(Bloomberg) — Former Attorney General William Barr criticizes American companies for being too close to the Chinese government and argues for more regulation of U.S. technology companies in a new book about his time in President Donald Trump’s administration.
China is engaged in “an economic blitzkrieg” using all instruments of national power “to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent technological power,” Barr wrote in his almost 600-page memoir, “One Damn Thing After Another.”
Barr’s book, which goes on sale Tuesday, has received media attention for passages about his contentious interactions with Trump after the 2020 presidential election.
Barr wrote that the election wasn’t stolen — Trump was legitimately defeated by Democrat Joe Biden. Barr also said that Trump “lost it” in the days after the election as he spun falsehoods that he was robbed of re-election by massive fraud.
In an interview Monday on NBC’s “Today” show, Barr said he doesn’t think Trump should be the Republican nominee for president in 2024 but that he’ll vote for Trump anyway if he is.
China’s ‘Raid’
But Barr also elaborates in his memoir on themes he pursued as the chief U.S.
law enforcement officer, including his view that the time has come for U.S. companies and policy makers to act with unity in response to China.
When it comes to China, Barr writes that too many U.S.
executives “are managing their companies to achieve a transient uptick in the stock price so that they can cash in their options and retire to a comfortable life in a gated luxury golf resort.”
“They don’t seem to realize — or don’t seem to care — that China’s goal isn’t to trade with the United States,” he writes.
“It is to raid the United States.”
Barr played a leading role in the Trump administration’s “China Initiative” — an effort to counter what it called nefarious activity by the Chinese government, particularly within America’s college and university system.
But the Biden administration ended the initiative last month after it came under criticism for fanning discrimination against Asian-Americans and as several high-profile criminal cases failed in court.
Google, Facebook
Separately, Barr writes that more regulation is needed in order to curb the power that social media giants like Google and Facebook have amassed over markets and information, acknowledging that his position seems odd coming from someone who considers himself to be a traditional conservative.
Barr accuses Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and other companies of deceiving regulators, lawmakers and the public over many years in their bids to control markets and information.
Unlike Trump, however, Barr doesn’t want to abolish a law known as Section 230 that shields Internet companies from lawsuits over content published by third parties.
Section 230 has become a target of conservatives who say it lets left-leaning tech companies censor right-wing voices, and Trump claims it is unconstitutional.
Barr calls for “vigorous enforcement” of U.S.
antitrust laws to help police Internet companies and writes that Congress also should grant “tightly defined regulatory authority” to the Federal Trade Commission, or another existing entity, to combat monopolistic online platforms.
“I have natural reservations about imposing a regulatory framework on market activities, as most conservatives do, but the reality is that some markets, or market conditions, require a degree of regulatory intervention,” Barr writes.
“In the case of Big Tech’s major platforms, it is hard to see how the challenges they pose to competition, privacy and the free flow of information can be addressed in the absence of regulatory framework.”
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