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Making Orwell Blush: An Exclusive Q & A with Virginia Senator Mark Warner

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With continued political turbulence in Virginia and throughout the US, RVA Mag reached out to Virginia Senator Mark Warner to catch the vibe in Congress on police violence, tech threats, and our role on the world stage.

Everyone should talk to Senator Mark Warner about something at least once. Because that something is going to branch into something else, and before long you will have covered everything from police violence in America to the global expansion of Chinese tech markets. With a casual demeanor and a conversationalist’s gift of persuasiveness, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is not only pragmatic about our current predicaments, but forward focused and at ease articulating the future challenges we will face at home and abroad.  

And in our age of perpetual political anxiety, this kind of clarity is needed now more than ever. 

Given ongoing political turbulence, RVA Mag wanted to catch up with Warner to chat about the state of play throughout the US. Over the course of two interviews, what soon became apparent is that the state of play for Warner is a vast interconnected system, which, with the right motivation, can be re-imagined into a new social contract: one that speaks to the challenges facing a new generation in political and economic transformation. Far from observing politics as a series of disparate events, Warner sees the modern policy landscape as a vehicle to develop new innovation and alliances, which can not only strengthen our individual rights, but bolster democracy globally.  

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

RVA Mag: I think we can start at the place that is most relevant right now — police violence. As a Senator that focuses on national security and intelligence, what’s it like to look around — not just in Virginia, but America, and see militarized police forces engaging civil society the way they have?

Warner: It is a little bit surreal. Especially when you see unmarked, unidentified federal officers in a city like Portland sweeping people into vans and having them disappear. When I was a kid, I was an exchange student in Argentina in the 1970s. The military there tried these same tactics. There was a group of grandmothers of these lost people who would show up every week in Buenos Aires to protest, and now, to have these pictures of moms linking arms in Portland with bicycle helmets trying to defend their children in the United States of America was maybe the most poignant thing of this. Obviously Black Lives Matter is an important movement, and the systemic racism that we’re seeing is why I am proud to be the original co-sponsor of the Justice In Policing Act. 

The notion that there are people in America who can be subject to that kind of unidentified policing is why Jeff Merkley’s proposed the legislation he has, which I and others support. If a governor, mayor, or local police chief needs federal assistance, let them ask for it, but let’s not impose this external activity when your local elected officials don’t want it — and in Portland, it has exacerbated the violence. 

RVA Mag: You cosigned a letter from “Intel Dems” demanding the answers to 26 questions from the Department of Homeland Security about the deployment of these federal officers. When you read the questions, it sounds like a list of requirements you would ask a CIA Station Chief. Are we at the point in this situation where this level of granularity is required?

Warner: That’s a great question. I hope we’re not at that point. But as we know in the intelligence world, there are protections put in place. We need to have those protections, god forbid, if we see these kinds of activities and use of these kinds of forces in the United States. I have been a little disappointed there has not been broader bipartisan support, because my Republican colleagues, for years, have been saying state and local government should have control and not be subjected to Washington over-reach. 

RVA Mag: One of the analogies which has been used is the idea of a “secret police.” Not actually secret, but a police force only accountable to the President. This does seem reminiscent of intelligence services from authoritarian countries. Is there precedent for this kind of police deployment? 

Warner: No, I don’t think there is. We had Director Wray from the FBI in the other day and we asked him if there was any FBI involvement. And he said no. So the idea that there are these federal protective services and other entities, who rightfully protect our federal buildings, but are not used in this kind of this context, is one more unprecedented area where this President knows no restrictions. 

RVA Mag: Where would the checks and balances against that level of authority and power come from?

Warner: The checks and balances usually come from career professionals at the Justice Department. They say no, but as we’ve seen, you’ve had 2,500 current and former justice department officials asking Bill Barr to resign. You have a president that has very little regard for rule of law, and unfortunately, an Attorney General who views his client not as the people of the United States but Donald Trump, so you’ve got a recipe for this kind of activity. Unless we can get the Majority Leader to let us vote on this bill — there are a number of more classically Libertarian Republican Senators: Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and the others; I would love to hear their reason for not voting for Merkley’s bill — I don’t know where they stand, but the chances are we’d get well over 51 votes. 

RVA Mag: When you listen to the concerns of younger people, myself included, there seems to be a growing fear that not only is our democracy under assault, but that the foundational core of the social contract is also at-risk. You don’t really have to look further than the president’s tweets about postponing the election or trying to invalidate mail-in ballots to see this. 

Warner: Luckily, you saw many Republicans push back when the president of the United States, in an effort to take people’s attention off of the fact that our economy contracted 36 percent, started saying he might try and delay the election. I think we have seen this president show a willingness use any tactic at all, which he thinks might deflect or remove people’s attention — so I was happy to see so many of my Republican colleagues step up after one of the great abuses of recent time, when military force cleared protestors out of Lafayette Square so that Trump could go hold a bible. That made me particularly angry, because I got married in that church 31 years ago! You saw [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Mark] Milley being manipulated, but you saw very quickly Milley and [Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper very much pull back. Because this is not the way we operate in this country. 

I don’t want to give you my full spiel of the future of capitalism, but I would argue this concern about democracy and the breakdown of the social contract precedes Donald Trump. 

RVA Mag: That’s interesting.

Warner: We had a social contract that existed since the 1930s to roughly around the year 2000. It wasn’t perfect, a lot of women and people of color didn’t do well. But generally if you worked hard, paid your taxes, you got a chance to move up in our society. And for 50 years, post-WW2 capitalism created more wealth than any system in the world. But starting in the late 90s, short-term profits became the overriding principle of everything, and where that was demonstrated most was the break down of the social contract. One of the structural changes that has come out of COVID is the idea that we can finally cover gig workers, independent contractors, sole proprietors with unemployment. 

Before, only about 50 percent of workers were covered by unemployment. So this whole notion of the social contract has to be redone. If you have the social contract fraying on one end and then your institutions of democracy fraying on the other, that combination comes together and that’s an explosive mixture — Americans by nature are always a little leery of power. 

RVA Mag: Do you think the American economy is still accessible? Especially for young people who are invested in a particular kind of economy that didn’t exist even five years ago?

Warner: I’m a classic born-in-the-50s baby boomer. But I also failed a number of times in business. However, had I not been a white guy with the right education, I’m not sure I would have gotten the chances I had. But it is stunning to me that in the UK and Canada, your ability to move from one economic status to another is easier there — the UK used to be the epitome of class structure. 

I was an entrepreneur and then a venture capitalist. 50 percent of all new jobs in the last 30 years were from start-up companies. Yet angel and venture capital deals are down 40 percent since 2016. Because if you are talking especially about tech — if your only options are to sell to Google and Facebook, then you can’t get to scale. This is hard. When I hear people say “Oh, Facebook and Google are great and free,” I remind them that they’re not free at all. They’re giant suckers of information. 

RVA Mag: Can America compete with countries like China nowadays? They are leading in green energy hardware, advancements in biomedical technologies, and artificial intelligence. Those are the economics of the future — not, as Republicans like to flaunt, coal. 

Warner: What the Chinese have done is what America did from around 1920 -1980. But they have done it in a way that was even more slightly sophisticated than we did. I have changed my view completely on China. Ten years ago, I was part of the school that wanted to bring them into the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization — the more you bring them in, the closer they’ll be. I think we were wrong. That was mostly revealed in the changes in the Communist Party under President Xi Jinping. My concern with China is not with the Chinese people; I stand with Hong Kong, and Chinese Americans. One of the things that Trump does is play on racial prejudice — so let me speak about the Chinese economic model, which is pretty wild. 

The Chinese allow massive competition in their domestic market for technology until a national champion emerges. And once that national champion emerges, they will end up getting about 70 percent of the Chinese market, which usually equates to about 25 percent of the world market. What we need is alliances that are technology-based, and I think we need a coalition of the willing. In the end, people still trust us to be the good guys, and what we’ve seen over the last three-and-a-half years is what happens when America exits the world stage. 

RVA Mag: I want to pick your brain about the place where tech, intelligence, and national security intersect, since this is something you have been super-focused on. How far along are we in our understanding of this intersection, given that bad actors both foreign and domestic are using media platforms to shape their own goals and objectives? 

Warner: In some sense, we have come a long way since 2016, when the Russians caught our intelligence community off guard. They generally caught the social media platforms off guard. They showed how vulnerable our whole society was to manipulation. The social media companies recognize this now. I don’t think they’ve gone far enough, but they recognize it. Our intelligence community literally has hundreds of professionals working to monitor this. So we are better aware. But on the other hand, Congress has made absolutely no progress. 

RVA Mag: Ah, there it is. Ok. 

Warner: We still have not passed basic privacy legislation. We have not done something when in any other time would have been a complete no-brainer — the Honest Ads Act, which had John McCain and Lindsay Graham on it. It’s basically saying, if there is a political ad on Facebook and YouTube, there would be the same disclosure requirements as an ad on TV or radio. I put out a white paper that had the theories of ideas on how we put guardrails around big-tech, and that legislation has basically gone nowhere. Almost all of this is bipartisan, so it is not broken down along those lines. It is almost to the point where big tech at first knee jerked reacted against any regulatory oversight, but now they realize this is in a global context. Even big tech realizes that having some national standards, rather than a patchwork of standards around the country and around the world, makes sense. 

We are seeing the big tech security issues moving from manipulation with social media to more nefarious contexts. When we look at the Chinese government combining facial recognition with their big tech companies to create a surveillance state, that might allow them to curtail COVID, but it allows them to spy on people [in ways] that would make Orwell blush. So there is the manipulation of social media, which has morphed into how big tech can be used as an agent of a surveillance state. 

RVA Mag: As the Vice-Chair of the Intelligence Committee, what do the threats look like in 2020? Have they evolved in the age of COVID?

Warner: I think technology is a positive force, but can be used as a mechanism of societal control. It goes back to the idea of alliances; what are the alliances of the future going to be? Post WW2, they were all military alliances, with a few economic trading blocs. But I think we are going to need these technology alliances amongst nations who have a basic fundamental belief in individual rights, democracy, and the rule of law. The asymmetric power that comes from technology with a ruthless CEO or ruthless government is daunting. Something that sneaks up on you can overcome your claims of investment in traditional defense technology. 

RVA Mag: Well, those are my questions Senator. Thank you for that great conversation.  

Warner: Thanks for letting me go on for so long! 

*Illustration by R. Anthony Harris

Cambridge Analytica and The Future of Facebook: The Bleak Reality

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Facebook, every time you sign in it starts.

One of the hallmark achievements of our century, this segway into a new evolutionary age of connectivity; designed to be a banner of equality to distance us from the imbalance of power. Every post to your status, you’re continuing the excavation into this new wonderland, while you lean back in your chair wondering where this rabbit hole leads.

The creation of organic social communities, digital frontiers for pioneer developers to flourish with little hindsight paid outside the family researcher. Each update would shift the parameters of modern society. Their intent became their mission, prophesied as higher purpose, one of equal footing. The sole responsibility of a users’ personal data- in many cases, one’s livelihood- was left, cradling upon a bridge of trust. And for many, that expectation was good enough.

The unmarked conquest of American capitalism accumulated inside the smokescreen amidst the new toymakers’ workshop. The original purpose lost amidst the obsession for connection. And the worst of it- the warning signs have been present all along, embedded in the fine print for anyone who cared to look.

In a memo addressed in June 2016 to fellow board members at Facebook, Vice President Andrew Bosworth relayed a statement far gone from the original benign aspirations of a group of college kids making a platform in their dorm room.  

Bosworth was quoted as saying, “So we connect more people. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools” His rumination did not stop there, “And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.”

The firestorm over Cambridge Analytica’s (CA) scornful acquisition of an estimated 87 million Facebook users personal data has shifted focus to the tech giant in a way that has not happened before. As further layers are peeled back, the walls surrounding the tech giants – not just Facebook – have started to crumble with a hail of scrutiny battering upon the doors – the barbarians are indeed at their gates.

CA CEO Alexander Nix. Photo from CA YouTube Channel

As the investigations into the CA scandal unfolds, many wonder- how could they obtain this information so easily – all while under the radar?

In response, Facebook desperately pushed to distance itself from CA, suspending the firm’s Facebook access and labeling them and their affiliates, as “rogue third parties”. They have been drawn up as the villains who took advantage of the helpless social network and their users. Nonetheless, several whistleblowers have since come forward, including ex-Facebook managers and former CA staff, illustrating a different story; one of deep negligence and malfeasance by both parties.

Since previous campaigns have knowingly used similar microtargeting techniques, CA has become a red herring, however. A diversion best left in the backdrop of growing national outrage over the protection of users’ personal data.

Jason Arnold, an Associate Professor of Political Science at VCU who spoke with RVA Mag about this issue summed up Facebook’s initial response:

Facebook is either lying or naive in saying that it cannot be responsible for what happens to datasets once it sells them to outsiders like the Cambridge [Analytica] researcher.

What once stood as the road to connecting the world now rests a dwindling bridge. The public has now been presented with the actual state of data mining and usage. Facebook’s original obsession with connectivity has turned decidedly toxic, catching the eyes of lawmakers and intelligence professionals who are still attempting to understand how platforms like Facebook influence events in real-terms.

“While companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google are great American success stories, so far I’ve been disappointed at how reluctant they have been to accept the fact that we are seeing the dark underbelly of social media,” said Virginia Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in articulating this challenge.

A growing body of evidence purports this to be a symptom of a widespread complication, a drop in the bucket to continual risks facing a society co-dependent to social media for relevance in a modern economy.  

“It is very unlikely that CA had something that was light years ahead of what competing firms were doing,” said Arnold. This is true, companies such as Experian and Acxiom have faced disablement following ties to ad-targeting. 

For instance, Graph API, the interface in which Facebook allows third-party apps to use your data, is at the center of this ethical uproar. It’s here where Facebook’s own data collection tools have encouraged the monetization of personal data with careless oversight. For proponents of electronic privacy, this is political transparency dozing at the wheel.

But it is also apparent there is plenty of blame to go around.

“I think we’re all to blame,” said Charlies Ajemian, chairman of Social Enterprise Alliance of Virginia (SEAVA). “I thought it was primitive, but definitely didn’t think people would hand over their information to marketers to use it on their own end. He went on to say that Facebook is also to blame, knowing that it was their responsibility to protect people’s data. “There can be a lot of great things about social networking that benefits the essential things, but it can also be used to other ends.’

Social media has become a necessity these days, much like a public utility. This necessity has also become very lucrative to marketers and consumers.

Most if not all businesses are deeply connected to social media, and the data scraped from the different platforms provides insight into what the public finds interesting. Whether through the messages we send, mentions of products we like, companies we follow – our online presence has become a modern-day currency and all E-Commerce runs on these metrics like fuel.

But what was not taken into account in these business models was something which coincides with its very foundation – the idea of progress and what that means in the context of 2018. Facebook has clearly underestimated its own tools and its own ideals. And perhaps without the proper oversight, many believe this problem will continue, leaving all of us codependent on social media in a precarious position.

“Facebook has proved they cannot handle this responsibility alone,” said Ajemian, “Social media is leading us towards a certain degree of social engineering and I don’t believe our current laws were created with this kind of attack in mind.”

In response to calls for reform, Facebook has taken an initiative to formulate a multi-stage plan for regaining composure, particularly in respect to the upcoming midterm elections. While their terms were technically updated in 2011 and later again in April 2014 to restrict data mining, loopholes have continued to be exploited, only to be realized in the past few weeks. This means the upcoming elections are likely still to be considered at risk. Nonetheless, for a company to weaponize illegitimate personal data mining demonstrates reasonable risks to the electoral process and democracy altogether.

Which has led some to believe regulation needs to come from government. “This is another strong indication of the need for Congress to quickly pass the Honest Ads Act to bring transparency and accountability to online political advertisements,” said Warner.

In direct response the CA scandal, Ajemian believes that greater transparency will be required. He has posited that Facebook could become an objective medium for the political arena.

“Facebook could build an objective continuity around candidates, offering data to the public to help have a better understanding of who a candidate is as a whole to help the electoral process,” he said. “Politicians run to win a position. Then it’s their duty to govern. We’ve gone too far into the campaigning side, it should be the best to govern not the best to win.”

Still, this doesn’t end with Facebook and remains an industry-wide problem. Data breaches happen, but it’s the response time that matters.

However, with Facebook, the problem remains complex since to “fix” their problem with data breaches they would need to build an entirely different platform to begin with. Some experts have speculated on new models for the tech giant, working searching for the sweet spot between privacy and data collection.

There’s a way you could use [Facebook] as a real solution for the world we’re moving in to. Facebook is valuable because of our identities, without us it’s nothing,” Ajemian said. “The real currency in the world is our attention. the better our attention is, the more we get paid.

In a review conducted by the Research Group COSIC out of Beligum, their analyst stated that Facebook should change its platform altogether – putting the power back into the hands of the user.

“In order to assist users and enhance transparency, we proposed a privacy scoring computation mechanism for the collateral information collection of third-party applications on Facebook,” said Iraklis Symeonidis, the lead researcher.  “The privacy score calculates the amount of the personal information of users that can be collected from such applications. Being able to raise awareness on personal information collection, it can support decisions and foster user control on personal data disclosure.”

In this regard, Facebook is not really a social network any more than an ad network. Letting the user take control of what information they want available for collection could be achieved, possibly a win-win for user and network. “You can’t maintain this model of selling our values to marketers,” said Ajemian.“What Facebook is doing is on steroids. It needs to change its model to empowering users. If only they worked to share the profits with the users, make them the partners. That would get people to participate voluntarily.”

A professor of journalism at VCU, Jeff South, stated alternatives to advertisement isn’t a new concept. “Restricting the use of our personal data on social media would greatly undercut the network’s appeal to advertisers,” he said. South added that “technological disruption” has put many media sources that relied on traditional methods of advertising back on a model that followed the subscription services of the 1830s.

Symeonidis remains skeptical about Facebook actually taking this level of initiative. “To be honest, I would be surprised if Facebook didn’t know about the analysis work. We have been publishing several articles since 2015 about Facebook and the third-party applications privacy issue,” he said in his analysis for COSIC.

The responsibility is not Facebook’s alone though, the public has a responsibility to bear some of this criticism too. “Our responsibility is to understand media literacy in the modern age. Take note of when people are blaming others, take a deep breath, and understand what they’re really saying. The way you approach something should not alienate people,” said Ajemian.

What has become clear in this debate is that the goals of each tech giants – not just Facebook – will constantly be in question moving forward. Their incomprehensibility to the layperson provides them a sense of ambiguity in how they represent their product to the public. Yet transparency should always take precedence, no matter the latest feature. And this bleeds into technical issues outside of the conversation over fixes to the platform, connecting to issues that should have never been present to begin with.

Warner got to the heart of the matter, implying regulations may be the unavoidable route. “We’re going to have to get this problem under control, and I’m not sure the companies are able to do it on their own. I don’t want to regulate these companies into oblivion, but I think it is time for them to accept responsibility for the potential misuse of their platforms and work with us to figure out the best way to prevent it.”

Whether Facebook decides to make a change for the better is little more than speculation. One distinction is for certain- the internet may have been for the user, but Facebook is still for its customers.

Who are the customers, and what are they trying to sell?