Oh, of course it does.
That's why Jared Cohen (who left the State Department to go to Google) and Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, are writing in Foreign Policy, right? About the tekkies' favourite topic -- disruption -- disruption of everything else but themselves, of course.
Sam duPont isn't so sure.
But I think Google and big IT in general *of course* has a self-interested foreign policy like any power bloc, it's just that they are keeping their cards held close. Build the pipes, aggregate the communities, then take over. The Gov 2.0 movement is illustrative of this tactic.
I first began to fumble with this idea when I tried to challenge Scoble going to Washington, ever-so-innocently, to spread the Twitter religion.
And I've watched it from Mike Arrington at TechCrunch -- before Google made it safe to challenge China somewhat Mike and others were very soft on China, they would never have dreamed of boycotting the Olympics or even saying a word about Tibet. Scoble was a bit more forward-leaning but ultimately, the interests of IT are to have the Chinese build the widgets, and that won't be changing even with Google. Google's position is merely a bargaining position, anyway, not a true principled human rights position as I said in the NDN comments.
And also on Foreign Policy itself.
Basically, the foreign policy points work like this:
o "net neutrality" (cheap work tools for API engineers, Google ad agency)
o pro-China (tech factories)
o pro-Russian (Intel, Silicon Valley tech delegations, etc.)
o pro-immigration -- at least of Indian engineers (not of Mexicans)
o for educational reform (create more innovation, engineers)
etc.
Do people ask whether what's good for Google is good for America?
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