A long-shot 2028 run by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox could force tech and social media into the center of the presidential debate.
At the end of a forum in Washington this week dedicated to addressing political violence and featuring Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Spencer Cox of Utah, moderator Savannah Guthrie asked if one of the participants intended to run for president.
“One of us is not,” Cox quickly responded, meaning himself. He should change his mind.
And not because Cox would be a Good Republican who’d no more indulge in Trumpian race-baiting about “filthy, dirty, disgusting” migrants than he would bring a stash of Maker’s Mark with him to the White House.
No, it’s not the teetotaling Mormon, father-of-four who wants to “disagree better” and modeled bipartisan collegiality through his earnest chat with Shapiro who’d have the most impact on the 2028 campaign.
It’s the other Cox, the one full of righteous indignation about the impact of social media on children and phone addiction on all of us, who believes tech companies should be confronted like the opioid makers of yesteryear. It’s the second-term governor who harnessed the internet earlier than most of his contemporaries, and still fights his Twitter addiction, but who has since become radicalized and, by his own admission, is now fully “a tech pessimist.”
Cox received his loudest applause at the forum, which was held at the National Cathedral, when he said: “If you want to be angry at someone, be angry at the social media companies. These are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the history of the world, and they’re profiting off of destroying our kids and destroying our country.”
There are few political figures in either party more passionate about the impact of technology. And that just happens to be the most consequential, if amorphous, issue looming ahead of the next election. As concern over algorithms gives way to panic over artificial intelligence, it’s clear every candidate will need an answer on what’s poised to reshape education, the economy, geopolitics, warfare and, oh, most every other facet of American life.
That includes our democracy itself. I’ve had more than one would-be presidential candidate privately concede to me that they’ve begun wrestling with whether democracy and social media are compatible.
This isn’t to say the 50-year-old Cox has all the answers or that somebody so radicalized would even be the best to determine how to address an enormously complicated and nuanced challenge.
The matter of whether we control technology or it controls us, however, is only becoming more fundamental. And if you don’t believe me, consider how you feel each time you find yourself unconsciously reaching for your phone like a three-pack-a-day smoker — or, worse, how you feel watching your kid stare into his or her preferred screen.
Cox would be a long shot for the GOP nomination, to put it charitably. However, he’d force the debate over technology into the main currents of the next election, same as those contenders who thrust campaign finance or the deficit into past races.
As with other cause candidates, the Utahn would find himself bathed in media attention, the longshot-with-a-slingshot David confronting the market-cap Goliaths of our time.
Cox would likely have some company across the aisle.
While the Republican used the Cathedral event to say he’d support a 16-and-under ban on social media access of the sort the Australians just passed, there was a Democrat who beat Cox to the punch earlier in the day.
“I think it’s time for America to pick up its game and do the same,” said former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel about the Australian law. “Look, when it comes to our adolescents, it’s either gonna be adults or the algorithms. One of them is going to raise the kids.”
Emanuel, a believer in the Clinton theory that every election is about the future, is convinced 2028 will be more about life after Donald Trump than the present. And he’s taken note of Cox’s denunciations of social media, including the governor’s pleas after the Charlie Kirk killing that people get offline and “touch grass.” (When I joked with Emanuel at the time that he and Cox, the Jew and the Mormon, could form a unity ticket, Rahm said: “We do both believe in Zion.”)
This is all to say there could be two media-savvy candidates in each party’s primary taking a hard line on what’s hardly a niche issue now, a modern-day reform version of how Bill Bradley and John McCain teamed up on campaign finance reform in the 2000 primary.
Cox and Emanuel would force their competitors to formulate their own positions on the industry that’s single-handedly propping up the stock market while also creating both enormous opportunities and difficulties across every element of society. If you read Puck journalist Peter Hamby’s dispatch from the Democratic Governors Association conference earlier this month, you’ll see how many in politics today don’t know what to say about the topic.
After Cox this week came out in favor of the Australia youth ban, Shapiro expressed unease with going quite so far — which was, notably, met with silence from a heavily liberal audience.
“I understand where Gov. Shapiro is coming from, I was there once,” Cox responded, adding, “the damage is just too great on our kids now, we don’t give them a driver’s license when they’re 12.”
Which prompted more applause.
The data keeps piling up.
This week, a handful of strategists from both parties released a report from a poll of men aimed at understanding “the Manosphere,” which revealed that a majority of males sampled said their social media feeds had gone more extreme — and that the most controversial “content reaches the men who are online the most, especially young Black and Hispanic men.”
As for 2028, it’s particularly important that Republicans have a candidate willing to force the big tech question into the campaign. That’s because the Trump White House has taken such a laissez-faire approach toward AI and really any check on the Silicon Valley titans. It has let crypto companies run rampant while the Trump family cashes in, allowed Nvidia to sell chips to China (thus giving up our best advantage in the AI race), and generally offered tech moguls carte blanche so long as they pay tribute to Mr. Trump. The administration is not only not wrestling with a great dilemma of our times — they’re acting like it doesn’t exist.
Add it all up — AI’s impact on jobs and power bills, plus the phone’s impact on kids — and you can see the wave of backlash building ahead of the next presidential election.
And with apologies to Steve Bannon — I know Cox is hardly your preferred populist avatar to take up the fight against the broligarchs — there’s no better-positioned figure to take up the cause.
While he first drew widespread national attention for his remarks after the Kirk killing, Cox has been aggressive as governor: Utah is suing Snapchat, has banned phones in classrooms and is now, I’m told by a source close to Cox, crafting legislation to pursue a digital tax a la the sin taxes on tobacco and alcohol.
The governor has also been in close contact with mogul Frank McCourt’s group, Project Liberty, which is focused on addressing data ownership. Cox is most consumed with the societal impact of technology, though, whether it’s on children’s brains or adult loneliness. He’s met with a variety of thinkers on the issue, ranging from The Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt to Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who last month urged people to “wake the f up” about AI risks.
Mostly, though, it’s personal for Cox, who’s watched the impact of phones on his own children, those of his contemporaries and himself.
“We all thought, at least I did, that social media would bring us together, and it has been the exact opposite,” he told me at the National Governors Association conference this past summer.
So what can be done?
Run, Spencer, Run.
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