As Mr. Klynge was exiting the building, the executive called his mobile phone to ask him to wait. Mr. Klynge thought there had been a change of heart.
Not so.
“When I got back to the conference room he gave me a goody bag with a T-shirt and cap of the particular company,” he said. He said Danish officials “laughed about this incident a lot afterward, but it says a lot about the mind-set of some of the companies in Silicon Valley.”
Some tech companies said they were beginning to better understand Mr. Klynge’s job.
Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, said he spoke regularly with Mr. Klynge, whose appointment he said gave Denmark “outsized influence.”
“If I want to compare notes on technology issues, he’s one of the best-informed people possible,” Mr. Smith said.
Peter Münster, a spokesman for Facebook, said, “It did take a few meetings before we understood the scope and intentions embedded in Klynge’s role.” Now, he added, “we have a good and constructive dialogue with the Danish tech ambassador, who speaks frankly, expressing both criticism and positive feedback.”
Google and Apple declined to comment, while Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Klynge said Denmark should not be overlooked. As a European Union member, it can influence regulations on privacy, competition, content moderation, taxes and misinformation. (He said he often had to clarify to tech executives that he worked separately from one of Denmark’s better-known officials, Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s top antitrust enforcer, who has levied billions of dollars in fines against the tech industry.)
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/technology/denmark-tech-ambassador.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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