But in the long term, all those billions of dollars will also go toward Schmidt's foreign policy visions, and Google's attempts at worldwide domination outside of Washington. Along with his book, Schmidt has attempted (and so far failed) to broker diplomatic relations with foreign nations, visiting North Korea back in January and Myanmar in March. While he has managed to drum up publicity for The New Digital Age, threatening Kim Jong-un to use the Internet (or else!) hasn't changed the country's relationship with America. Money, however, speaks louder than Schmidt's "humanitarian" words — and could lead to the type of geopolitical change he talks about in the book. Schmidt may hope to save countries from totalitarianism via Android equipped phones and Google Glass, but Assange sees the political vision differently: "... while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in 'repressive autocracies' in 'targeting their citizens,' they also say governments in 'open' democracies will see it as 'a gift' enabling them to 'better respond to citizen and customer concerns," Assange writes. "In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the 'good' societies closer to the 'bad' ones."

Whether you fall on the Schmidt or Assange side of that future, Schmidt has one big advantage: lots and lots of money. That, along with the right people to peddle his views in DC, means our Google overlords are more powerful than ever before.

*This post originally stated Google spent $18.2 billion on lobbying.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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