Hillicon Valley: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube execs to testify at Senate hearing on algorithms | Five big players to watch in Big Tech’s antitrust fight

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Welcome! Follow our cyber reporter, Maggie Miller (@magmill95), and tech team, Chris Mills Rodrigo (@chrisismills) and Rebecca Klar (@rebeccaklar_), for more coverage.

Washington is ramping up efforts to rein in the market power of the largest tech companies in the United States, and some members of Congress and some of President Biden’s nominees are set to play a big role. Meanwhile, Congress is also examining the impact of social media platforms’ algorithms, and executives from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are set to testify at a Senate hearing next week. 

BACK IN THE HOT SEAT: Executives from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will testify next week at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on social media algorithms and amplification, the panel announced Friday.

The hearing will feature Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of content policy, Alexandra Veitch, YouTube’s director of government affairs and public policy for the Americas and emerging markets, and Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s head of U.S. public policy. 

Along with the executives, Tristan Harris, co-founder and president of the Center for Humane Technology, and Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, will testify at the hearing. 

The Senate subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law will look into the impact of the design of social media platforms. 

Read more here. 

BIG PLAYERS TAKING ON BIG TECH: Although President Biden has remained fairly quiet on any antitrust action since assuming office, he has nominated and appointed two critics of Big Tech to key enforcement and advisory positions. 

And on Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have been pressing the tech CEOs and proposing legislation to revamp antitrust laws. 

Here are five big players to watch going forward:

Lina Khan: Khan, an influential antitrust scholar who was boosted by progressive critics of big tech, is known for her “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” paper, which she wrote as a student at Yale.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.): Klobuchar, a former presidential candidate who had a good relationship with Biden, is a key Democratic lawmaker to watch in the coming battle.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah): Lee, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, is also focused on Big Tech, though sometimes from a slightly different perspective than Klobuchar.

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.): Cicilline has used his perch at the top of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust to lead and shape Democrats’ approach to Big Tech.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.): Cicilline’s counterpart on the antitrust subcommittee, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) is set to play a pivotal role in marshaling Republican support behind any proposal.

Read more about all 5 here. 

CRITICAL PROTECTIONS: Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Friday introduced legislation intended to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks and other national security threats. 

The National Risk Management Act would require the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to conduct a five-year national risk management cycle. This would involve CISA identifying and compiling the major risks to critical infrastructure in a report sent to the president and Congress, with the president then detailing to Congress how the administration was tackling these threats. 

Hassan emphasized the need to focus on emerging threats such as those from foreign hackers, which have escalated during the past year. 

Sasse, who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stressed in a separate statement the need to protect critical systems due to the changing nature of attacks. 

Read more about the legislation here.

READY FOR TAKEOFF: SpaceX on Friday successfully launched four astronauts en route to the International Space Station.

The Falcon 9 launched at 5:49 a.m. Friday from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew is expected to reach the International Space Station Saturday at 5:10 a.m.

Flying in the craft were Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of the U.S., Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet of France.

Read more about the launch. 

Lighter click: Just toddler things

An op-ed to chew on: The good, the bad and the truly horrifying potential of CRISPR technology

NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB: 

Mike Lee’s strange new respect for ‘hipster antitrust’ (National Journal / Brendan Bordelon)

Donald Trump Is Gone, But QAnon’s Sex Trafficking Conspiracies Are Here To Stay (BuzzFeed News / Otillia Steadman)

Rep. Khanna on Congress’s $100 billion bet to take on China (Protocol / Issie Lapowsky)