Since leaving the White House, McLaughlin served as executive director at Civic Commons — a nonprofit dedicated to apps for local government — and taught a class at Stanford Law School.

McLaughlin was a key voice in Google’s internal debates about its operations in China five years ago, which is a huge issue for social media companies.

You can find McLaughlin’s Tumblr, where he posts a few photos a month, here.

New York-based Tumblr runs 36.5 million blogs and has a staff of about 60.

Jared Cohen (pictured here), who has gained fame as the State Department’s social networking phenom and the youngest member of its policy planning staff, is considering taking a job at Google in a strategic policy role, said sources close to the situation.

Cohen has been in discussions with Google very recently about going there, those sources said, although it is not a done deal.

In other words, the revolving door between Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley keeps on turning, especially Googlers.

Katie Jacobs Stanton, who worked for both Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO), recently left a job at the State Department to return to California to head international efforts for Twitter.

Google’s top policy wonk, Andrew McLaughlin, serves as deputy chief technology officer.

Sonal Shah, who worked at Google.org, is now director of the White House’s new Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

And Sumit Agarwal, who was head of Google’s mobile product management, became the deputy assistant secretary of defense for outreach and social media in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Coincidentally, for their Twitter-as-statecraft fame, the 28-year-old Cohen, along with Alec Ross, a senior adviser for innovation at the State Department, got the full New York Times magazine profile treatment earlier this month in a piece titled “Digital Diplomacy.”

Wrote Jesse Lichtenstein:

“Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors. Ross and Cohen’s style of engagement–perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana–reflects the hybrid nature of this approach…They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft.”

If it sounds a lot twee in a policy wonk way, it definitely is, which should fit in well at Google, which could use a few friendlier faces to show off in Washington, where some regulators are eyeballing the search giant’s growing power closely.

In the piece, Cohen is seen as playing the organizer of a private dinner Secretary Hillary Clinton had with some Silicon Valley power players, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, earlier this year.

He and Ross have also been leading technology delegations abroad to places like Iraq, Haiti, Russia and the Congo, chock full of Internet leaders.

Cohen, who attended Stanford University and was also a Rhodes scholar, was actually appointed by the Bush administration’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

He is also the author of a book, “Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East.”

Google and Cohen both declined to comment.

But to give you an idea of their close relationship, here is a video of Cohen and Ross in a conversation with Schmidt at the the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., in March:

McLaughlin wouldn’t comment to the Post and the spokesperson said his email exchanges with Google had no effect on U.S. policy, but a review of email released yesterday by the White House showed McLaughlin discussed with Googlers how to combat digital piracy, organize relief efforts for Haiti, and promote “Net Neutrality,” which Google strongly favors but which is opposed by other corners of the tech world, such as broadband providers.

In particular, Post writer Todd Shields highlights one email exchange McLaughlin had with Google veep Vint Cerf regarding net neutrality:

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Previously on Digital Daily: Google Buzz Exposes White House Deputy CTO (And Ex-Googler)

Among the many Gmail subscribers to have their private contacts exposed in the Google Buzz privacy fiasco was Andrew McLaughlin, the Obama administration’s deputy chief technology officer and Google’s former head of global public policy.

“So I see a big default privacy flaw in Buzz,” McLaughlin wrote in a Feb. 10 Buzz post uncovered by Breitbart’s Big Government (click on image below to enlarge). “By default, Buzz adds the people you e-mail most as your ‘followers’, and then lists them on your public Google Profile Page. In other words, Google exposes the people you e-mail most, by default, to the world. That violates my sense of expectations–I expect the list of people I e-mail most to be kept private. What should I do? I guess I don’t really have an option other than turning off Buzz. Any other ideas?”

Sure. Here’s one: How about no longer using your former employer’s email service to communicate privately with the folks you once worked with as a lobbyist for Google?
Certainly seems unwise given the mandate of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

[Buzz image credit: Breitbart's Big Government]

It will be like they never left the Googleplex in Silicon Valley if this Washington, D.C., invasion of execs from the search giant keeps up.

The fourth new geek in town is Sumit Agarwal (pictured here), who was head of Google’s mobile product management and has become the deputy assistant secretary of defense for outreach and social media in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Phew! But what’s that? Poking with M-16s? The Berlin Wall? Tweeting troop movements?

In any case, it’s interesting to see so many key appointments in the tech arena going to one company, especially one so immersed now in national and international policy issues.

And especially since Google (GOOG) has begun spending so much money in D.C. on lobbying.

As I reported recently:

According to the most recent public reports filed by Google with the Senate on its lobbying spending there, the search giant has significantly increased its outlay in 2009 from the previous two years.

In 2007, Google spent a total of $1.52 million, which rose to $2.84 million in 2008.

And the 2009 total? Just over $4 million, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database.

That’s probably no surprise given the ever-growing range of issues of concern to U.S. regulators due to Google’s increasing number of deals and because of many new and often controversial initiatives the company is forging forward with.

From pushing for approval of its DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 to its failed attempt to strike a search and online partnership with Yahoo (YHOO) in 2008 to last year’s wrangling with book publishers to 2010’s expected tussle over its $750 million purchase of mobile advertising start-up AdMob, Google’s presence in D.C. is only going to rise as its ambitions expand.

That’s still $2.7 million less than archrival Microsoft (MSFT) spent in 2009, but Google has been gaining on the software giant in a very short time.

In any case, these are former Googlers, who might or might not return to the mother ship at the end of their tenure.

But, for those keeping track, Agarwal will join:

* Former business development and product exec Katie Jacobs Stanton, who was the Obama administration’s director of citizen participation and now works in the State Department.

* Google’s top policy wonk, Andrew McLaughlin, who serves as deputy chief technology officer.

* And Sonal Shah, who worked at Google.org and is now director of the White House’s new Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

“We’re in this for the long haul. In the years to come, we’ll be making significant and growing investments in China. Our launch of google.cn, though filtered, is a necessary first step toward achieving a productive presence in a rapidly changing country that will be one of the world’s most important and dynamic for decades to come. To some people, a hard compromise may not feel as satisfying as a withdrawal on principle, but we believe it’s the best way to work toward the results we all desire.”

– Google Senior Policy Counsel Andrew McLaughlin, January 2006

Whether it’s an act of moral bravery or the first step in a commercial retreat it had been planning anyway, Google’s “new approach to China” isn’t going to fly with that country’s government. Beijing clearly has no intention of granting Google’s request to allow unfiltered Internet searches.

“We must make truly improving our capacity to guide opinion on the Internet a major measure for protecting Internet security,” Wang Chen, director of China’s State Council Information Office, said Wednesday. Our country is at a crucial stage of reform and development, and this is a period of marked social conflicts….Properly guiding Internet opinion is a major measure for protecting Internet information security. Internet media must always make nurturing positive, progressive mainstream opinion an important duty.”

And then there was this remark from foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, offered up a regular ministry briefing: “China’s Internet is open. China welcomes international Internet enterprises to conduct business in China according to law.”

Chen and Yu didn’t mention Google (GOOG) by name, but their messages were clearly intended for the search giant. China has laws restricting content and if Google refuses to abide by them, well, there will be “far-reaching consequences”–as the company’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, recently called them.

“Far-reaching consequences” not for China, but for Google, which may now be forced to shut down Google.cn and potentially the rest of its China operations as well, ceding its claim to the world’s largest Internet market to Chinese rival Baidu.

Mr. McLaughlin, who was Google’s head of global public policy and government affairs, is leaving Silicon Valley for Washington, D.C., to become a deputy to Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, who’s in charge of advancing the president’s tech agenda.

The White House has declined to confirm Mr. McLaughlin’s appointment. Google has confirmed he’s left the company but remained mum about where he’s going.

On Wednesday, two consumer advocacy groups sent a letter to the White House asking administration officials to reconsider hiring Mr. McLaughlin, since he previously oversaw Google’s lobbying efforts.

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