This is a very interesting appointment, and brings about an interesting question on government appointments. Without knowing anything about Michelle Lee, my fi

This is a very interesting appointment, and brings about an interesting question on government appointments. Without knowing anything about Michelle Lee, my first thought was, "Great, this is someone who actually knows something about the topic, rather than some political hack!" But then I switched to, "Didn't I think the same way when banking execs went to jobs in the Treasury?" At what point is this industry capturing the regulators that should be watching them? This was a big enough problem in Japan that they forbid execs from regulating the industries that they used to work in. My sense is in this case it's still probably a net positive. Looking only at her LinkedIn profile, it seems like she was a technologist first, then a lawyer, then a Google GC. Seems like the right intellectual background. We will see if she has the political savvy to negotiate a large bureaucracy. For all of our sake I hope she's able to pull it off!