp has presented her as a “capitalist” to donors, according to Reuters.
The close tie to the industry extends beyond the professional sphere. Harris attended the wedding of Sean Parker, founder of Napster and an early executive at Facebook, while her brother-in-law, Tony West, serves as vice president and chief legal officer at Uber. Two former policy advisers now work as lobbyists for Amazon and Google. The New York Times noted in 2020 that family, friends, and former employees make up a revolving door between government and the tech world.
Is there a conflict of interest? Critics argue that Harris has aligned with Silicon Valley interests. During her time as attorney general and later as senator, she declined to back regulatory measures targeting tech firms, such as a hypothetical law forcing them to stop user tracking or a proposal to remove autonomous Uber vehicles from streets. Critics lament that she presided over a period of massive consolidation and power in the hands of the tech giants and did little to counter it.
Her supporters argue that her proximity to the industry has helped spur actions. For instance, in 2015, pressure attributed to Harris is said to have contributed to moves by Twitter, Google, and Reddit to curb the distribution of revenge porn—explicit images shared without consent.
As the United States moves, or could move, in a new direction, Harris’s presidency would likely influence the tech policy agenda. Yet her platform does not spell out a clear, comprehensive plan for the sector, leaving many questions unanswered. In her tenure as vice president, she has backed regulating artificial intelligence, but she has not clearly stated positions on antitrust measures aimed at breaking up Big Tech or removing protections that shield content promoting hate. Critics warn that several advisors have ties to tech firms and industry groups.