Monopolförderung

Umsichtige Imperien kümmern sich nicht nur liebevoll um narzisstische Präsidenten, sondern auch um normale US-Regierungen:

In the summer of 2021, President Joe Biden summoned the CEOs of the nation’s biggest tech companies to the White House.

A series of cyberattacks linked to Russia, China and Iran had left the government reeling, and the administration had asked the heads of Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google and others to offer concrete commitments to help the U.S. bolster its defenses.

You have the power, the capacity and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity, Biden told the executives gathered in the East Room.

Microsoft had more to prove than most. Its own security lapses had contributed to some of the incursions that had prompted the summit in the first place, such as the so-called SolarWinds attack, in which Russian state-sponsored hackers stole sensitive data from federal agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration. Following the discovery of that breach, some members of Congress said the company should provide better cybersecurity for its customers. Others went further. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who chairs the Senate’s finance committee, called on the government to reevaluate its dependence on Microsoft before awarding it any more contracts.

On the surface, it seemed a political win for the Biden administration and an instance of routine damage control from the world’s largest software company.

But Microsoft’s seemingly straightforward commitment belied a more complex, profit-driven agenda, a ProPublica investigation has found. The proposal was, in fact, a calculated business maneuver designed to bring in billions of dollars in new revenue, box competitors out of lucrative government contracts and tighten the company’s grip on federal business.

The White House Offer, as it was known inside Microsoft, would dispatch Microsoft consultants across the federal government to install the company’s cybersecurity products — which, as a part of the offer, were provided free of charge for a limited time.

But once the consultants installed the upgrades, federal customers would be effectively locked in, because shifting to a competitor after the free trial would be cumbersome and costly, according to former Microsoft employees involved in the effort, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared professional repercussions. At that point, the customer would have little choice but to pay for the higher subscription fees.

Die einvernehmliche Geiselnahme hat jahrelang gut funktioniert, peinliche Sicherheitsvorfälle wurden erfolgreich abmoderiert, und die Einleitung von Kartellverfahren kurz vor dem Machtwechsel dürfte eher symbolischer Natur sein – unter einer Trump-Regierung muss sich die FTC schließlich auf die Unterstützung des DoJ gegen einen viel unbotmäßigeren Technologiekonzern konzentrieren.