Over 200 former employees of federal surveillance agencies have since joined the corporate ranks of Big Tech companies in recent years, thus increasing the likelihood of systematic censorship of conservative accounts by such platforms.
According to the Daily Caller, the four social media companies Google, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok have recruited 248 former employees from the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice (DOJ), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as proven by searches of the professional job listing and networking platform LinkedIn. The bulk of these hires were made between 2017 and 2022, with some of the former federal employees moving on to top executive positions within the social media companies.
Google alone hired 130 former employees from the four aforementioned agencies. Facebook, now referred to by employees as “Meta,” hired 47 former employees from the FBI, DOJ, and DHS. At Twitter, 46 former federal employees now serve as executives. And TikTok, the controversial Chinese-owned app that has been banned on numerous occasions by various states and other countries, has employed 25 former employees of the four government agencies.
Reed Rubinstein, the former deputy associate attorney general under President Donald Trump, described this phenomenon as a “terrifying” revolving door between the federal government and Big Tech.
“The revolving door has been a feature of D.C. for as long as I can remember,” Rubinstein said. “Any business that is heavily regulated is going to be concerned about managing the regulators, and one way to do that is by purchasing them. As we saw with Baker, they are still wearing — sometimes — two hats. They still talk informally to folks who are in the [intelligence community], and so it’s not necessarily a clean break. In fact, what they pay for, is those relationships.”
Rubinstein was referring to James Baker, a former FBI attorney who went on to have a senior role at Twitter, and used his position to heavily edit the documents that were being released to reporters as part of the “Twitter Files” series, presumably to remove information that Baker considered damaging to his former employers at the FBI. Upon learning of Baker’s sabotage, Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk had him fired.
“The integration of Big Tech and the national security state, really it’s dystopian, it’s terrifying,” Rubinstein continued. “They have enough data to show that that power, which is immense, will be abused. And right now there is no effective check on it.”