• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 7, 2025

"Unless you are breaking stuff you are not moving fast enough.”

Mark Zuckerberg famously said that to Henry Blodget in a 2009 interview published in Business Insider, and the “move fast and break things” mantra has been Big Tech’s de facto slogan ever since.

But what happens when it’s applied not just to silicon-based applications, but us carbon-based ones too?

That’s what we’re finding out as an unelected co-president of the United States moves at Silicon Valley speed to break democracy as we’ve known it.

It’s not just the velocity of the damage, but the breadth of it, moving so fast and on so many fronts -- many of which we cannot see until it’s already done. That’s because it’s being done by hackers utilizing black-box techniques -- some of which cyber pros might call “black hat” techniques -- to dismantle the technological infrastructure America functions on. Literally the OS of democracy.

While we’re used to living with black-box angst as American consumers -- and even as business professionals -- we work hard to mitigate it in what some savvy pros have likened to an “arms race.”

And while democracy’s OS has been hacked numerous times before -- sometimes by hostile foreign actors like Russia’s GRU-backed Internet Research Agency or other proxies -- this one is being waged on the homeland via an unelected, unconfirmed advisor who has been given more power and access to our most sensitive systems and data than any cabinet-level appointment.

I know you know this already, and are probably thinking, “So, what’s the point, Mandese?”

Well, it’s actually two points.

One is that as wise as our founding fathers were, they didn’t design our Constitutional republic to function at the speed and breadth of Big Tech disruption. Unlike the January 6, 2021 insurrection, this attempted coup isn’t manual, it’s machine. And it’s happening in dark places we cannot see.

And while Americans have grown used to the lack of tech transparency, it should not come at the sake of our government data, our personal freedoms, our rule of law, and our democracy. We’re supposed to vote for that.

I know that despite the disclaimer I put on this post, some contrarians will nonetheless read it and grouse, “Well, we did vote for this.” Did you, really?

I’d like to see the data showing that even a small majority of the 49% of voters who did vote for Trump also voted -- in spirit -- for Elon Musk?

The recent polling I’ve seen for Republican voters doesn’t indicate that.

Politics aside, my second point is really the one I want you to think about, because after all, I’m just a trade reporter writing stuff for a few hundred thousand people in the advertising, marketing and media industry. This is is MediaPost, not Politico.

That said, I actually am a career political reporter, I just focus the part that involves Madison Avenue.

If you include my coverage of the 1980 presidential election for my college newspaper -- I’ve been covering U.S. politics for nearly 45 years.

The last 40 focusing on political media and marketing for Adweek, Ad Age, and most recently MediaPost.

I even recently applied for White House correspondent credentials, After seeing Karoline Leavitt’s debut as new Press Secretary in which she invited nontraditional journalists -- heck, even bloggers and social media influencers -- to apply for some newly created access to White House press briefing.

Somehow, I don't think an ad trade reporter will be what Donald Trump has in mind.

Nah, my day job is writing to inform a small but influential audience of ad industry pros on mostly wonky trade craft, but also this sometimes annoying blog.

So here’s my second point: Madison Avenue is both a disproportionately important part of America’s political system and it is also under attack by the extreme MAGA-wing of holding power in our government.

Inside the White House, Trump has put indirect pressure on the ad industry by forcing the media industry -- especially Big Tech platforms -- to undermine the safety of the information they publish.

Not just abandoning fact-checking, and platforming the kind of unsavory content many, if not most big brands would rather not be associated with.

Unelected co-president Musk’s X platform is chief among them, and when a group of the world’s leading brands organized an industry response to support responsible media, he sued them, effectively shutting down the World Federation of Advertisers “Global Alliance for Responsible Media.” And he continues to add names of big, responsible brands that backed it to his ongoing antitrust claim.

I find it ironic that someone who speaks so much about the importance of “free speech” would work so hard to take it away from advertisers, but his is not the only attack.

The House Judiciary Committee, led by chair Jim Jordan, has been probing ad industry efforts to support responsible media, ostensibly related to individual ad agency’s involvement in GARM, including investigations into both Omnicom and Interpublic, which are also in the process of seeking regulatory approval for their proposed merger.

A Judiciary Committee probe into Dentsu’s attempt to launch a post-GARM initiative supporting responsible media ultimately pressured the holding company to abandon its effort, as well.

Now, even as the MAGA-wing threaten the commercial free speech of marketers and agencies, a new effort is going after the non-commercial free speech of companies that underwrite America’s beloved public TV and radio stations.

Never mind that right-wing legislators have already long chipped away at federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, they are now going after America’s private sector -- corporate underwriters -- which along with “generous support from viewers and listeners like you” is where they get the majority of their funding.

In other words, the anti-free speech extremists in the MAGA-wing are not only attacking the rights of commercial advertisers, but non-commercial ones too.

What’s next? The Ad Council?

I don’t expect individual agencies, advertisers and/or corporate underwriters to stand up to this kind of pressure, but it would be pretty amazing if we looked back in the future and saw that it was the ad industry that helped preserve American democracy by supporting responsible media and not -- directly or indirectly -- funding the irresponsible kind that is helping to undermine it.