“These people, when they start out — whether it’s Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, whatever — they resist paying for music until you go beat the f— out of them. And then of course, none of them pay fair market value and they get away with it. Your company’s worth $30 billion and you can’t spend 20 grand for a song that becomes a phenomenon on your channel? Even when they pay, artists don’t get enough. Writers don’t get enough

Thank God for Irving Azoff! (Although how about $1 trillion?) In a must-read profile interview with the LA Times, The Great One lays down the only strategy that works with Big Tech–not unity dinners, not lobbyist sell-outs, not sucking up to monopolists like Daniel Ek. And you know why he’s right? Because they do it to us and weakness in the face of bullies is not an option.

Yes, Dr. Azoff has identified the Tech Gene that turns entrepreneurship into a kleptocracy faster than you can say disrupt. But what should we expect in the coming years given the Tech Gene pandemic? The Big Tech kleptocracy goes way beyond stealing from creators.

Moonalice band member and venture capital investor Roger McNamee recently wrote a good description of policy expectations in Wired:

One of the policy areas that demands a new approach is technology. New technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence have been plagued by racial and gender bias, with particular harm in areas like law enforcement, job hiring, and mortgage applications. Internet platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter have amplified hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, undermining our politics, our pandemic response, and the safety of our citizens. More than 1,000 marketers have joined the #StopHateForProfit campaign, agreeing to pause their advertising on Facebook for a month or more to protest the amplification of hate. In addition, many companies in Silicon Valley have been accused of racial and gender bias relative to employees, most recently Facebook, where an employee and two applicants filed a complaint of alleged racial bias. For all its past contributions to our nation, Silicon Valley now has issues with culture, business models, and business practices that require government intervention.

Imagine my disappointment last week when The New York Times reported that President Obama had suggested that you work with two members of the Silicon Valley establishment, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. I know both men well. They are brilliant and very successful. Their money and expertise may be valuable to your campaign, but I hope you will not turn to them for policy guidance. They were architects of the culture and values that produced the problems I described above.

I hope you will take to heart the words of Albert Einstein, who said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” This is particularly true in tech.

And the New York times story said:

Mr. Biden’s campaign and transition team include advisers with ties to tech companies and other industries that worry liberals. Avril Haines, a former Obama national security and intelligenceofficial who is helping to lead Mr. Biden’s transition team, was a consultant for the data-mining company Palantir and WestExec Advisors, a firm that represented a major tech company it hasn’t identified.

A WestExec co-founder and Obama State Department official, Antony J. Blinken, is running the Biden campaign’s foreign policy operation. WestExec has worked with the philanthropy started by Eric Schmidt, the former Google chairman, and with Google’s in-house incubation unit, Jigsaw. But Mr. Blinken and Ms. Haines did not participate in that work, according to the Biden campaign, which said both advisers stepped away from WestExec this month.

Cynthia C. Hogan, a former White House lawyer for Mr. Biden who is helping to lead his vice-presidential selection process, was a lobbyist and government affairs executive at Apple. She tendered her resignation from the company in April, according to the Biden campaign.

If you’ve never heard about these advisory network, don’t be surprised. As the Times tells us:

A list of rules provided to members of the policy groups, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, instructs participants not to disclose their participation “on social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn or in your professional bio.” It also warns them not to discuss or distribute names of other committee members, contents of committee conversations, emails from the committee or to talk to the news media.

“Simply put, do not talk to the press,” the document reads, emphasizing “do not talk to the press” in boldface.

And what is Eric Schmidt doing?  According to Recode:

Yes, to paraphrase former government official Susan Crawford, it looks like “Uncle Sugar” Eric is trying to “geek around the nation state.” Why? It’s very odd but it’s exactly the kind of thing that Roger McNamee warned of. As Recode tells us, it could be a COVID play to allow Uncle Sugar to travel to raves in Europe more easily (as Cyprus citizenship gets him an EU passport), but:

[I]t is still uncommon to see Americans apply to the Cyprus program, according to published data and citizenship advisers who work with the country. The program is far more popular with oligarchs from the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, and it has become mired in so many scandals that the Cypriot government announced last month that it was to be shut down.

But not for Uncle Sugar. So there goes the confirmation hearing. Why did Uncle leave Google again? We never got an answer to that or why his NY pad is soundproofed–from the inside.

Yes, they’re psycho kleptocrats just like Irving says, and it looks like they’re back. But thankfully we have Irving Azoff and we’re not waiting for the cavalry to save us–which they never have.