A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is heading to California this week to meet with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and other power brokers in Hollywood and Silicon Valley to talk about China.
All ten lawmakers going on the three-day trip serve on the House select committee investigating the Chinese Communist Party, which is chaired by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the trip’s leader. The delegation has a packed schedule of private meetings from Wednesday through Friday with top tech and media industry figures.
GALLAGHER PLANS TO CALL DISNEY’S IGER, NBA’S SILVER TO TESTIFY BEFORE NEW CHINA SELECT COMMITTEE
The group will meet with Iger at the Disney lot in Los Angeles, California, on Wednesday to discuss the company’s relationship with Beijing, a source familiar with the plans told Axios. Disney has come under fire for its cozy relationship with the CCP and has been accused of ignoring Beijing’s human rights abuses and obeying censorship demands in exchange for access to the lucrative Chinese market.
The lawmakers will also convene with other producers and screenwriters to discuss China’s demands of the entertainment industry.
On Thursday, the delegation will head to Silicon Valley for meetings with Microsoft President Brad Smith and Kent Walker, Alphabet’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer. They’ll also meet with executives from Palantir and Scale AI.
The group will start Friday at Apple headquarters with Cook, who just returned last week from his first trip to China since the COVID-19 pandemic, before hosting a discussion on Russia-China relations with former Defense Secretary James Mattis and Stanford fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro.
The lawmakers will also meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, though it is not clear when.
A source familiar with the trip plans told Axios that the delegation was “intended to just hear mostly from them about how they’re thinking about various issues.”
“This can’t all be defensive,” the source said. “We also need to be thinking about offensive and how do we out-compete.”
The trip comes as U.S. lawmakers attempt to develop a cohesive policy platform to respond to intellectual property, trade, and national security issues stemming from China. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), the ranking member of the panel who is part of the California trip, has publicly conveyed optimism about the prospect of reaching bipartisan deals on China.
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Gallagher has said he plans to call Iger and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to testify before the committee on their working relationships with Beijing, though he also expressed willingness to go speak to them directly.
“I’d be even willing to go out, when it comes to Hollywood or Disney, I’d be willing to go out and sit down with them where they are, you know, engage with them in a discussion,” Gallagher told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt in January. “But we want to have a discussion in front of the American people. I think it drives the American people crazy when they see the NBA bending the knee to [Chinese premier] Xi Jinping.”
