October 22, 2020 | The Hill
How Big Tech factors into the US-China geopolitical competition
October 22, 2020 | The Hill
How Big Tech factors into the US-China geopolitical competition
Excerpt
On Oct. 6, the House Judiciary Committee issued a report calling for new antitrust regulations to rein in Big Tech. This report comes after a 15-month antitrust probe into technology firms Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook — and with it, findings that the tech giants all hold monopoly power.
Congress is making the wrong call — not because of what was in the House report, but because of what was not: These 450 pages, the antitrust probe, and the national conversation about Big Tech writ large ignore the strategic context. They assume that the U.S. system sits in a vacuum; that the alternative to Big Tech is small, or smaller, tech.
It is not. The alternative to U.S. Big Tech is China’s Big Tech.
Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic are senior fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) with a focus on China policy, and the co-founders of Horizon Advisory, a consulting firm focused on the implications of China’s competitive approach to geopolitics. Follow Emily on Twitter @edelabruyere.