Jacob Helberg | |
---|---|
Education | George Washington University (BA) New York University (MS) |
Spouse | Keith Rabois |
Jacob Helberg is an American author and technology advisor. [1] [2] Helberg currently serves as a commissioner for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and senior advisor to Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies. [3] [4] [5] Helberg has commented extensively on US-China relations, and the national security implications of Chinese-developed web apps like TikTok. [6] [7] [8]
Helberg is openly gay. [9] He married American investor Keith Rabois in a 2018 ceremony officiated by Sam Altman. [10]
Helberg became a leading advocate for the 2024 passage of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which forced a sale or ban of TikTok. [11] [12] [13] [14] Helberg is the founder of the Hill and Valley Forum, a working group of American venture capitalists and lawmakers concerned about China's impact on the American technology industry. [4] [2]
Helberg is one of the top donors to Donald Trump's 2024 reelection campaign, donating $2 million in 2024. [15] [16] [17] Prior to the October 7th Hamas Assault, Helberg primarily donated to Democratic candidates, including the Pete Buttigieg 2020 presidential campaign. [18] [19]
In 2021, Simon & Schuster published a book by Helberg, The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power. [20] According to The Information, the book argues that "foreign adversaries are using technology to wage war against the U.S." [21]
Jeffrey S. Yass is an American billionaire businessman. According to Forbes, Yass had a net worth of $27.6 billion in 2024 and is the richest man in Pennsylvania. He is a registered Libertarian who gives money to conservative super-PACs including Club for Growth Action and the Protect Freedom Political Action Committee. He and his wife Janine Yass are supporters of school choice, a cause to which they have donated tens of millions of dollars.
Palantir Technologies Inc. is a public American company that specializes in software platforms for big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The company's name is derived from The Lord of the Rings where the magical palantíri were "seeing-stones," described as indestructible balls of crystal used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world.
Joseph Lonsdale is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-founded companies including Palantir Technologies, Addepar, and OpenGov, and co-founded and serves as the managing partner at the technology investment firm 8VC.
Keith Rabois is an American technology executive and investor. He is a managing director at Khosla Ventures. He was an early-stage startup investor, and executive, at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide, and Square. Rabois invested in Yelp and the Xoom Corporation prior to each company's initial public offering (IPO). For both investments he insisted on being a board of directors member.
Michael John Gallagher is an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Wisconsin's 8th congressional district for the Republican Party between 2017 and 2024.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smart phone app.
DCM (also known as DCM Ventures) is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, Tokyo and Beijing. DCM was one of the first venture capital firms to invest in the early-stage technology sector in China, beginning in 1999. It has increasingly shifted away from Chinese investments due to US sanctions against China.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. In March 2024, Zhang's personal wealth was estimated at US$40.2 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the second-richest person in China, after Zhong Shanshan. On November 4, 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights.
U.S. WeChat Users Alliance (USWUA) v. Trump was a court case pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction on September 20, 2020, blocking the Trump administration's ban order against WeChat based on concerns raised about harm to First Amendment rights and the hardships imposed on a minority community using the app as a primary means of communication. The lawsuit was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the video sharing social network TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography.
There are reports of TikTok censoring political content related to China and other countries as well as content from minority creators. TikTok says that its initial content moderation policies, many of which are no longer applicable, were aimed at reducing divisiveness and were not politically motivated.
In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from then-president Donald Trump, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that TikTok owner ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.
TikTok has sparked concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the Chinese government, leading to restrictions and bans in the United States.
The RESTRICT Act is a proposed law that was first introduced in the United States Senate on March 7, 2023. Introduced by Senator Mark Warner, the Act proposed that the Secretary of Commerce be given the power to review business transactions involving certain information and communications technologies products or services when they are connected to a "foreign adversary" of the United States, and pose an "undue and unacceptable risk" to the national security of the United States or its citizens.
Lemon8 is a social media app owned by ByteDance. First launched in 2020, it has been likened to Xiaohongshu.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is an act of Congress that was signed into law on April 24, 2024, as part of Public Law 118-50. It would ban social networking services within 270 to 360 days if they are determined by the president of the United States and relevant provisions to be a "foreign adversary controlled application"; the definition covers websites and application software, including mobile apps. The act explicitly applies to ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok—without the need for additional determination. It ceases to be applicable if the foreign adversary controlled application is divested and no longer considered to be controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.
The Hill and Valley Forum is a consortium of American lawmakers and venture capitalists first convened in March 2023 to combat China's influence on the US technology industry. Founded by United States–China Economic and Security Review Commission member Jacob Helberg, the working group includes Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla. The forum's initial private dinner in Washington, D.C. was held in advance of congressional testimony by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and was attended by then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr.
The America PAC is a political action committee (PAC) created by Elon Musk with the backing of a number of prominent tech businessmen to support Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.