this week, Kanter decided it was time to tell some hard truths to fellow antitrust experts. With “gasps in the room,” he laid into academics, particularly economists, for taking money from large corporations and then offering their supposedly expert disinterested opinion. It’s a well-known problem, but one that goes unmentioned in polite circles. Until now.
Kanter noted a series of stories, like tricking an international enforcer into attending a training event he thought was associated with the U.S. government, but was in fact paid for by large corporations encouraging lax antitrust, or academics taking money from big tech and then advocating against action against big tech, all without disclosure. He cited, without naming names, a disgraced academic named Josh Wright authoring papers promoting Qualcomm’s posture on antitrust, papers later cited by a Court of Appeals ruling for the company. Wright was paid by Qualcomm, but hadn’t disclosed that.
Universities, economics journals, and the practice of economics are being fundamentally corrupted.
Law professor and former enforcer John Newman wrote a shocking thread about how it’s playing out in California, where the legislature has asked the California Law Review Commission whether antitrust law needs updating. Newman showed how Google, Amazon, and Apple, through a network of byzantine trade associations (NetChoice, DCI, RXN, Connected Commerce Council, CCIA, ITIF, Chamber of Progress) and economists who don’t disclose their affiliations, has sent significant amounts of expert commentary to overwhelm the commission. As Kanter said, it’s Big Tobacco, only this time paying off economists.
tricking an international enforcer into attending a training event he thought was associated with the U.S. government, but was in fact paid for by large corporations encouraging lax antitrust, or academics taking money from big tech and then advocating against action against big tech, all without disclosure.
Universities, economics journals, and the practice of economics are being fundamentally corrupted.
Gee, I wonder why we shouldn’t just dismiss these things as “conspiracy theory.” Because, there are such things as conspiracies, that’s why.
Kaminsky also uncovered a $100,000 grant from GEC to the London-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI) in 2021 and 2022, an entity that calls itself “the world’s first rating of the media sites based on the risk of the outlet carrying disinformation.”
Despite GEC’s mandate proclaiming that it is only involved in international affairs, GDI went on to concoct a blacklist of 10 outlets, including The Post, with conservative or libertarian-leaning opinion sections in an effort to demonetize them.
Other GEC grants went to non-governmental entities like the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab to flag social media posts for suppression.
The State Department records, exclusively obtained by The Post, make no mention of these taxpayer-funded entities’ conduct, choosing instead to fault Taibbi, Kaminsky and now-X owner Elon Musk for spreading alleged falsehoods about GEC.
Perhaps I have no “need to know” about the carrying ons of our government and/or corporate entities.
Kanter head the DOJ antitrust division. And the GEC is part of the State Department domestically interfering in social media.
Does the left hand of the federal government know what the right hand is doing and vice-versa?
How you support unbiased experts is a fundamental question.
University professors often support their research with grants often from govt agencies. Its easy to see them trending toward ideas granting agencies are likely to fund. They are not unbiased.
Similarly those funded by think tanks get hired for their position on think tank policies.
Unbiased is not possible. (I’m reminded of early scientists like Lavoisier who funded their own research out of curiosity. Those days are long gone.)
The best you can hope for is debate by competitive bias that we hope results in decisions based on good judgement.
This is the equivalent of regulatory capture. There is an awful lot of money backing it. Bring on the Trust Busters. It’s industry giants that need to be reined in.
