Google, Russia and $4700 in Advertising

Just prior to and following the 2016 Presidential Election, the technology sector led us to believe that the Russians had made a massive effort to sway American voters.  Given that the tech sector, particularly Google and Facebook have a business model that relies almost solely on advertising, one would think that state and non-state Russian actors would have spent untold millions of dollars on convincing us not to vote for Hillary Clinton.  Recent testimony on Capitol Hill by Google's Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai puts that myth to rest.

Here is a key excerpt from the testimony:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D - NY) - Now, according to media reports, Google found evidence that Russian agents spent thousands of dollars to purchase ads on its advertising platforms that span multiple Google products as part of the Russian agents' campaign to interfere in the election two years ago.  Additionally, Juniper Downs, Head of Global Policy for YouTube (a Google product) testified in July that YouTube had identified and shut down multiple channels containing thousands of videos associated with the Russian misinformation campaign.  Does Google now know the full extent to which its on-line platforms were exploited by Russia actors in the election two years ago?

Sundar Pichai - We have - we undertook a very thorough investigation and in 2016 we now know that there were two main ad accounts linked to Russia which, you know, advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising.  We also found other limited....

Rep. Jerrold Nadler - A total of $4,700?

Sundar Pichai - That's right.  Which was, you know, no amount is okay here.  But we found limited activity and improper activity.  We have learned a lot from that and we have dramatically increased the productions we have around our election offerings leading up to the current elections.  We again found limited activity from both the Internet Research Agency in Russia as well as accounts linked to Iran.

If you wish to see the exchange for yourself, please forward to the 43 minute mark in this video:

Given Google's global reach, the diversity of its platforms and its power to affect change, it is interesting to see that this company which touts "access and technology for everyone" benefitted from less than $5,000 in spending by Russia-linked accounts.  Keeping in mind that Google/Alphabet has had two years to "navel gaze" and in that time, found that Russian spending on advertising amounted to $4,700 out of $110.885 billion in revenues and $12.662 billion in profits (2017 data), one really has to question the entire notion of Russian interference in the election through the use of social media, particularly when we know this about Alphabet's former leader and his connections to the Clinton campaign of 2016.

Google's Connection to Hillary Clinton and the 2016 Election

Updated January 2020

During the 2016 election, I posted this missive on October 14, 2015 on how search engines could be used to influence election outcomes.  This is well before the so-called Russian interference narrative that erupted in the last few weeks of the 2016 presidential election.  Little did I realize that the world's foremost search engine was going well beyond the mechanism that I described in my posting to influence America's voting public into casting their ballot for Google's preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Thanks to leaked videos from Google as can be found here, we now have a very clear understanding of how Google's key personnel voted in 2016, giving us a clear sense of how the go-to search engine was attempting to influence voting.  We all should have seen this coming.  In an email from John Podesta's computer, WikiLeaks posted this exchange between Cheryl Mills, Deputy White House Counsellor for Bill Clinton and Counsellor and Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Eric Schmidt, then Chairman of Google and the world's 106th richest person with a net worth of $14.4 billion as shown here:

Here is the email dated April 15, 2014, a few days under a year before Hillary Clinton even announced her candidacy for president in 2016:

It seems to me that, given that Hillary Clinton hadn't even announced at that point in time, Eric Schmidt, the head of a major U.S. company, had spent a great deal of energy and time into helping create a campaign template for Ms. Clinton.

Here are some of the highlights:

1.) a campaign budget of $1.5 billion with more than 5000 paid employees.

2.) campaign headquarters for approximately 1000 young, hardworking and enthusiastic people in either Chicago or New York City.  These people have to "be dying to work for you (Hillary)".

3.) Employees will relocate to participate in the campaign and will find low-cost temporary housing or live with campaign supporters on a donated basis.

I found this suggestion particularly interesting given that Eric Schmidt has billions of dollars that he could have used to help house some of these employees and volunteers in housing that was more suitable.

4.) a single record for a voter was to be developed, primarily using smart phones to identify and speak with voters.  It can also be used to update profiles on the voter and supply them with videos and answers to questions that they might have.  To keep these records up-to-date, volunteers were to do "walk abouts" where they would encounter potential voters; by having smart phone data, the volunteer could update voter records in real time.  Smart phones could also be used to raise funds and recruit additional volunteers.

5.) As part of "The Rules" and given that Google is a highly profitable company, Mr. Schmidt suggests that all players in the campaign work "at cost" and that auditing should ensure that "no one is profiting unfairly from the campaign".

I particularly liked this paragraph and the use of the words "the right vote":

"For each voter, a score is computed ranking probability of the right vote. Analytics can model demographics, social factors and many other attributes of the needed voters. Modeling will tell us what who we need to turn out and why, and studies of effectiveness will let us know what approaches work well. Machine intelligence across the data should identify the most important factors for turnout, and preference." (my bold)

Basically, if you boil Eric Schmidt's ideas for a Clinton campaign down to five words, this is what comes to mind:

"Big Brother is watching you".

Given that smart phones were going to play such a key role in the 2016 election and that Google's Android has a major share of smartphone operating systems in the United States as shown here:

...how can we be assured that Google wasn't going to share user data with the Clinton campaign and the DNC to help them build their much needed voter database?

Unfortunately for Eric Schmidt, Google, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills, someone managed to hack into John Podesta's poorly protected computer and provide us with insight into how Google was using its corporate power to influence the election in Hillary Clinton's favour.  In any case, it appears that there was quite a cast of characters that were attempting to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in their favour.

The Impact of Demographics on the 2016 Election

Updated October 2016

An interesting brief by William Frey at the Brookings Institute looks at how demographics is impacting the American political scene.  This demographic divergence is becoming particularly critical as the age of the candidates offering for President of the United States bridges the gap across two generations, from the early forties to the later sixties.

In the last two presidential elections, young voters and those from racial minorities tended to vote for the Democrats while older voters tended to vote for Republicans.  As well, the presidential candidates of both parties tended to reflect their respective party bases; the younger Barak Obama and the older John McCain and Mitt Romney.  In 2012, President Obama received 80 percent of the minority votes that were cast and Mitt Romney received ninety percent of his votes from white voters.  This voting support difference can be explained using this graphic:

President Obama won a larger proportion of the votes of those under the age of 45 with a 23 percent margin for voters between the ages of 18 and 29 and a 7 percent margin for voters between the ages of 30 and 44.  Mitt Romney won a larger proportion of the voters 45 years of age and older with a 4 percent margin for voters between the ages of 45 and 64 and a 12 percent margin for voters aged 65 and older.

Why did this happen?  This voter distribution occurred largely because racial minorities are more heavily represented among younger voters, creating what William Frey refers to as a cultural generation gap.  This gap is growing more significant; for the most part, baby boomers grew up in a time of low immigration and segregated minorities that resulted in a society that was relatively homogenous, particularly during the 1950s and early 1960s.  As white baby boomers and as those Americans who are older than the baby boomers (the Silent Generation born between 1928 and 1945) have aged, they have become more concerned with their economic well-being, becoming a more conservative group and, in general, have become far more angry with the government and more concerned about "big government" than either Gen Xers or Millennials as shown on this graphic from Pew:

It is interesting to see that the Silent Generation, who make up 17 percent of all voters and are 79 percent non-Hispanic whites, have become increasingly discontent.  They are the whitest of the generations and the least accepting of immigration and interracial marriages as shown on this graphic:  

In contrast, the younger and more racially diverse generations are quite happy with greater government intervention in their lives, in part, because employment opportunities are not as abundant as they were during the 1960s and 1970s.  As well, since the majority of the Gen X and Millennial generations have been exposed to greater numbers of immigrants, they are more open to both immigration reform and interracial marriages.

The 2016 presidential election cycle will be somewhat different with a white baby-boom senior representing both the Republicans and the Democrats.  Both candidates will have to work to get the votes of younger Americans who feel that they have been disenfranchised by the party elite.