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IN THIS ISSUE – “Newsom Really Has to Light A Fire”

Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.

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FOR THE WEEK ENDING JULY 30, 2021

 

Recall Ramps Up: Poll Shows Near-Even Split

Politico & CalMatters

Will Democratic complacency doom Gov. Gavin Newsom?

That is the overarching question after a new poll set alarm bells clanging among Newsom supporters. The Berkeley IGS tally of recall views found Newsom with a comfortable double-digit advantage among the overall electorate — but 100 percent turnout is a mythical creature never seen in the democratic wild, and the race among the likeliest voters is far tighter: 50 percent against the recall versus 47 percent for it.

The near-even split hinges on the category “likely voters”: Although California has nearly twice as many registered Democrats as it does Republicans, the poll found a whopping 87% of GOP voters are highly interested in the recall, compared to just 58% of Democrats and 53% of no party preference voters.

Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll: “I think the Newsom campaign really has to light a fire among the Democrats and say, ‘Look, the outcome is in jeopardy unless you get out there and vote.’”

It’s understandable that the Newsom antagonists driving this recall are more eager to vote. But the governor and his team have drawn reassurance from Newsom’s stabilizing poll numbers, the lack of an establishment Democratic challenger, and the governor’s enormous advantages in both the electorate and in fundraising totals as allies have stocked a warchest with well over $30 million.

Yet this poll shows the real risk of complacency and disengagement. Democratic voters are resoundingly confident this recall will fail, according to IGS, whereas a majority of Republicans believe it will succeed.

And there are red flags as a coronavirus resurgence feeds voter malaise and spurs restrictions like Newsom ordering state workers and health care staffers to get vaccinated: a double-digit majority of voters believe California is on the wrong track, and Newsom’s approval is underwater again at 48-51. Team Newsom certainly sees the risk, warning donors in a Saturday email that “one of the great struggles we face is far too many people think there’s no chance he’ll get recalled.”

Another major IGS takeaway: conservative talk show host Larry Elder’s late entrance has jolted the field. Elder has already outraised longer-running Republicans despite spending just weeks in the race, demonstrating that his years on the air built a preexisting base. Now IGS put Elder atop the GOP replacement field, with a 34 percent plurality among the likeliest voters and a 18 percent plurality among the overall electorate. Would it be “undemocratic” for a Republican to become governor with a narrow plurality of the second-question vote? Voters are divided 42-42 on that one.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and businessman John Cox are both backed by 10% of likely voters. Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who has earned the endorsement of the original recall proponents, is supported by 5% of voters, according to the survey. Meanwhile, Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympian-turned-reality-TV-star and arguably the most famous of the candidates, is polling at just 3%.

Anne Dunsmore, campaign manager for Rescue California, one of the committees leading the recall effort, said the polling shows that Newsom’s strategy of painting the recall as power grab by Trump Republicans is not working. Dunsmore said she’s confident that the margin will only grow smaller as the election approaches.

“For sure it’s trending in our direction and that’s exactly where you want to be before the game starts,” she said.

Newsom’s biggest hurdle to defeating the recall may be turning out voters, but he isn’t having any trouble turning out rich donors. The main committee tasked with defending him against the recall has so far raised $39 million and counting — more than double the amount raised by the committees campaigning to remove him from office and to support the 46 candidates seeking to replace him, combined.

A new analysis from CalMatters’ Ben Christopher shows that Newsom’s largest financial lifeline has come from organized labor, which contributed a whopping 45% of the total sum — including $1.8 million from the teachers’ union and $1.75 million from the prison guards’ union this week.

Dan Schnur, a former chairperson of California’s campaign finance watchdog and past strategist for Republican politicians, offers one reason why labor groups might be motivated to give big: “This is a relatively painless way to strengthen your relationship with an incumbent governor.”

The prison guards’ contribution, for example, could be interpreted as a sort of thank-you gift. Although the guards aren’t reliable Democratic allies, they recently scored a major pay hike from Newsom and lawmakers over objections from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Meanwhile, Twitter is ablaze with comparisons to the French Laundry scandal that stoked the recall after photos surfaced of Newsom’s maskless son sitting with other unmasked children at an indoor summer camp, despite state rules requiring kids to wear face coverings at day camps. A spokeswoman for the governor told the Sacramento Bee that the Newsoms hadn’t seen an email from the camp stating it wouldn’t enforce mask guidance, and that their kids would no longer attend the camp.

The summer camp news appears to have been broken by Reopen California Schools, a parent advocacy group that last week sued Newsom over a requirement that all students wear masks to school in the fall. Another parent group called Let Them Breathe also recently sued Newsom over the mask rule. That could bode poorly for Newsom, given that recall ballots will be mailed to Californians starting Aug. 16 — right around the time many parents will be sending their kids back to school.

 

Water Supply is #1 Environmental Worry in Our Golden (Brown) State

Public Policy Institute of California

When asked to name the most important environmental issue facing the state today, Californians are most likely to mention water supply and drought—a shift from a year ago. About six in ten Californians approve of Governor Newsom’s handling of environmental issues, and a similar share approve of President Biden on the environment.

Overwhelming majorities of Californians—including majorities across partisan groups—believe that developing alternative energy sources should be prioritized over expanded use of oil, coal, and natural gas in the nation’s energy supply. These are among the key findings of a statewide survey released today by the Public Policy Institute of California.

(Note: As a companion piece to the new survey, PPIC is publishing a blog post by president and CEO Mark Baldassare, “What’s Wrong with the Recall?”)

One in four Californians (25% adults, 26% likely voters) say that water supply and drought is the most important environmental issue facing the state. Smaller shares named wildfires (17% adults, 18% likely voters), climate change (13% adults, 16% likely voters), and air pollution and vehicle emissions (6% adults, 5% likely voters). Last July, fewer Californians—10% adults, 11% likely voters—pointed to water supply and drought as the top environmental issue facing the state; instead, climate change was most likely to be named as most important.

“Water and the drought has jumped to the top of the list when Californians are asked to name the most important environmental issue facing the state today,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO.

Most Are Very Concerned about the Impact of Climate Change on Droughts and Wildfires

Strong majorities (68% adults, 70% likely voters) believe the effects of climate change have already started. One in ten or fewer (8% adults, 10% likely voters) believe the effects of climate change will never happen. Views are divided along partisan lines, with 82 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents saying the effects of climate change are already underway, compared to 44 percent of Republicans. Across racial/ethnic groups, solid majorities say the effects have already begun (69% Latinos, 67% whites, 66% Asian Americans, 60% African Americans). In a March Gallup national survey, 59 percent of American adults said the effects of climate change are already happening.

Overwhelming majorities believe that climate change is a factor in the environmental challenges now facing the state: 80 percent say that climate change has contributed to the current drought, and 78 percent say that climate change has contributed to California’s recent wildfires. Overwhelming majorities across regions and across demographic groups hold these views.

Many Californians are concerned about the future effects of climate change. Six in ten are very concerned about climate change causing both droughts and wildfires that are more severe (63% each), and about half (52%) are very concerned about more-severe heat waves. One in four (25%) are very concerned about increased sea-level rise due to climate change.

“Most Californians believe that the effects of climate change have already begun and that it is contributing to the current drought and wildfires,” Baldassare said. “Six in ten are very concerned about more-severe droughts and wildfires as a result of climate change.”

A Near-Record Share Say the Water Supply Is a Big Problem in Their Part of the State 

Solid majorities (63% adults, 69% likely voters) say the supply of water is a big problem in their part of California. This includes majorities across regions (70% San Francisco Bay Area, 67% Central Valley, 60% Los Angeles, 59% Inland Empire, 57% Orange/San Diego) and across age, education, gender, income, partisan, and racial/ethnic groups. The share of adults saying that water supply is a big problem has increased by 25 points since July 2020 (38% to 63%) and is near the record high of 70 percent (September 2015).

State and local officials have asked residents to reduce water use in light of the current drought. Asked about their own household’s efforts to reduce water use, 41 percent of Californians say they have done a lot, 39 percent say they have done a little, and 20 percent say they have not taken steps to reduce use. About four in ten across regions say they are doing a lot (43% Los Angeles, 41% San Francisco Bay Area, 40% Central Valley, 40% Inland Empire, 38% Orange/San Diego).

“Majorities across the state’s major regions say that the water supply is a big problem in their part of California, while about four in ten residents say their households have recently done a lot to reduce water use in response to the current drought,” Baldassare said.

Majorities See the Threat of Wildfires as a Big Problem 

More than half of Californians (55% adults, 57% likely voters) say the threat of wildfires is a big problem in their part of the state. Across regions, about half or more say it is a big problem (60% San Francisco Bay Area, 56% Inland Empire, 54% Los Angeles, 52% Orange/San Diego, 48% Central Valley).

Asked about the government’s readiness to respond to wildfires in their part of the state, one in three Californians have a great deal of confidence (33%), while about half have only some confidence (52%). Fourteen percent have hardly any confidence in the government’s readiness. Democrats (37%) are somewhat more likely than independents (28%) and Republicans (25%) to have a great deal of confidence. The share of residents with a great deal of confidence varies somewhat by region (38% Los Angeles, 37% Inland Empire, 36% Orange/San Diego, 31% Central Valley, 20% San Francisco Bay Area).

“A majority of Californians say that the threat of wildfires is a big problem in their part of California, while one in three residents have a great deal of confidence in government’s readiness to respond to wildfires where they live,” Baldassare said.

MORE:

https://www.ppic.org/press-release/water-supply-and-drought-are-now-californians-top-environmental-concern/

 

Stymied Housing Bills Show Legislature’s Hidden Conflicts

CalMatters

Encouraging housing to be built in place of abandoned big box stores and strip malls. Making it easier to build student housing near community colleges. Establishing an authority in Los Angeles to finance affordable housing.

These proposals all promise to ease California’s ever-worsening housing crisis by adding or preserving the already-scarce supply.

But these bills also appear to be dead in the water.

They missed a key July 14 deadline to be heard in a policy committee in the state Assembly before lawmakers went on a month-long summer recess until mid-August. It’s still possible to revive the measures before the session ends in mid-September, but doing so would require a rules waiver — and political willpower.

So if lawmakers have stated time and again that easing the state’s housing affordability crisis is their top priority, and these are some of the solutions, what’s the hold up?

As often happens in the Legislature, it’s impossible to say for certain, and key players remain tight-lipped. But several observers of the housing debate noted a significant similarity among the bills: They all require that a portion of the workforce that builds the housing be graduates of mostly union-run apprenticeship programs.

That union labor requirement has proven to be a deal-breaker or deal-maker for several housing bills already: The provision made it into bills and allowed them to survive so far. Or it was excluded and resulted in strong opposition and a bill’s demise, including one last year to build affordable housing in church parking lots, and another retail-to-housing conversion effort similar to the bill now in limbo.

The requirement is a source of tension between the powerful State Building and Construction Trades Council — which represents more than 450,000 California construction workers and wants more jobs for its members — and affordable housing developers, who are hoping to build many of the proposed projects.

“This question of good jobs versus affordable housing is a false question,” said Lola Smallwood Cuevas, a project director at the UCLA Labor Center. “It’s a question that has been living for 15 years that cannot afford to live on.”

Negotiations between the two groups hit a wall in January; CalMatters reported in June that developers hoped legislative leaders would help break the stalemate.

Instead, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Lakewood Democrat, is standing up to the Trade Council’s hard-nosed approach by holding up the bills, according to several lawmakers and legislative staffers, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Two of the bills in limbo are in the housing package proposed by Senate leader Toni Atkins, a San Diego Democrat: Senate Bill 6 to allow housing in commercial zones and SB 330 to create workforce and student housing in community college districts. Several other bills in the Senate package also include the union language, including SB 7, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law to expedite environmental review on larger projects, including affordable housing.

Two other high-profile bills in the Atkins package — SB 9 to allow duplexes and lot splits in areas zoned for single-family homes and SB 10 to let cities authorize more dense housing development near transit — aren’t affected by the labor provision because they only cover smaller projects.

Sources said that talks are ongoing between Rendon, Atkins and the Building and Trades Council, known as “the Trades.”

Both Rendon and Atkins declined to comment for this story. Trades spokesperson Erin Lehane said she knew nothing about a conflict with leadership over the labor language, and her group had not been part of any discussions.

“I’ve really no idea,” Lehane said. “Nobody’s told me that there’s any issues with these bills.”

But the holdup could be about more than just policy. Several sources said the Trades got sideways with Rendon when they funded attack ads in 2018 against Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, a Bell Gardens Democrat with whom they had also sparred over energy policy. The Trades, along with affiliated local unions, has given more than $90 million to state candidates and campaigns since 2015

Bill Wong, a senior political adviser to Rendon, said it’s possible those tensions have lingered: “It’s like when couples argue about things from the past not relevant to the argument at hand. I think it’s human nature.”

Wong, however, warned against reading too much into the missed deadline. He said contentious bills typically make it unscathed through the chamber where they were introduced, while the more difficult policy debates take place in the other house before they get to the governor’s desk.

“It’s the nature of negotiations,” he said. “We’ve got approximately four to six weeks left in session. You know, if I’m the Trades, I want to get the best deal I can, which means, if I cut a deal today, and my members are saying, ‘Well you had six weeks to get a better deal, why didn’t you go all the way to the bitter end?’ ”

Trades Council President Robbie Hunter, who has been at the helm of these discussions, announced his retirement at the end of June, shortly after the CalMatters story and a Politico story about lawmakers’ frustration with his negotiating tactics.

But Lehane said that Hunter could stay on the job through the end of the year andlaughed off a question about the timing: “Everybody was looking for so much reading on it. It was funny. I think it surprised a lot of people but it really is just, he wants to have some time for himself.”

At issue is the bills’ “skilled and trained” language that states at least a third of the employees in each trade (plumbers, bricklayers, etc.) working at a job site must be graduates of an apprenticeship program. That mostly benefits the Trades’ members, as unions run about 90% of such apprenticeships.

The council is pushing the requirement because they say non-union construction workers barely float above the poverty line while graduates of apprenticeship programs earn higher wages over the course of their careers.

Affordable housing developers, on the other side, say a tiny fraction of construction workers are unionized — so the requirement would constrain an already-tight labor pool and raise costs. Besides, they argue, many state laws already require that they pay union-level wages, unlike market-rate developers.

It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario: Unions say they can’t recruit more members through apprenticeships if they can’t guarantee jobs, but developers say they can’t build housing if there aren’t enough workers.

Lehane insisted the “skilled and trained” language wasn’t a problem, pointing to the bill Newsom signed into law and Assembly Bill 777, which would allow the state to transfer land in Sacramento to UC Davis to construct much-needed affordable housing for students. The labor requirement was added to the bill at the last minute, in the Senate.

Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, a Sacramento Democrat and the bill’s author, attributed the timing of the amendment to “due diligence and evaluating what this language would mean as far as trying to find contractors to do work here.”

“I would think that in some of the other bills there’s questions as far as the impact,” he said. “But in my case here, I came to the undeniable conclusion that this language will not hold back what we’re trying to accomplish at UC Davis for increased student housing at the Med Center campus.”

Another bill in limbo that has the union requirement, SB 679, would establish an authority to finance affordable housing in Los Angeles.

According to the most recent state data, there’s about one unionized construction worker for every three needed affordable housing units in Los Angeles County. That ratio matters because research shows it takes roughly one worker to build each unit of housing. And while the goal is to build up the workforce over time, mostly union members would be immediately eligible to start building under these bills.

Under state law, L.A. County must plan for 340,000 housing units by 2030 that are affordable to low- and very low-income households.

“It took us a little bit to realize that the bill was being held in a sort of purgatory,” said Tommy Newman, a senior director at the nonprofit United Way, which sponsored the bill. “We assume that the reason relates to the larger debate around labor requirements.”

The bill’s author, Democratic state Sen. Sydney Kamlager, who represents most of downtown and South Los Angeles, said the bill checks all the boxes to pass. It has 10 co-authors in the Legislature; it is a top priority for the 39-member Los Angeles delegation; and it has support from Bay Area legislators, who don’t typically see eye to eye with their Los Angeles counterparts on housing issues.

“So, there’s no tension there,” said Kamlager, who leads the L.A. delegation. Instead, she pointed to a Los Angeles Times editorial that highlights the same conflict with the Trades.

If the “skilled and trained” provision really is the problem, she said, it seems irrelevant, because the bill is about creating an agency to finance housing projects — not build them. The new agency, she said, “won’t have any trained workers, so I don’t know if it makes sense to have that kind of detail in this bill.”

“But I do think that it is time for us to have more honest and deliberate conversations about what our workforce looks like in Los Angeles,” she added. “What experience and training do they currently have and how do we get folks into these kinds of jobs? What are all the different levers and mechanisms we should be tapping into and using? But this bill is not that bill.”

Maybe it should be, said UCLA’s Smallwood Cuevas, who is also director of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center.

“We have to build on targeted local hire and apprenticeship, and overlay that with very intentional language and structure that ensures that those communities most marginalized get access,” she said.

She pointed out that while Black people comprise less than 8% of Los Angeles residents, they are 34% of the homeless population. She believes the bill should help people on the verge of homelessness get into construction of affordable housing so that they can afford rent and build a career.

Kamlager said she would be open to whatever is necessary to move the bill forward, as long as stakeholders are involved in the discussions. While she hasn’t been involved so far, she is counting on Atkins: “I am putting my faith in her.”

https://calmatters.org/housing/2021/07/california-housing-bills-unions/

 

Silicon Valley Chases Tech Workers Nationwide; Pandemic Enabled “Access to Lost Einsteins Across the Country”

Wall Street Journal excerpt

The winners of the pandemic are turning out to be the workers themselves and the companies in coastal hubs who can pay less than a San Francisco salary but more than a local one, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.

“If talent is the most important dimension, they have a way now then to truly access lost Einsteins all across the country,” said Mr. Muro. “What remote work does is it turns every hire into a national competition.”

In the short term, the democratization of tech jobs is broadening Silicon Valley’s reach and influence, rather than diminishing it. Longer term, companies in smaller hubs are hoping the current pinch is temporary and that eventually they’ll have access to the new tech migrants—especially if larger tech companies start reversing work-from-home policies—easing their labor shortage and enjoying a livelier tech scene and the venture capital that comes with it.

While many big tech companies have opened offices in smaller cities in recent years, most of the jobs and the venture-capital money are still concentrated in coastal hubs, with the San Francisco Bay Area at the epicenter of the industry’s growth. Between 2010 and 2018 the Bay Area accounted for nearly 18% of digital services job growth in the U.S., according to Brookings.

For decades, landing some of the most desirable tech jobs meant having to live there, dealing with exorbitant housing costs and long commutes. The pandemic has served as a pressure-release valve for both the companies and their workforces. Of nine tech companies that shared relocation data with The Wall Street Journal, approximately 9% of employees they counted as living in the Bay Area made permanent moves away from the region during the pandemic. The companies, including Twitter Inc., Slack Technologies Inc., and Dropbox Inc., had a total of more than 9,000 workers in the area as of early 2020.

Some headed beyond commuting distance to cities such as Sacramento and Los Angeles, or left the state for existing tech hubs including Austin. Whether it was living out a dream of settling in the mountains or moving back East near family, plans people hoped to make good on five to 10 years from now became plans for right now.

In the first quarter of 2021 in Austin, there was a greater share of home buyers who had lived in San Francisco the previous year than there were people who had moved within the city, according to the real-estate brokerage Atlasa. Around 50 employees from Google bought homes in the Texas city, 23 from Facebook, 17 from Apple Inc. and 17 from Amazon.com Inc., the firm found.

Twitter had started working on plans to decentralize its workforce in early 2018 at the urging of its CEO, Jack Dorsey, who thought the company was too concentrated in San Francisco, according to chief human resources officer Jennifer Christie.

Flexible work program requests from Twitter employees—either to work remotely in the same place or to move to a new city—were nine times higher this year compared with 2019.

“There’s no question that employee expectations have been changed forever,” said Ms. Christie. “These days flexibility is really table stakes.”

Twitter had around 10% of its San Francisco employees relocate over the past 12 months. The company started welcoming employees back to its San Francisco office earlier this month and is expanding in other parts of the Bay Area, with a new office set to open in San Jose. But it is also keeping track of its concentration of workers in Austin, San Diego and Portland to see if it should start leasing space there.

Twitter said the changes enable it to make more diverse hires as it draws talent from places such as Atlanta, which has the highest concentration of Black science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates; and Miami, with its large Latino population.

Moving toward a model of smaller offices and co-working spaces spread out around the country is becoming increasingly popular for tech companies. Slack in April launched a six-month pilot program to give each of its full-time employees a membership to WeWork.

Dropbox, which has 2,700 total employees, plans to call its offices “studios” and estimates it will open in at least a handful of new cities over the next 18 months.

“The idea is many hubs, not one,” said Melanie Collins, Dropbox’s chief people officer. “We encouraged our employees to relocate.”

The software company started offering relocation bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 this year (employees who went from San Francisco to Georgia or Idaho, for example, received $30,000). The idea was to give people incentives to move to places where the company plans to hire, and where its customers are based. Nearly 60% of its new hires since January have been outside San Francisco, New York and Seattle.

Tech companies in other major hubs like Seattle are seeing similar trends to those in San Francisco: Online real-estate company Zillow Group Inc., which is based there, found that the biggest change in migrations was to places at least 50 miles away from a Zillow office.

“It’s further than a daily commute but it’s not so far as a flight,” said Dan Spalding, the company’s chief people officer.

Since adopting its work-from-anywhere policy, Zillow has made a handful of senior hires in Minnesota. It now has employees in 49 states.

Some industry observers warn that Big Tech’s extended geographic reach could stifle innovation. Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University said sectors like artificial intelligence are already heavily concentrated among a small number of companies.

“If you imagine Google and Facebook and Apple and Amazon and Microsoft, they start hiring AI talent from Philadelphia, Houston and so on and so forth, those tiny startups, which also are a critical part of the AI ecosystem, they are not going to be able to get that talent,” he said.

The Silicon Valley diaspora could also export its social woes. The median home price in Bozeman, Mont., climbed 50% in June compared with the year-earlier month, according to the Gallatin Association of Realtors.

Mike Myer, CEO and founder of the customer-service messaging platform Quiq Inc., which is based in Bozeman, said he has been getting hit by both work-from-anywhere and hire-from-anywhere strategies: His existing employees’ cost of living has gone up and he’s now competing with New York and San Francisco companies for new hires.

Mr. Myer recently lost a prospective candidate to a publicly traded company offering a higher salary, and he raised wages for his own employees earlier this year to prevent attrition. “We’re going to continue to make adjustments,” he said.

Clearwater Analytics LLC, one of the largest tech companies in Boise, Idaho, said around 60% of research-and-development employees who left over the past six months took on remote roles and half were hired by Bay Area or Seattle companies.

In Provo, Utah, the pandemic has tightened the labor market in some ways and opened it up in others, according to Verl Allen, CEO of the marketing-software startup Claravine Inc., which was founded in 2014 and has 40 employees.

“When we went out to start hiring, especially in engineering, we were struggling to get enough inbound interest,” said Mr. Allen. “You can’t scale the teams quick enough here.”

Mr. Allen said he has friends in Utah who have recently taken jobs at Salesforce.com Inc. and Okta Inc.—both based in San Francisco—and they don’t have to move. Meanwhile, he has found talent in Little Rock and Portland.

“San Francisco is poaching from Salt Lake, Salt Lake is now poaching from Little Rock and from Portland,” said Mr. Allen. “It makes it more difficult for us but the markets below us is where the real pain is probably going to be felt.”

Bryson Webster, 33, moved from the East Bay town of Walnut Creek to Lehi, Utah, several years ago while working for Adobe Inc., which has an office there. At the time, he worried that opting for a more-affordable lifestyle would mean limiting his career opportunities in the future when he finished his time at Adobe.

When he started job hunting late last year, he didn’t need to apply to jobs with any Utah companies: All of his interviews were with companies in San Francisco and New York willing to let him work remotely. He took a job with Okta and didn’t have to relocate.

“It opened a totally new world of opportunity for me,” he said. “Why settle?”

Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and CEO of the venture firm Revolution, said tech transplants may eventually seek out jobs with local startups that offer less bureaucracy, more equity, and the chance to be involved in something in its earliest stages. Some might start companies after identifying opportunities in their new hometowns. For others, the allure of remote could wear off.

“They might get a little frustrated that they’re not in the room where things happen,” he said.

 

Disinformation For Hire – A New Shadow Industry Profiled

NY Times

In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.

A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.

But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.

Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.

Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.

They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.

“Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it “a boom industry.”

Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India’s ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Mr. Brookie’s organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties.

In the Central African Republic, two separate operations flooded social media with dueling pro-French and pro-Russian disinformation. Both powers are vying for influence in the country.

A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.

Most trace to back-alley firms whose legitimate services resemble those of a bottom-rate marketer or email spammer.

Job postings and employee LinkedIn profiles associated with Fazze describe it as a subsidiary of a Moscow-based company called Adnow. Some Fazze web domains are registered as owned by Adnow, as first reported by the German outlets Netzpolitik and ARD Kontraste. Third-party reviews portray Adnow as a struggling ad service provider.

European officials say they are investigating who hired Adnow. Sections of Fazze’s anti-Pfizer talking points resemble promotional materials for Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine.

For-hire disinformation, though only sometimes effective, is growing more sophisticated as practitioners iterate and learn. Experts say it is becoming more common in every part of the world, outpacing operations conducted directly by governments.

The result is an accelerating rise in polarizing conspiracies, phony citizen groups and fabricated public sentiment, deteriorating our shared reality beyond even the depths of recent years.

MORE:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/europe/disinformation-social-media.html