The Deafening Silence of CEOs

Why Business Leaders Must Speak Up Against Authoritarianism

Jul 08, 2024

How the supreme court’s decision RE: Chevron Doctrine impacts privacy 🏛️ 🔨 🔐
Why business leaders need to speak up RE: the existential threat of a Trump reelection 💼 🗣️ 💼 🗣️ 💼 🗣️
The scary thing about the OpenAI data breach wasn’t the information that was stolen, it was that it happened in the first place ⚠️ ⚠️
How three red dots have challenged most of what we know about the universe 🪐🌌☄️🌑⭐💫
The privacy-focused AI hearing headed to the Senate 🛡️ 🤖 🏛️
Pay-or-consent models violate GDPR 💰 🆚 👌

My Take:

Two weeks ago, I was apoplectic when the markup for the Federal Privacy bill was canceled just six minutes before it was due to begin. The message was clear: pack it up, this won’t pass.

Last week, the Supreme Court nullified the possibility altogether by repealing the Chevron Doctrine, ensuring that even if we had a Federal Privacy bill, no agency could meaningfully enforce it.

In case you’re not familiar, the Chevron Doctrine provides that courts should defer to administrative agencies' interpretations of statutes. Chevron has been the law of the land for forty years.

I’m not going to argue it was perfect. There has been regulatory overreach and inaction, but keeping power with regulators ensured that those making decisions were subject matter experts. It was a division of labor that, while glitchy at times, ensured that dedicated experts attended to complex, fast-moving dynamics that reliably safeguarded the well-being of American citizens. You don’t think about whether the chicken you ate for dinner has salmonella in it; whether you knew it or not, the USDA works quietly in the background to ensure it doesn’t.

SCOTUS handed all that power to judges who can’t possibly be expected to have the expertise to step in for 100 different regulatory agencies—spanning consumer product safety, labor relations, securities and exchange, and nuclear weapons. It’s preposterous to believe that judges have the acumen or the time to understand and manage all of these complexities.

In other words, SCOTUS gave lower courts (along with itself) a role in policymaking as well as the enforcement of those policies. You barely need to have passed High School civics to understand that this violates every notion of checks and balances intended by the Founders. It also creates an impossible situation for the courts, which aren’t staffed to take on the responsibility that just fell into their laps. It will take time to staff up courts to enforce regulation—essentially ensuring a free-for-all in the meantime.

Unfortunately, this was only our first bite at SCOTUS’ shit sandwich. The bigger hit came down in the conservative majority’s decision on Trump v. United States, which agreed that a President has immunity in all official acts. Of course, this gives Trump cover for his action (and inaction) on January 6.

Trumpian conservatives have laid out their vision for 2025 in 920 excruciating pages. This plan includes removing terms like "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" from federal regulations, effectively eliminating protections against discrimination for LGBTQ+ individuals. It also includes a federal abortion ban and an end to reproductive rights by way of ending the right to contraception.

In a police state, information is power. There are currently zero federal protections for privacy. Meanwhile, obscene amounts of information on the market abound via data brokers that the next administration could leverage to go after LGBTQ individuals or women seeking reproductive healthcare or immigrants.

The federal government could purchase—or order seized—location data on every individual who has been to a Planned Parenthood or a pride parade in the last five years. It could use that information to incarcerate people.

Many historical atrocities have unfolded under the banner of “official acts” of the state. The creation of concentration camps was an “official act.” Internment camps for Japanese U.S. citizens during WWII, where my children’s grandmother spent much of her childhood, were also “official acts.”

Yet, all we’ve heard so far from the business community of late is deafening silence, and it’s not anecdotal.

The New York Times reported a significant drop in CEOs speaking out against Trump compared to 2020. The Times posited that, “the past four years have highlighted the potential danger of speaking up. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida waged war against Disney, one of his state’s biggest employers, after Bob Chapek, the media giant’s CEO at the time, spoke out against the legislation in Florida that activists labeled the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill amid employee pressure. Republican attorneys general have attacked companies including JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock over their environmental, social, and governance programs. Such political pressure packs a punch.”

If every decision you make centers exclusively on the delivery of value to shareholders, consider this: Trump has promised a complete transformation of executive power, unlike anything we have seen before, most of it not addressable by Congress. He has promised to fill his Cabinet and the top 50,000 jobs in government with appointees chosen not for their qualifications or loyalty to the Constitution, but for personal fealty to him. He has promised to use the full power of every Federal agency in a campaign of “retribution” against anyone who has treated him or his followers “unfairly.” This is not hyperbole; he and his allies have published detailed plans to achieve all of these things. If you have a business that competes with an ally of President Trump, what’s to stop him from seizing your assets as an “official act?” As of last Monday, nothing at all.

No doubt that there’s danger in speaking out when you’re staring down the gun of an authoritarian regime. There are still actions we can take to stop that from happening. But it requires an end to the silence. It requires everyone, particularly business leaders, to stop hedging their bets and start calling attention to the mounting existential threats.

In her dissenting opinion on Trump v. United States, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

I’m afraid for our democracy too—and as long as we have one, I’ll continue raising the alarms. Here’s hoping more business leaders follow suit.

Totally Unpaid for Promotion:

We do one on every episode of the{Closed}session podcast and I’m bringing it to Substack. If the Chevron Doctrine news has piqued your interest or you’re just looking for a good read, pick up Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk. This incredibly well-researched book from 2018 delves into the transition and political appointments during Donald Trump's presidency — putting particular focus on three government agencies: the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce.

A new trend for seed VCs and the scariest part about OpenAI’s data breach VIA TechCrunch ⚠️ ⚠️

While it doesn’t seem that people have to be too worried about what the hackers actually accessed, the fact that it happened is worth paying attention to. TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey argues that AI companies are treasure troves of data and will likely become more of a target for hackers. Companies that work with the large AI companies should pay attention.

Forbidden black holes and ancient stars hide in these 'tiny red dots'by Robert Lea VIA Space 🪐🌌☄️🌑⭐💫

The odd red bodies, scientists say, hide stars that models suggest are "too old" to have lived during early cosmic times and black holes that measure up to thousands of times larger than the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. Scientists believe these objects must have been born in a way unique to the early universe — by a method that seems to have ceased in the cosmos after around 1 billion years of its existence.

Senate panel to hold privacy-focused AI hearing by Rebecca Klar VIA The Hill 🛡️ 🤖 🏛️

The hearing will examine how AI has “accelerated the need for a federal comprehensive privacy law,” according to the committee announcement.

Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model in breach of EU tech rules, says Brussels by Ioanna Lykiardopoulou VIA TNW 💰 🆚 👌

The model provides EU users of Facebook and Instagram with a binary choice. They can either use the platforms for free and consent to data collection for advertising purposes, or they can pay a monthly fee for the ad-free tier and protect their data from being shared. Meta hoped that this choice would satisfy the DMA’s requirement for companies to obtain explicit user consent before combining or cross-using personal data across different core platform services. Now, the European Commission has published its preliminary findings, determining that the model is in breach of the rules.

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