Former Meta global affairs chief Nick Clegg delivered a stark warning Friday about tech companies getting too cozy with politics, arguing firms should keep a "respectful distance" from public intervention just as President Trump's TikTok deal blurs those very lines. His timing couldn't be more pointed.
Nick Clegg just threw cold water on the entire tech-politics industrial complex. The former Meta global affairs chief didn't mince words Friday when he told CNBC's Squawk Box that people should feel "uneasy" about tech firms meddling in politics.
"I generally don't think that politics and tech innovation mixes very well," Clegg said. "I think it's quite good when they kind of keep each other at a certain, respectful distance."
The timing of his comments is fascinating. Trump just brokered a deal to keep TikTok alive in the U.S., with Oracle taking control of cloud services and security operations. It's exactly the kind of tech-political entanglement Clegg seems to be warning against.
Clegg, who stepped down from Meta earlier this year, zeroed in on two critical aspects of the TikTok arrangement: data safety and algorithm ownership. He questioned whether U.S. data would actually be "kept safe here and not subject to surveillance" - a pointed concern given the deal's murky structure.
But Clegg's biggest worry isn't just about TikTok. He's watching a much larger dominoes effect unfold globally. India recently pushed for "hard data localization" that would keep all citizen data within its borders. That kind of thinking, according to Clegg, could shatter the internet as we know it.
"The moment countries start doing that, the dominoes will start to fall," he warned. "If everybody says, 'No, we want our slice of the data cake,' then of course, the open data flows that drives the internet will start eroding."
The geopolitical chess game is already underway. Trump's executive order establishes a joint venture to oversee TikTok's U.S. operations, but neither China nor ByteDance has commented on the arrangement. That silence speaks volumes about the delicate balance between tech innovation and national security interests.
Clegg sees the U.S.-China relationship as the biggest threat to internet freedom. He pointed to a recent image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi standing alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping as particularly "striking" - a visual reminder of shifting alliances that could reshape global internet governance.