Harris's view of business: friendly to big tech, active in climate change countermeasures

There is a possibility that US Vice President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in the November election. Here, I will introduce her views and actions on key business topics.

As California Attorney General, Harris sued eBay.

They insisted on non-competitive employment practices surrounding an employment ban agreement with eBay, and filed a lawsuit against eBay in 2012.

A lawsuit was filed against Intuit, and a settlement of approximately 4 million dollars was obtained in 2014.

In 2015, in response to suspicions that the housing design app was recording business calls without proper notification and consent, the start-up company Houzz was forced to hire a chief privacy officer.

In particular, “revenge pornography” is the act of posting explicit photos without the subject's consent. She led a pressure campaign leading to Facebook's ban on “revenge porn.”

Meta and Alphabet Google, Microsoft, etc. are taking measures to delete specific explicit images.

“I cannot emphasize enough how aggressively tech industry leaders have acted,” Harris said at the press conference at the time. “I'm not saying that there were people who were happy to receive a phone call from the Attorney General saying, 'I want to hear the story, 'came. But they all did. They actually did that.”

As a candidate for California Attorney General, Harris has reportedly asserted to potential donors that he is a “capitalist.” She has generally been seen as being close to the owners and investors of prominent tech companies that are local industries in the local Bay Area. I also attended the wedding of Shawn Parker, who was an early Facebook executive. My brother-in-law Tony West is Uber's chief legal officer.

She also received donations from renowned venture capitalist Reed Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, billionaire John Doerr, and venture capitalist Ron Conway. Also, Sheryl Sandberg, who was Facebook's chief operating officer (COO), and Mark Benioff, who is a Salesforce billionaire, supported her.

Harris's position on climate and energy is similar to Biden's. But throughout her career, she has made it clear that clean energy and environmental justice are priorities.

When announcing Harris as her companion for the 2020 election, Biden mentioned the lawsuit she launched as San Francisco's district attorney from 2004 to 2011 when she held an important position in California, and as the attorney general of the same state until she took office as a federal senator in 2017/1, and emphasized her tough stance on major petroleum companies.

Last year, Harris debuted in international negotiations on climate change, announced a $3 billion contribution to the Green Climate Fund, and delivered the first major international address focused on climate change.

As vice president, Harris was also involved in the Environmental Protection Agency's policy development, and has tackled environmental justice issues over many years, such as multi-billion dollar programs to replace lead pipes and lead paint all over the United States.

As vice president, Harris was particularly outspoken about artificial intelligence. In her November 2023 speech, she warned of the “existential” threat of AI and said it could “endanger the very existence of humanity.”

At meetings with executives of high-tech companies such as Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Harris warned that there is a “moral” obligation to protect oneself from the dangers that AI can bring.

She mentioned the effects of fraudulent phone calls generated by AI and content generated by unlabeled AI, and supported Biden's AI executive order calling for enhanced consumer protection.