that's a touch plate switch, so the lamp contains a hidden black box with a microcontroller that sits in a tight loop waiting to detect your finger
Project 62 Valencia lamp wasting 2.5 watts.
at least the circuit board that connects live AC to a metal plate on an ungrounded frame does have decent isolation :P
luckily I rewire all lamps in my house as soon as I buy them, to convert to 24v dc
this lamp will end up using less power while ON than it did while off in the factory configuration