It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who said that when leaving office, although most people quote his warning to beware the military industrial complex. He was right on both counts, but the former seems just a bit more prescient at this juncture.

The news that grabbed the headlines this week was Microsoft’s $70B bid for the troubled Activision (Microsoft’s Activision buy could shake up gaming), but the real news is that Microsoft is bigger than Google, Amazon and Facebook. But now lawmakers treat it like an ally in antitrust battles.

Odd, given that so much attention is focused these days on anti-trust and Big Tech and note to self, the acquisition would make Microsoft bigger in the gaming space than Nintendo. This, as we stand at the threshold of the metaverse and given Microsoft’s ownership of LinkedIn, this would consolidate its position in the metaverse in both work and play.

Nothing to see here, but as the MSN (from the Washington Post) piece points out, “More than 24 hours after Microsoft announced its plans to purchase Activision…aggressive trustbusters in Congress were uncharacteristically quiet.”

Microsoft learned a thing or two after the antitrust litigation of the 90s.

Basic rules to keep in mind:

Keep your head above the fray

Make yourself/your company’s expertise indispensable.

Position yourself as an industry expert

As the article noted, MSFT has had a presence on Capitol Hill that spans at least a decade longer than most of the other tech companies.

“At the center of those relationships is Microsoft President Brad Smith, the company’s most visible envoy to Washington. Smith, who joined the company in the 1990s and played a key role in its antitrust battles, has testified on Capitol Hill multiple times, including at least four times in 2021. (Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), chairman of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee) thanked him last year for “his assistance” during the course of lawmakers’ investigation into other large tech companies.

“Before one of his recent Capitol Hill appearances, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who sponsored legislation that could result in the breakup of some tech companies, lauded Smith as a prominent technology expert.’

 

Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house and let’s not forget who founded Microsoft, owns 1+% of its stock and remains as a technical advisor to the company: none other than the world’s most powerful doctor and college dropout Bill Gates.

Smith is also in favor of reversing Section 230, which of course does not directly impact Microsoft at all

“Smith told The Post in 2019 that Section 230, a provision of law that protects companies from lawsuits over content created by their users, has outlived its utility.

“Section 230 had a place and time, but that time is now over,” he said in a 2019 interview.

“And last year, Smith advocated for legislation targeting Facebook and Google. He called for the United States and other countries to adopt legislation similar to an Australian proposal that would force tech companies to pay publishers for news. In The Post, he accused social media companies of becoming “powerful engines of disinformation” and warned that without new guardrails, politicians would exploit social media.”

But wait! Conflict of Interest? Bill Gates Gave $319 Million to Major Media Outlets, Documents Reveal According to MintPress News, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated at least $319 million to fund media projects at hundreds of organizations including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS and The Atlantic, raising questions about those news outlets’ ability to report objectively on Gates and his work. And that’s a very small sampling of the list of media outlets to which he donated – globally. “Despite flying more under the radar, Gates and his companies have amassed considerable influence in media,” the Defender reported.

There’s no doubt that since he seemingly stepped down from the day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has gotten far wealthier and more powerful. And with the advent of the metaverse, that much more potentially dangerous, given that they will have the ability to control large populations on both the personal and professional fronts, as well as digital currency itself.

Microsoft was never broken up into different companies as happened with the breakup of Bell Telephone into what became known as Baby Bells – smaller companies that became much more agile and over time, powerful. Microsoft remained intact, but Gates exited and through his investments and ‘philanthropies,’ we’re nonetheless faced with what we might call the “Baby Bills,” considering that his reach extends to chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, education, technology, of course, even the “world’s first molecular beverage printer,” et al. In other words, to almost every area that in some way touches or impacts our lives. We wonder if legislators and regulators have any idea about the potentially disastrous long term consequences being set into motion that might have us look back at this moment and wonder, to quote Alexander Graham Bell himself, What hath God wrought… Onward and forward.