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the luxury of taking two or three more
years to figure this out. We need, in a
sense, a fusion center where we have
intel and the prominent platforms—
Facebook, Google, Twitter—jointly
sharing information.What do you think of the House
Judiciary Committee calling for big
tech executives’ emails?
I think big tech is making a huge er-
ror by not further engaging with the
national government. We have been
ceding the regulatory lead to Europe
on privacy, and to the UK and Aus-
tralia on content. And what the tech
community is going to find out is that
when we do get the federal regulation,
these previous efforts are going to be
the floor and not the ceiling. I think
they’ll rue the day that they didn’t
work with us on an earlier basis.Writer Andrew Marantz has a new
book coming out called Antisocial:
Online Extremists, Techno-
Utopians, and the Hijacking of the
American Conversation in which he
blames “disruptors’ naivete” and
their “reckless techno-utopianism”
for creating gatekeeper-
free platforms that enabled
proliferation and ampliɿcation of
the Nazi, alt-right fringe world. Do
you agree with the assessment that
he’s making there?
I’m not going to comment directly on
the alt-right, but I would say I think
these companies have been naive. I
think they have talked about the com-
munities they’ve created, and there
have been upsides in all of this innova-
tion. But they were, I think, too willing
to ignore this dark underbelly of com-
munities of hate that were created, the
ability to have their platforms manip-
ulated, the ability to have foreign gov-
ernments and their agents use it to try
to disrupt not just our democracy.Newsweek: You said the 2016
election revealed “The dark
underbelly of an entire system.”
Is there any chance of protective
legislation being passed before
the election season? Isn’t it
an emergency?
WARNER: Our system is not secure
in 2020. I would argue there are a
variety of solutions that would get
80 votes on the floor of the Senate if
we were allowed to vote. These are all
bipartisan bills. First, to make sure if
a foreign government intervenes, the
appropriate response is not to say
thank you, but to tell the FBI. Second,
to make sure that every polling station
in America has backup paper ballots.
Third, that the Honest Ads Act, which
makes sure that there are the same
reporting requirements for political
ads on Facebook and Google as there
are in Newsweek and on television.
Fourth, some rules of the road in
terms of how social media platforms
operate. The Wild, Wild West for these
social media platforms is coming to
an end.Senator Mitch McConnell is the
gatekeeper; he is not allowing
these things to come to the ʀoor
where there would be bipartisan
support. Why?
He’s had a consistent position against
campaign-finance and election-relat-
ed legislation. One of the things that’s
incumbent on me and Democrats and
others is to keep elevating election se-
curity and protection of our democra-
cy as a top issue.What is your biggest fear about
2020 and big data? Won’t there
be exponentially more data points
for each American—that are on
sale for political strategists—
than Cambridge Analytica ever
imagined having access to?Yes. Exponentially more. We know
that Russia will be back because it
worked in 2016. If you add all they
spent on Brexit, France and the U.S.
election together, it’s less than the
cost of one new F-35. We’re seeing 21st
century conflict by cyber means, and
mis- and disinformation means, as a
cheap and effective tool. My biggest
fear: Russians will continue to obtain
information that they will then wea-
ponize with a much more massive
use of manipulation. That would be
through both deepfake technology
and the creation of both [fake] indi-
viduals and bots at an unprecedent-
ed level masquerading as Americans.
They’ll try to drive our debate in a way
that will clearly change what kind of
news we read and could change the
outcome of the election.There is a lot of tension between
the U.S. intelligence community
and Facebook, Google and Apple
about sharing more data with
respect to the election. The
government is saying, “You need
to give us more to protect,” and the
position on the other side is, “We’re
already doing enough to protect
the election.” Are Washington and
Silicon Valley at war?
I don’t believe they’re at war, and I do
believe the social media companies
are getting better. But we don’t have“Make sure if a
foreign government
intervenes, the
appropriate
response is not to
say thank you,
but to tell the FBI.”12 NEWSWEEK.COM OCTOBER 04, 2019