Hello, I'm Nicholas Thompson.

I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Wired.

And Mark Zuckerberg is going to Congress.

You know what?

It's gonna be ugly.

Because he doesn't actually have any allies

right now in Congress.

The democrats are mad at him.

The republicans are mad at him.

The public's mad at him.

The press is mad at him.

Everybody's mad at Mark Zuckerberg.

The Congressmen know that.

So they're gonna be asking a lot of mean questions.

It's gonna be complicated.

So, let me go through five things that I'll be watching for

when Zuckerberg goes to testify.

First of all, actual policy.

The thing that could come out of this,

is regulations of Facebook.

There are very few regulations of Facebook.

And there's some that would make sense.

I kinda put them in different categories.

There's stuff that they should definitely do.

For example, regulating political ads.

You should have roughly equivalent regulations

of political ads on the internet as you have on political

ads on radio and TV.

We don't have that.

There's legislation already written.

There's probably a way to do that.

So I'll be looking for conversations about that.

There's another category of regulations

that could make sense if done properly.

For example, privacy regulations.

What protections should Facebook and the other internet

companies guarantee to their users.

Transparency.

What kind of transparency and openness

should these companies guarantee to their users?

You can imagine a lot of sensible policies in those areas.

You can also imagine much more specific regulations

like modeled on the German regulations limiting hate speech,

enforcing the companies to do certain things

in specific ways.

If Congress starts to go down that avenue,

it's gonna me a mess.

Second thing I'll be looking at,

at the actual interesting debates.

I know this is gonna be kind of a blood and guts show.

But I'm kinda of a geek and I sorta wanna learn

the way Zuckerberg thinks about these trade-offs

and the way Congress thinks about the trade-offs.

So, what trade-offs am I talking about?

Well there are all kinds of interesting trade-offs

embedded in these debates.

For example, as you tighten privacy,

you kinda make a platform less useful.

So what exactly do we lose

as Facebook protects us more?

As you filter more, you kinda lose

a little bit of free speech.

So where exactly does Congress want us to set that line?

And how does Zuckerberg think about that?

There's also a little bit of a trade-off always

in tech between freedom what you can do with your data,

where you can take it, and security.

How safe is your data?

So that's an interesting trade-off.

I'm interested in how Zuckerberg thinks about that.

So to the extent that Congress gets inside those debates,

that's gonna be interesting to me.

Okay, the third thing I'll be looking for,

how does Zuckerberg do?

He's not a politician.

But he's kind of a politician.

He owns Facebook in such a way he can't really be removed.

He controls it, it's run a little bit

like a call to personality.

The amount that Zuck is liked,

has a huge bearing on his company.

So it will be interesting to see how he responds.

He's kind of a little bit of an awkward guy.

He's an awkward guy with a lot of media training.

So he'll do okay.

He's gonna have a bunch of really smart people.

A bunch of people who've trained as lawyers

who's trained at making people feel uncomfortable,

and they'll all be against him.

Usually when someone comes to one of these hearings,

like half the people are on their side,

half the people are against him.

This time, Zuckerberg's gonna be on his own.

So how will he do?

That matters a lot for Facebook.

Very interesting to watch the outcomes.

They really do range from Mark Zuckerberg

did better than expected.

To Mark Zuckerberg fell apart.

Or said just something appalling

or completely screwed it up.

Probably he won't do that.

Probably he'll do okay 'cause he's smart

and he's really been practicing answering questions

and apologizing in the last two weeks.

But I don't know.

That's a big thing to watch.

The fourth thing I'm interested in, Russia.

Really important and we haven't gotten

to the end of that story.

We know that Facebook was very late

in finding Russian propaganda operations on the platform.

Missed it during the summer of 2016,

it took 'em until the spring of 2017

to start to get a sense of that.

But is there more?

Did your data actually get to the Russians?

Because of Cambridge Analytica used your data,

to kind of make American politics more divisive,

it's one thing.

But if Russian propaganda artists

and intelligence operatives used your data

to manipulate an American election,

that's a national security situation.

A fifth thing I'm interested in.

Again, a little wonky, but I think it's important.

How does Zuckerberg think about his obligations

as an American company?

And how does Congress think about that?

Right?

So Facebook was founded in the United States.

The headquarters are in California.

It's definitely an American company.

But has operations all over the world.

That has a huge political influence all over the world.

But to what extent does it think

about having special obligations in this country?

I'm super interested in this.

'Cause right now there's a big national competition

over artificial intelligence.

I just spoke to Emmanuel Macron, the President of France,

about his huge push.

China.

They've got like half the AI talent in the world,

the Chinese government is really pushing

AI in those countries.

United States has about half, or maybe more than half

in this country and all of our companies

that are good at it, well we're just clobbering them.

Right, so we're in this weird situation

where there's a national competition

over artificial intelligence

and the companies that have it in the US

are kinda getting beaten up.

And the companies that have it in China

are getting propped up.

It's really interesting.

It's really interesting to think about

what are the national obligations of the companies

that control this technology

which will be utterly essential to the future.

So, that's probably not what this hearing is gonna get into,

probably gonna be about grandstanding, incriminations,

apologies, but that would be something

I'd really wanna hear a conversation

between Mark Zuckerberg and our government.

So, off we go.

Probably they'll just kinda beat him up,

he'll respond as best he can,

he'll apologize left and right,

we'll get through it learning a little bit here

and a little bit there, but I'd love it if we got

into the meat of some policy issues

and really saw how the thinks and how Congress thinks.

And got a sense of what regulation is actually coming.

'Cause that matters.

I'm Nicholas Thompson.

I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Wired.

I'll be avidly watching these hearings,

possibly with popcorn and with a lot of my other colleagues,

who'll also be writing about them.

So keep checking back on the site and ideally we'll have

all kinds of interesting things to say.