Government Ethics & Anti-Corruption

Italy's communications authority AGCOM announced a penalty exceeding €14 million against Cloudflare in January 2026 for failing to comply with anti-piracy regulations related to Piracy Shield. CEO Matthew Prince condemned the fine as 'a scheme to censor the internet,' criticizing it for having 'no judicial oversight,' no appeal process, and no transparency, and requiring services to block content globally not just in Italy. Prince threatened to discontinue free cybersecurity services for Italian users, remove all servers from Italian cities, scrap investment plans, and 'discontinue the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber-security services' Cloudflare was providing for the Milan Cortina Olympics in February 2026.

In January-February 2026, Anthropic and the Pentagon reached a standoff over a $200 million contract. Anthropic demanded "human in the loop" restrictions - specifically that Claude not be used in "fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely)." CEO Amodei stated "frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons" and offered to work on R&D to improve reliability. The Pentagon demanded "all lawful use" language. Defense Secretary Hegseth gave a Friday 5pm deadline; Amodei refused. Trump ordered all agencies to cease Anthropic use and Pentagon designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk" - language normally reserved for foreign adversaries.

In December 2025, after sustained lobbying by CEO Jensen Huang, the Trump administration approved Nvidia's sale of advanced H200 AI chips to China with the U.S. government receiving a 25% cut of future sales. Huang met directly with President Trump on December 4 and with Republican senators in closed-door meetings. Senator Elizabeth Warren alleged Huang 'used donations and personal access' to influence policy, citing his attendance at a $1 million-per-plate Trump fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago and Nvidia's donations to Trump's White House ballroom project. Warren called the decision one that 'sells out American national security' and demanded Huang testify before Congress.

New York Times reported senior Anthropic employees discussing ways company could spend money to influence politics, with executives likely donating to new political network helmed by former Rep. Brad Carson (D-OK). As government contractor, Anthropic is legally barred from contributing to political campaigns.

In November 2025, NSO Group named David Friedman, Trump's former ambassador to Israel, as Executive Chairman. This followed an October 2025 acquisition by U.S.-based investors led by film producer Robert Simonds. The appointment raises concerns about NSO's potential re-entry into U.S. markets after being placed on the Entity List.

Court filings revealed Alphabet will contribute $22 million 'on behalf' of Trump to the Trust for the National Mall for construction of the White House State Ballroom. The contribution resulted from a settlement over Trump's lawsuit against YouTube for banning him after January 6, 2021. The $300-400 million ballroom project is funded by multiple Big Tech companies. Shortly after the settlement was disclosed, the DOJ approved Alphabet's $30B+ acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz.

In June-July 2025, during heightened tensions between Trump and Musk over fiscal policy, the Trump administration initiated a review of SpaceX's government contracts after Trump called for terminating Musk's federal contracts and accused him of being the 'most heavily subsidized businessman in history.' SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell held quiet meetings with White House officials to reaffirm SpaceX's role in U.S. strategic infrastructure. White House and Pentagon officials ultimately concluded SpaceX's deals were vital to core missions of DoD and NASA. Shotwell negotiates many of SpaceX's lucrative contracts with the U.S. military and owns a 0.3% stake ($1.2B net worth) in the company.

During President Trump's May 2025 visit to Saudi Arabia, Oracle announced a $14 billion investment over 10 years—nearly 10x its previous $1.5 billion commitment. CEO Safra Catz explicitly credited 'the decisive actions and strong leadership of President Trump' for enabling the partnership. Catz served on Trump's 2016 transition team and currently serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

A Public Citizen report found Musk had direct business interest in over 70% of DOGE targets. On inauguration day, his companies faced $2.37 billion in potential liability from 65 regulatory actions across 11 agencies. DOGE then: fired FDA staff reviewing Neuralink, cut NHTSA staff that regulates Tesla autonomous vehicles, targeted the SEC investigating his Twitter stock purchase. DOJ dropped a SpaceX discrimination lawsuit. Starlink terminals were installed at GSA headquarters within days (normally takes months). The White House said Musk would self-police his own conflicts of interest.

NVIDIA Corporation made a seven-figure donation to President Donald Trump's $239 million inauguration. CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump at the White House, attended a $1 million per plate Mar-a-Lago dinner, and stated 'I'd be delighted to go see him and congratulate him.' After the Mar-a-Lago visit, plans for export controls on NVIDIA's H20 chip were paused, raising ethics concerns about quid-pro-quo arrangements.

In January 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a personal $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration fund (Jan 3), attended the inauguration ceremony at the Capitol (Jan 20), and the next day stood alongside President Trump at a White House press conference to announce Stargate, a joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank planning to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure. This marked a stark contrast to Altman's 2016 blog post comparing Trump to Hitler.

In April 2024, the FTC issued a landmark regulation banning enforcement of non-compete agreements. In August 2024, a federal court struck down the regulation, ruling it was an overreach of statutory authority and that the regulation was 'arbitrary and capricious.' The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable sued, arguing 'the FTC exceeded its administrative authority' and that such economic significance should be decided by Congress, not an agency.

Markus and Martin Villig (Bolt co-founders) donated over €220,000 to Estonian political parties including Reform Party (€30,521), Social Democratic Party (€15,521), and Isamaa (€2,021). These donations occurred while Bolt actively lobbied the Estonian government to oppose the EU Platform Work Directive.

In 2024, Ant Group announced changes to shareholder voting rights that reduced Jack Ma's voting control from 50% to 6%, meaning he was no longer the actual controller of Ant Group. The restructuring came as part of ongoing Chinese government pressure following the 2020 IPO cancellation. Ma replaced SoftBank as Alibaba's largest shareholder in early 2024 but continued to face government oversight.

In 2023, ASML violated a 'gentlemen's agreement' with the United States by selling far more chip-making machines to China than agreed during September 2023-January 2024. According to a book by former Bloomberg journalists, then-CEO Peter Wennink suggested ASML could provide the U.S. with insight into Chinese chip factories in exchange for allowing ASML engineers to continue serving Chinese customers, with a senior American official stating 'ASML could be Washington's eyes and ears in China.' ASML denied the claim, calling it 'factually incorrect and significantly misleading.'

Over 2.5 years, the FTC under Khan's leadership lost every single merger challenge it brought through litigation without a single win. Courts rejected FTC attempts to block Microsoft's $69B acquisition of Activision Blizzard (July 2023, judge called case 'bald assertion') and Meta's acquisition of Within (February 2023). The FTC also lost challenges to Illumina-Grail merger. Courts found the FTC was 'weak on the facts,' could not demonstrate consumer harms, and relied on 'novel antitrust theories that courts did not recognize.'

In February 2023, Christine Wilson, the sole remaining Republican FTC Commissioner, announced her resignation citing Khan's 'willful disregard for the rule of law and due process.' In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Wilson criticized Khan's 'disregard of congressionally imposed limits on agency jurisdiction, her defiance of legal precedent, and her abuse of power to achieve desired outcomes.' Wilson specifically criticized Khan's decision not to recuse herself from the Meta/Within case despite having publicly argued before joining the FTC that Meta should be prevented from acquiring any other firms.

At a 2022 conference, Khan stated that if agencies 'think that current law might make it difficult to reach, there's a huge benefit to still trying,' adding that courtroom losses would signal to Congress that lawmakers need to update antitrust law. Internal emails showed career FTC staff concern that 'Chair Khan did not want the FTC to be successful and purposefully put staff in a position to complete poor work product.' One manager wrote that Khan wants to appear 'aggressive' but is acting 'with little regard for the consequences of losing in a way that negatively affects the enforcement agenda.'

Between 2015 and 2021, Frances Haugen made over 40 donations to Democratic candidates and organizations including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her 'Courage to Change' PAC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the progressive group 'It Starts Today'. Her most recent donation was in August 2021, shortly before her whistleblowing became public. This raised questions about potential political bias in her testimony before Congress on tech regulation.

In April 2021, China's State Administration for Market Regulation fined Alibaba $2.8 billion for anti-competitive practices, specifically for forcing merchants to choose between Alibaba's platforms and competitors ('pick one of two'). The fine represented 4% of Alibaba's 2019 domestic revenue. The action was widely seen as part of broader government crackdown on tech companies following Jack Ma's regulatory criticism.