“The Future Is for Everyone” is an admirably spacious slogan. Meta's arrangements for managing that future are more intimate: former officials from both parties, installed where they can help the company explain itself to whichever party is in charge.

Joel Kaplan will leave next year after more than fifteen years as Mark Zuckerberg's principal Washington adviser. The succession described by Axios includes executives with Republican and Democratic backgrounds. Bipartisanship survives. It has simply found a place where the compensation is less dependent on the public finding it useful.

Zuckerberg credits Kaplan with helping keep Meta's products available to billions of people. Axios also describes his work protecting the personalized-advertising business from regulatory challenges. Both statements can be true. A service can reach billions of people while maintaining an extremely attentive relationship with the much smaller number of people positioned to regulate it. The audience gets scale. The government gets introductions.

The departing official's associates call him a consistent advocate for Zuckerberg's free-expression principles. One appreciates the precision of that possessive. There are many competing ideas of free expression in the world; a company can simplify matters by locating its own in the founder's office. Consistency becomes easier to administer when the principle has a permanent desk.

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Now the duties will spread. Dina Powell McCormick will add external affairs to an already substantial portfolio that includes AI infrastructure. Chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney, a former Trump trade official, will gain policy responsibilities. Brian Rice, a former John Kerry aide, heads US government affairs. Tucker Bounds, formerly a John McCain spokesman, leads global communications and public affairs. Meta has assembled enough past administrations to make a disagreement in the corridor sound like a presidential-library reunion.

These are professional backgrounds, not evidence of an improper favor. Their advertised usefulness is quite respectable: navigating changes in who governs. That is also why the arrangement is more revealing than the universal slogan. Everyone may enjoy the future, but someone has to recognize the people writing its rules before the reception starts.

Our public-benefit share-fund piece asked whether a corporate promise to share rewards replaces public authority. This personnel transition offers a more practical answer. Companies continue investing considerable effort in their relationship with that authority. Apparently it still matters, even when the technology is described as everyone's destiny.

Kaplan remains through the midterms and into 2027 for the handover. The continuity is reassuringly deliberate. Elections can change the party in office; Meta would prefer them not to change whether somebody in the building knows whom to call. The future is for everyone. The address book will be transferred privately.