[tptacek]

If you want to dispute that these meetings are done for their optics and not for their productivity, fine. You won't convince me, or I think many other people, but that doesn't mean you're not entitled to hold your own opinion about them.

All I'd like to establish is that it is, at this point in the conversation, not reasonable for you to write as if you don't understand the objection people have to these meetings.

[ethanhunt_]

If the meetings are done for optics and not productivity, why have Musk and Kalanick not mentioned that? Musk said he left on principle, and Kalanick said being on the council was getting in the way of his goal.

[tptacek]

You're repeating yourself needlessly. Obviously, people who leave these groups have decided that the liabilities of endorsing Trump outweigh all potential benefits.

[ethanhunt_]

> Obviously, people who leave these groups have decided that the liabilities of endorsing Trump outweigh all potential benefits.

Obviously. The point of my OP was that there shouldn't be liabilities to advising the president (liabilities for endorsement are another matter).

> You're repeating yourself needlessly.

Because the central point of our disagreement is whether being on the economic council is an endorsement or not. Musk and Kalanick both being on the council and loudly leaving it, but not telling any of the public that the advisory council is an empty photo-op seems unlikely to me. So I wanted to get your explanation for why that would happen, but you twice didn't respond to the question.

[tptacek]

I don't really even concede the validity of question.

Despite what they may say, tech leaders don't go to these things in the hope of seriously influencing the administration. They're grown ups, and most of them pay lobbying operations. All of them understand that nothing important starts at a giant polished wooden table occupied by their competitors on one side and the news media on the other.

You honestly believe Tim Cook woke up the morning of that last meeting and thought to himself, "the best thing I can do with my time today is to sit down at a table with Donald Trump and Eric Schmidt"? Of course you don't.

The reality is: Trump's invitation to these events is coercive, in the sense that Cook will make news by not attending, and 50% (well, OK, 39.2%) of the US market will be irritated by that news. Attending is problematic, but if he shuts up, it's less problematic than not attending. So that's what he does.

It's for a similar reason that Musk and Kalanick don't hold press conferences decrying the theater of these photo op meetings. The political photo-op is as old as cameras, and tilting at windmills offers them nothing but downside.

Which brings us back to the reason we're irritated that Cook and Schmidt go to these things. The current calculation they're making says they lose less by going, and effectively providing a soft endorsement, than by boycotting. That's because their own employees --- who overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration --- are allowing them to get away with it. If even 5% of Google's employees credibly threatened a work stoppage of any sort over Schmidt's co-opting of their work to endorse Trump, Schmidt would not be allowed to attend; the costs to Google would outweigh the benefits.

[ethanhunt_]

Being quiet to not irritate the 39.2% of their customers is plausible, but in the case of Musk and Kalanick they didn't stay quiet. They left, and stated publicly the reasons why they left. I'm still inclined to believe that if the council was nothing more than a photo-op for Trump, Musk and Kalanick would've said that when they left. It would've made them look even better than they do now to that 39.2% ("I want to give my advice but the council is just a photo-op" is better to that segment than "I'm not giving my valuable advice because it's no longer a net-positive for my career/company").

[tptacek]

Since, again, the fact that these are giant round-table meetings, of a sort that never occur in the industry itself, performed largely in front of cameras and with every word recorded, I think the extraordinary claim here is yours, and the evidence you've supplied is essentially nil.

That said, I think I've been pretty clear that I don't expect you to agree with me; I simply expect you to stop writing as if you can't imagine any reason other than (I suppose) bloody-mindedness that people would have a problem with Cook and Schmidt and Pichai attending these meetings.