Google and Facebook Scramble to Clean Up Ties With Putin: A Talk With Justin Sherman
Cybersecurity expert Justin Sherman focuses on national security and the ethics of technology.
Reporter Luke Goldstein asks a cybersecurity specialist about Big Tech tensions in Russia.
This interview is part of Open Markets’ Clearly Speaking series.
In the days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Big Tech corporations swiftly froze Russia out of the global communications systems with far-reaching consequences for Russian users and President Vladimir Putin's regime. Under pressure from Biden administration sanctions, Google and Facebook cut off advertising to RT and other Russian state media, Apple suspended all product sales in the country, and other tech firms closed their offices in Moscow.
Justin Sherman is a fellow at the Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft Initiative and co-founder of Ethical Tech, a research initiative at Duke University. His work covers both the national security risks posed by Big Tech and these corporations' often close relationship with Putin’s government. Open Markets spoke with Sherman about why the U.S. tech industry cozied up to Russia before the conflict, the implications of its aggressive response to the invasion of Ukraine, and the national security threats posed by the centralization of data collection.
About the relationship between Big Tech and Russia that set the stage for the corporations’ response to the war in Ukraine:
The Kremlin began to increasingly see the internet as a threat to the regime's security over the course of the 2010s, and moved to limit the open internet and place controls on foreign technology companies in Russia. Most relevant to today, the Maidan revolution of 2014 in Ukraine was heavily organized on Facebook and Twitter. That really put the nail in the coffin, and Putin now sees these platforms as tools of the U.S. government.
On Russia's "landing laws" and how they strong-arm the Big Tech companies:
The landing laws were passed last year and said that any foreign internet company operating in the Russian market with more than 500,000 daily users must open a representative branch within Russia's borders. It's been the main tool of state control. Once they put employees on the ground, the Russian intelligence services have been able to go after them aggressively and pressure these companies to do what they want.
About the role of tech companies in Russia's most recent elections:
The Kremlin told Apple and Google to remove Alexei Navalny's opposition party app from the App Store, and both companies initially refused. Putin then called representatives from Apple and Google to the Russian parliament and threatened them by listing the people they would jail from their offices in Russia. The Kremlin sent armed masked thugs with guns to hang around the Google Moscow office until both companies removed the applications, which they did. The message was clear: If you don't get in line, we're going to put the pressure on where it hurts.
What's shocking is that after the intimidation tactics during the election, the general response from the companies was, do nothing, keep our heads down, and it'll be fine. That was naive and stupid and puts its employees at physical risk.
On the motivations and risks tech companies must balance in their response to the war in Ukraine:
I am frankly surprised by how forceful their actions have been. Market forces are a huge part of the response, which some stories have undersold. You don't want to be the one tech company not responding forcefully to Russian propaganda or you'd face enormous public pushback. They're incredibly cautious about the sanctions and don't want to be seen as not complying with Washington's policies and face potential regulatory action.
We want to be careful about praising the individual decisions the companies made such as shutting down ads to Russian state media just because this time they aligned with the international community. The response has certainly shown just how much power the companies have over global communications when there's a conflict of this nature. But you can imagine a scenario where a U.S.-allied country does something that violates international law and how will social media companies respond then? What's the standard they're setting? There's a lot of complexity to these decisions.
About the national security risks the U.S. must manage stemming from Big Tech platforms and their data troves on American, European, and Ukrainian citizens:
The Russian security apparatus right now is already monitoring internet chatter, media posts, because they are fixated on figuring out who's organizing opposition online. The tech platforms are the gatekeepers deciding what information stays and what is taken down. Their policy decisions shape the communications space and they can make good policies to reduce risks to Ukrainians or amplify them.
Then there's the problem of centralization. The risk is that these companies have a ton of data on people's lives. Google's Threat Analysis Group reported that in the first days of the war they saw persistent targeting of Gmail addresses of government officials in the U.S. to try and get access to information. Data centralization of this scale is dangerous and it would be far better if the ecosystem was more segmented.
For more perspective on competition policy, from Big Tech to surveillance, check out insights from other recent conversations here.