More and more Big Tech firms are implementing 'corporate foreign policies'. What is Microsoft's approach?
IS MICROSOFT A digital nation and does it have a secretary of state? The answer of Brad Smith, the software giant’s top lawyer, is, well, diplomatic. Nation states are run by governments and firms need to be accountable to them, he says. But yes, he admits, he worries a lot about geopolitics these days.
The tech firms, too, are adapting—none more so than Microsoft. Mr Smith presides over an operation comparable in size to the foreign office of a mid-sized country. Its 1,500 employees work in departments like “Law Enforcement and National Security” or “Digital Diplomacy Group”. It has outposts in 56 countries, sending regular cables to headquarters in Redmond, near Seattle. Mr Smith is as itinerant as a foreign minister.
Against this cynical backdrop Microsoft’s diplomatic efforts look refreshingly principled. Its worldwide antitrust fight at the turn of the century; Edward Snowden’s leaks which revealed widespread surveillance by America’s spooks; the rise in state-sponsored cyber-attacks—such “inflection points”, says Mr Smith, forced the company to mature geopolitically, long before its rivals in the case of antitrust.
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