many argue that silicon valley firms are de facto extension of the US government [1]. a swiss army knife (haha) in their toolkit that allows complete control over the flow of information. i mean seriously, just look at how fast the Crypto AG story was forgotten. only this Dutch article [1] and a handful of others properly dives into the profound impacts that the CIA backdoored Crypto AG devices likely had on world events in the past 50 years. [2]
so yeah if SV firms were not extensions of the US govt. (hardware firms too, not just software), they would have already been broken up years ago.
the senate hearings are just a charade used to stroke the ego's of the 'visionary' SV tech bro CEOs. they also show us how tech illiterate the working class has been made. [2]
NSA: VPN and "secure" webmail providers
CIA: They don't need fronts anymore, they have CISCO, Juniper, Netgear, etc.