The Washington Post published an elaborate exposé of Google’s meticulous work in this fourth domain, illustrated in the backstage intrigues that accompanied a three-part series on internet search competition held at George Mason University’s Law and Economics Center, a "free-market–oriented" academic center that had received significant funding from Google. The meetings occurred in May 2012, just as the FTC was investigating the Google antitrust case. Reporters found that company staffers worked closely with the center, choosing pro-Google speakers and participants, many of whom were Google employees. Their efforts included "sending the center’s staff a detailed spreadsheet listing members of Congress, FTC commissioners, and senior officials with the Justice Department and state attorney general’s office." Reporters noted that the conference’s panels were dominated by "leading technology and legal experts" who forcefully rejected the need for government action against Google, "making their arguments before some of the very regulators who would help determine its fate." Many participants had no idea that Google was involved in crafting the meetings because Google and center staffers had agreed to conceal the corporation’s backstage involvement.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 402