Monthly Archives: May 2021

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Mike Lee speaks with delegates attending the Utah Republican Partys 2021 Organizing Convention at the Maverik Center in West Valley City on Saturday, May 1, 2021.

By Christian Vanderhooft | The Public Forum

| May 16, 2021, 12:00 p.m.

On May 12, the Senate Commerce Committee voted in favor of Lina Khans nomination to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Khan is the author of the influential Yale Law Journal article, Amazons Antitrust Paradox, which called for breaking up Amazon, and later served as counsel for the House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee, where she published a report accusing Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google of acting as monopolies. Giving her a seat on the FTC, which investigates businesses for antitrust violations, is quite simply a nightmare for Big Tech.

Eight Republicans on the committee voted in favor of her nomination. But Sen. Mike Lee voted against her.

Lee likes to talk the talk when it comes to Big Tech. Earlier this year, he wrote that Big Tech had divide[d] the nation, undermine[d] fundamental liberties, and distort[ed] the market. He referred to them as a corporatist nightmare of censorship and hypocrisy and claimed that he had repeatedly warned of the dangers posed by Big Tech.

But he also argued new antitrust laws were unnecessary and a non-starter. Instead, our current laws were sufficient: Our antitrust enforcers [have been] asleep at the wheel, he complained, but if properly enforced, our current laws are more than up to the task of policing anti-competitive conduct.

Of course, as soon as President Biden nominated someone who was actually eager to enforce those laws, Sen. Lee balked.

It is simply hypocritical for Sen. Lee to pretend to take on Big Tech, while simultaneously doing all he can to protect them from facing any consequences for their monopolistic behavior. Utah voters should remember that, whatever his rhetoric, in a choice between big businesses and everyday people, Lee will always choose business.

Christian Vanderhooft, Draper

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Letter: Sen. Lee pretends to take on Big Tech, while doing all he can to protect them - Salt Lake Tribune

Would you like to read a U.S. senators book about antitrust law? No? How about two U.S. senators books about antitrust law?

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, recently published books with a combined 825 pages about the history of Americas skepticism of large and powerful corporations.

I read them both and wouldnt recommend that other mortals follow my lead.

But the books are remarkable if only for what these senators on opposite sides of the political spectrum agree on: They want tougher regulation, new laws, more aggressive judges and citizen movements to tame what they see as Americas too-big business elite, especially technology powers like Google, Facebook and Amazon. A shorthand for these two books is that Teddy Roosevelt was good and big tech is bad.

I dont want to draw too much of a false equivalence. Ms. Klobuchars Antitrust is deeply researched and comprehensive. (Maybe too comprehensive.) Mr. Hawleys The Tyranny of Big Tech is largely an incoherent mess. But let me explain some of what I learned from reading them:

The senators agree that big is bad. One of the strangest sights in modern American politics is how powerful tech companies like Google and Facebook have generated bipartisan hatred. They have few friends. Certainly not these writers. To them, the power of tech companies is emblematic of what goes wrong when big corporations are left mostly alone to do what they want. Its weird, really, how alike they sound.

Mr. Hawleys book opens with an anecdote of a 2019 meeting with Mark Zuckerberg in which the senator says he challenged Facebooks boss to break up his company. (Zuckerberg said no, not surprisingly.) The tech barons have risen to power on the back of an ideology that blesses bigness and concentrated power in the economy and government, Mr. Hawley writes.

And Ms. Klobuchar: The sheer number of mergers and acquisitions, outsized monopoly power and grotesque exclusionary conduct in the Big Tech sector exemplifies what is going on with the power of BIG.

Quite similar, no?

Mr. Hawley and Ms. Klobuchar are channeling a view among some economists and legal scholars that the accelerating concentration of many American industries is a root cause of many problems, including income inequality. In this view, if U.S. laws more effectively enforced competition, Americans would have better health care, cheaper cellphone bills and more control over what happens to our digital data.

Wow, they love Teddy Roosevelt. Both senators are nostalgic for when the former president challenged the big corporate barons of his day in railroads, oil, finance and other industries. (This view of history, but especially Mr. Hawleys, is a little off base.)

The point of the hero worship is to say that U.S. law and the American public throughout history have fought back against companies they felt were getting too powerful. The senators want to bring back that spirit of both citizen and government rebellion against corporate bigness. This is also a point that the law professor and antimonopoly advocate Zephyr Teachout made effectively in her book on corporate monopolies last year. (Yes, there are a lot of books about antitrust.)

If you want to read at length about the Pullman Strike of 1894 and the Grange movement opposing agricultural monopolies after the Civil War, then Ms. Klobuchar has the book for you. Both senators are trying to make people see and care about the consequences of corporate monopolies in their lives. Their shared message is that people who feel that the system and economy arent working for them should be engaged about antitrust law.

The best idea: Stop calling it antitrust. Ms. Klobuchar says that the word is an artifact of 19th-century corporate giants like Standard Oil and is meaningless to 21st-century Americans. Shes right. Ms. Klobuchar says that we should instead start talking about competition policy, monopolies or simply bigness. And yes, Ms. Klobuchar acknowledges that her book is titled Antitrust.

What about Congress? Both senators agree that the government watchdogs and courts have failed to restrain big companies from getting even bigger and abusing their power. Neither one takes enough time to blame themselves and their peers in Congress for this.

It is the job of legislatures to write laws that tell companies what they can and cant do, and to empower government watchdogs like the Department of Justice with money and authority to enforce the rules. In other words, THIS IS YOUR JOB, SENATORS. In their books, the senators liberally mention bills that they have proposed to restrain big tech companies. They are less forthcoming in talking about failures to pass those bills or whether they were good ideas in the first place.

Ms. Klobuchar, for example, led legislation in 2017 that would have forced internet companies like Facebook to disclose what organizations were spending on political ads, similar to the disclosures for conventional media. It hasnt passed.

The senators are best when they talk about themselves. Ms. Klobuchar talks about relatives who emigrated from Slovenia at the turn of the 19th century and worked in mines with terrible conditions and poor wages. In her telling, she wouldnt be where she is today without ordinary citizens fighting against big, bad companies and petitioning for laws to better restrain monopolies and provide genuine competition for their labor.

Mr. Hawley is most effective when he talks about his anxieties as a parent. Like many of us, he spends too much time on his phone and says his children have noticed. He agonizes when his young son is drawn to smartphones and tablets, and he tries to be more conscious about the time and attention his family devotes to screens.

Im not sure Mr. Hawleys beef has much to do with the power of big tech companies rather than the general brokenness of our brains thanks to our constant access to gizmos. The effects of screen time arent so clear. But Mr. Hawley has some ideas that are worth listening to: Emphasize real-life communities, not only ones we engage with through screens. The government should intervene to ban techniques like websites that let people scroll forever without end and automated recommendations that feed us one video after another from YouTube or TikTok.

Recommended reading: I wouldnt hand either senators book to people who are curious about why they pay so much for medicine or worry about their kids being hooked on Instagram. Instead Ill suggest two other works that tread similar ground but are shorter, more readable and already influential among people who care deeply about powerful corporations effect on the world.

Tim Wus 2018 book, The Curse of Bigness, is a short, breezy and captivating history of American monopolies and the risk he sees from todays powerful corporations. (Did I mention that its short?) Lina Khans 2017 law school review paper, Amazons Antitrust Paradox, was an intellectual cannonball that questioned decades of development in U.S. law and how it failed to account for the influence of new corporate powers like Amazon.

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Antitrust by Amy Klobuchar, and The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley - The New York Times

Wall Street followed up a three-day losing streak with a broad stock market rally Thursday powered by Big Tech companies and banks.

The S&P 500 notched a 1.2% gain, clawing back almost half of its loss from a day earlier, when it had its biggest one-day drop since February. Even so, the benchmark index is on track for a 2.8% weekly decline, which would be its largest since January. The other major indexes were also on pace for sharp weekly declines, despite recouping some of their losses.

Technology stocks, which were hurt badly earlier in the week as investors fretted about signs of rising inflation, were among the bigger gainers.

Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Googles parent company all rose. Financial companies also did well. JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab and Capital One Financial each rose more than 2%.

In a switch from Monday, the energy sector was the only loser in the S&P 500 as oil prices fell sharply. Its not uncommon for markets to reverse direction after sharp gains or losses over a period of days as investors reassess markets and pause during periods of volatility.

Investors have kind of gotten conditioned about when theres volatility and when there are pullbacks: step in and buy the dip, and you will be rewarded in short order, said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

The S&P 500 gained 49.46 points to 4,112.50. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 433.79 points, or 1.3%, to 34,021.45. The Nasdaq, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, climbed 93.31 points, or 0.7%, to 13,124.99.

Smaller company stocks, which for most of this year had outgained the broader market, also recovered some of their losses from earlier in the week. The Russell 2000 index picked up 35.81 points, or 1.7%, to 2,170.95.

Recent economic reports have left many investors uneasy. Last weeks jobs report showed fewer employers hiring than had been expected, and on Thursday the government reported that wholesale prices jumped 0.6% last month, driven by higher costs for services and food. That was more than expected and the latest indication that inflation pressures are mounting.

Rising prices reflect growing economic activity after last years global shutdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic. However investors worry inflation might disrupt the recovery or prompt central banks to withdraw stimulus and near-zero interest rates.

The capital markets are clearly grappling in a tug of war, said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

Investors have been questioning whether rising inflation will be something transitory, as the Federal Reserve has said, or something more durable that the Fed will have to address. Currently, the central bank has maintained low interest rates in order to help the economic recovery, but concerns are growing that it will have to shift its position if inflation starts running too hot.

Is there something more durable being embedded within rising prices? The next several months will not likely resolve this debate, Northey said.Bond yields rose sharply this week in response to the data but pulled back slightly on Thursday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note was 1.66% compared to 1.70% the day before.

In other markets, the price for Bitcoin plunged 10% after Tesla CEO Elon Musk reversed his earlier position on the digital currency and said the electric car maker would no longer accept it as payment.

The price of U.S. crude oil fell 3.4% after a key gasoline pipeline on the East Coast was reopened late Wednesday. The price of crude oil is now down slightly for the week. Energy stocks fell along with oil prices. Occidental Petroleum slid 5.6% for the biggest loss in the S&P 500.

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Stocks climb after three days of losses, led by Big Tech - The Business Journal

Applied Finance Capital Management, an asset manager rooted in research on company valuations, has spotted attractive buying opportunities in the stock market, including some big technology companies, according to one of its founders.

Undervalued, high-quality companies are on a super sale right now, Rafael Resendes, who co-founded Applied Finance in 1995, said in a Tuesday phone interview. His stock picks include tech giants Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Facebook Inc., as well as discount stores operator Walmart Inc. and fast-food chain McDonalds Corp.

In his search for intrinsic value, Resendes says he is not after companies that appear cheap based on measures, such as price-to-book. Instead, Applied Finance makes projections about a companys profitability in part by treating research and development as an investment, rather than an expense, as done under traditional accounting rules, according to the co-founder.

U.S. stocks have been falling this week, with losses of the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +2.32% exceeding declines posted by the S&P 500 SPX, +1.49% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.06%. But while many investors have grown concerned about stretched valuations in tech stocks, Resendes says his models show growth companies have begun to look attractive this year.

He now sees a tug of war of opportunities in growth versus value, but says Applied Finance doesnt have a dog in the race between the two investment styles. Were always looking for what the undervalued stocks are, he said.

Growth stocks have been trailing value equities in 2021, a switch after outperforming for years.The Russell 1000 Growth index RLG, +1.91% has gained 1.4% this year through Wednesday, trounced by a 14.1% rise for the Russell 1000 Value index RLV, +1.28%, according to FactSet data.

We differ from probably the vast majority of people in that we dont think value is necessarily that attractive, he said. We think the easy money in value was made starting last August.

Some tech names Resendes likes have mixed performances so far in 2021. Shares of Apple AAPL, +1.98% tumbled about 7.5% this year through Wednesday, while Microsoft MSFT, +2.11% was up 7.5% and Facebook FB, +3.50% gained 10.8%.

That compares with a Nasdaq COMP gain of just 1.1% for the year through Wednesdays close, trailing an 8.2% gain for the S&P 500 and the Dows 9.7% rise.

Big tech names may be a bit more controversial in terms of buying opportunities as other investors have expressed concerns that their valuations are too high, according to Resendes. But he sees a big runway for these stocks.

Opinion: This selloff in tech is irrational even more so than last years climb

The firms mutual funds Applied Finance Select Fund, Applied Finance Explorer Fund and Applied Finance Core Fund are up double-digits this year, according to FactSet data.

The Select Fund AFVZX, +1.30%, which invests in large-cap stocks, was up 16.5% at last check for the year, FactSet data show. The Explorer Fund AFDZX, +2.23%, focused on small and midsize companies, gained 26.1% over the same stretch, while the Core Fund AFAZX, +1.44%, which primarily targets large-cap companies, was up 16.4%.

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There is a super sale in Big Tech and other high-quality stocks, says this fund manager - MarketWatch

Americans have fallen further out of love with Big Tech, the latest Axios/Harris 100 brand reputation poll shows.

Why it matters: Even though Americans were hyper-connected to their devices throughout the pandemic, their relationship with many of the world's biggest tech firms has continued on a downward trend, suggesting that people see their products as necessary evils.

Social media leaders Facebook and Twitter failed to improve their standing near the bottom of the list, despite their role in helping users stay connected through pandemic-era isolation.

Overall, companies that sell products and services to businesses and individuals like Microsoft, Apple, Sony and HP fared much better than ad-supported social media and information tech companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok and Reddit.

How it works: The Harris poll first identifies the 100 most visible companies and then ranks them based on what respondents think of them.

The big picture: Tech's reputation does not compare favorably to other industries in the poll. While sectors like pharmaceuticals, energy and financial services saw tremendous gains during the pandemic, tech and media suffered.

What to watch: Newcomers to the poll this year, like TikTok and Reddit, show that newer tech firms are becoming more visible to Americans.

Go deeper: Read the full results of our Axios/Harris 100 reputation poll and learn more about the methodology.

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Big Tech's reputation takes a pandemic plunge - Axios

In an interview last fall, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault compared theInternet giants of today platforms such as Facebook and Google to the big pollutershe fought for many years as an environmental activist.

The comparison is intriguing,perhaps even apt and it might explain how Guilbeault is going about the task now of reining in this new generation of multinational corporate behemoths. Whilethe battle Guilbeault fought before entering government was about the future of the planet, the struggle between governments and Big Tech is, in the words ofTaylor Owen, foundingdirector of The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University,"about the future of liberal democracy itself."

But that comparisonshould have reminded Guilbeault that this fight would not be easy andthat he would need as many allies as he could muster. He also might haveguessedthat being a cabinet minister with a bill to passmeans dealing with intensescrutiny ofevery statement probably unlike anything he faced in his previous career.

Now,Guilbeault and the Liberal government need to worry that their clumsy handling of Bill C-10 the first of what is supposed to be a series of moves to regulate Big Tech is going to make it even harder to win the battles ahead.

WATCH: Heritage MinisterSteven Guilbeault questioned about C-10

Amid mounting consternation about C-10, Guilbeault was summoned again by the heritage committee this week and appeared for an hour on Friday afternoon. If he was at all shaken or deterred by the events of the last few weeks, it wasn'tapparent.

The bill's basic aim is to modernizethe Broadcasting Act and bringing some of the major streaming sites such as YouTube and Netflix under the same sort of Canadian content regulations that govern traditional broadcasters. It would, for instance, ensure that those American platforms pay fees into a fund for Canadian producers.

First tabled in the House in November, the bill only really emerged as a flashpointa few weeks ago.

During committee study in April, a majority of committee members voted to remove a clause from the bill that had excluded content uploaded to social media from regulation. The argument for removing the clause was that it might have inadvertently excluded YouTube from regulation.

Butexperts soon warned that, without that exclusion, social media companies would have to scrutinize what Canadians upload, which could infringe on a citizen's freedom of expression.

Successfully navigating those concerns was going to require a careful and steady hand. But Guilbeault has gone out of his way to make things harder on himself.

First, the minister struggled in an interview with CBC's Power & Politics to explain why the change was made. Then, after insisting the government had no interest in regulating Canadians' social media activity, he suggested in another interview that social media users with a large number of followers might be regulated.

Within a day, the minister had takenthat statement back, conceding that he "should have been more precise." It's thesecond time in hisbrief ministerial career that he has had to eat his own words about the government's intentions.

Days later, Guilbeault tweeted someone else's claim that a "deliberate campaign of misinformation" was being waged by "commercial interests." That tweet ledone expert to accusethe minister of employing "Trumpian tactics" against his critics.

For all of that, Guilbeault and the government could take some solace from the fact that the bill appeared to bequite popular in Quebec, where the arts and culture community is very conscious of the need to createand preserve aspace for French-language content.

Erin O'Toole's Conservatives, apparently unconcerned about the votes they might lose in Quebec by opposing C-10, are leaning hard into the idea the bill is a threat to free speech a notion thatregisters with supporters who are ready to believe that Justin Trudeau is itching to censor their tweets.

WATCH: Erin O'Toole says he'd repeal C-10

On Friday, Conservative MP Rachael Harder pushed the Conservative argument further to suggest that the combination of clunky CanCon rules and new regulation of social media would have resulted in someone like Justin Bieber never being discovered.

(Depending on your taste in music, that might not actually count as an argument against the bill.)

Armed with anew analysis from the Department ofJusticethat said a newlyamended version of C-10 would not infringe on the charter right to freedom of speech, Guilbeault insisted that his bill would not regulate the content created by Canadians and cited polling data that suggest Canadians support the sort of platform regulation that his government is pursuing.

But NDP MP Heather McPherson practically begged the minister to show some contrition and reach out to those experts who fearthat C-10 is deeply flawed. "I have to express my disappointment in the way that you've managed the creation and the communications around this legislation," she said.

Guilbeault appeared unmoved and eventually suggested that some experts simply oppose all regulation of Internet platforms a suggestion that Michael Geist, one of the leading academicvoices on technology law in Canada, declared to be "simply false."

There's probably still a chance that C-10 will end up in some broadly acceptable form by the time it's made its waythrough the heritage committee, a third-reading vote in the House and further study in the Senate.

But C-10 is only just the start,one small piece of a larger puzzle. Guilbeault is also supposed to table legislation that would require platforms to remove hate speech and deal with other "online harms." He has promised that platforms like Facebook will soon be required to compensate news producers. AndInnovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagneis trying to overhaul digital privacy laws.

Belatedly engaged, the challenge posed by these globe-spanning platformsis broad and deep so much so that Guilbeault and his counterparts in several other Western countries have banded together to help each other confront it. That might be another similarity between the fight against climate change and the struggle to deal with Big Tech.

But that same spirit of cooperationmight inform Guilbeault's domestic approach. If he's going to get to durable solutions, he needs as much goodwill as he can muster. He needs to offer clarity. He needs to avoid alienating every informed observer.

So far, it's not going great. And it's not going to get any easier.

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Steven Guilbeault is trying to take on Big Tech. It's not going well. - CBC.ca

Rodgers Silicon Valley Acquisition CEO TJ Rodgers argues car makers are feeling the strain of the semiconductor shortage due to their inefficient supply chains.

Big Tech and top chipmakers have formed a new lobbying group that is seeking government chip manufacturing subsidies.

The Semiconductor in America Coalition, made up of chip buyers including Amazon Web Services, Apple, Google and Microsoft, and manufacturers like American Micro Devices, Intel, Nvidia and Texas Instruments, has asked Congress to provide funding for the CHIPS for America Act, which authorized domestic chip manufacturing incentives and research initiatives.

President Biden has previously asked Congress to provide $50 billion of federal money.

"Robust funding of the CHIPS Act would help America build the additional capacity necessary to have more resilient supply chains to ensure critical technologies will be there when we need them," the group said in a letter to congressional leaders.

Chip supply chains were disrupted due to production shutdowns that were implemented to help slow the spread of COVID-19.

The resulting global chip shortage has caused auto manufacturers to slash production. Automakers have asked Biden to use the Defense Production Act to reallocate chips to the sector, but the administration has balked at the request amid concerns doing so would cause other industries to face a shortfall.

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The share of chips manufactured in the U.S. has fallen from 37% in 1990 to 12% today, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, which says the decline is mostly due to subsidies offered by foreign governments to global competitors, putting American companies at a disadvantage.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will hold a summit on May 20 with companies impacted by the global chip shortage, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

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Big Tech, semiconductors team up to lobby US government on chip production funding - Fox Business

The American Dream is made possible through free enterprise, representative government, and individual liberty. That balance was upended when a handful of tech companies seduced the populace into giving up their right to privacy. Their schemes produced so much capital, Big Tech just bought off any resistance and repackaged these stooges as the #Resistance.

While we were distracted by buzzing smartphones, global corporations intruded into every aspect of our lives. As a result, Sen. Josh Hawley writes in his new book The Tyranny of Big Tech: Our republic has never been more hierarchical, more riven by class, more managed by an elite than it is today. That is corporate liberalisms legacy. But it need not be our future.

The Tyranny of Big Tech unfolds in three parts. In the first, Hawley sketches a brief history of Gilded Age monopolies. In the second, he details the 21st centurys techno-capitalist takeover. I never thought Id read a Republican author whos grasped the work of tech-futurist Jaron Lanier, but Hawleys full of surprises. The final section lays out the senators ambitious plan for antitrust legislation.

Hawley opens with the robber barons who consolidated railroad, steel, and oil monopolies at the turn of the 20th century. His story tracks two divergent philosophies: constitutional republicanism and corporate liberalism. The former is credited with defending the rights and dignity of the common men and women whose voices, he argues, the latter is crushing.

Hawley holds up Teddy Roosevelt as a defender of original republican values. He celebrates Roosevelts heroic efforts to loosen the robber barons stranglehold on America, even if that struggle failed to halt the wheels of progress.

He presents Woodrow Wilson as the face of corporate liberalism. First as a university professor, then as president, Wilson espoused a grand evolutionary vision of American society. Just as nature moves from simplicity to complexity, human society naturally progresses toward higher levels of cooperation. In this view, the international corporation emerges as the inevitable heir to earthly power.

Countering this arrogant elitism, Hawley advocates the original republican philosophy. His stated goal is to protect the ability of the working class to speak their minds and govern themselves.

Corporate liberalism, on the other hand, sold the public a new way of life based on personal choice. Ironically, corporations would leverage the fulfillment of individual desire to erode the common mans right to self-government. Hawley points to Big Tech as the culmination of this process.

The second part of Hawleys book lays out our current problem. Through the miracle of digital technology, we have become app-dependent, easily manipulated, atomized, and mutually hostile. Our personal data is mined, and our souls sold back to us in digital form. As usual, our elected leaders have been too busy counting their campaign contributions to do much about it.

Without any meaningful consent, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Twitter probe the inner lives of every person within reach, then sell that data to the highest bidder. You could argue that anyone who leaves his door unlocked deserves to get robbed, but only a shill would say the thieves should go unpunished.

Hawley does an excellent job of describing Big Techs mechanisms of surveillance and control. His chapter on the addictive nature of digital technologyperfected in the smartphoneshows how effortless it was to implement these systems. He compares app addiction to casino culture, with its clanging bells and unrealistic expectations. Each message alert, each like on social media, and each clickbait headline keeps the brains reward pathways locked in like a desiccated retiree glued to a slot machine.

For many, the results have been horrible. Hawley digs into the accumulating research on the parallel rise of digital culture and various psychological disorders. Citing social psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, he highlights the correlation between unlimited screen time and the recent spikes in teen depression, anorexia, and suicide. While hes careful to avoid definite causal relationships, he presents strong evidence that the dark side of digital tech outweighs its promise.

Hawley pulls no punches when discussing Big Techs effect on the broader social landscape, particularly in the realm of politics. He describes the conformist social networks that coalesce on Facebook and Twitter, and the blind hostility that erupts between them. Looking at the cold artificial intelligence that guides this process, Hawley wryly notes that Empathy isnt easy to code.

He calls out the open censorship and intentional manipulation of search resultstodays dominant source of informationciting psychologist Robert Epsteins conclusion that, Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections in the world since at least 2015. Thats over and above the pipeline of cash flowing from Silicon Valley to Washington DC.

What is Big Techs endgame? Hawley writes:

The twenty-first century corporate elite hail global integrationsocial, political, and economicas the great engine of progress. They prize transnational ties over any distinctly American identity. Far from empowering ordinary people, Big Tech assaulted their agency and undermined their independence. By design.

The strangest part is that everyone knows this is truethe compulsion, the manipulation, the discord, the data extractionbut no one seems to care enough to stop it. A sense of inevitability has been cultivated around technology, which Hawley traces back to the evolutionary schema touted by the early progressives. He readily acknowledges theres no going back, but against all odds, hes committed himself to trying to steer this ship in a different direction.

The books conclusion offers two parallel routes to a better society. The first is simple. In a high-tech marketplace, were forced to make healthy personal choices. Hawley urges his readers to cultivate rich communities in the real world, and holds parents responsible for shielding kids from the ubiquitous glowing eye.

The second solution is far more ambitious. At the forefront is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This statute protects tech platforms from liability for users content, while still allowing them editorial control. Its true that repealing the protection could have unintended negative consequences for smaller platforms, but so long as any tech company determines public discourse on such a large scale, there has to be accountability for silencing unwanted dissent.

Additionally, Hawley argues that Congress has to bust up the de facto monopolies held by Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google. Each of these companies has cornered its respective marketsthe public square, the marketplace, and information flowplus a bevy of other fields, in addition to huge stakes in mass communication and artificial intelligence development. The original robber barons never enjoyed this level of concentrated global power. If the European Union has the guts to stand up to Big Tech, so should we.

Across the political spectrum, antitrust sentiments are converging with tech skepticism. Hawleys book was published just a week after Sen. Amy Klobuchars Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age. She focuses much of her attention on Big Pharma, which Hawley assailed as Missouris attorney general. The serendipity is astounding. But no significant legislation will be passed without bipartisan compromise and broad public support.

Purity spirals are for social media clubs. You wouldnt find me singing in Hawleys Presbyterian church, and hed probably peg me for a granola-munching henotheist. So what? Whats important are our common interests.

True to form, dim liberals confuse such irony with hypocrisy. Since the books publication, haters have been typing out vapid headlines like Josh Hawley used lots of tech to hawk his book blasting big tech. Whats funny is that theyre only highlighting the problem. For all practical purposes, theres no other way to reach the public en masse.

Its like a man who takes a self-driving car to DC, where he protests a law that mandates autonomous vehicles. Sir, how did you get here today? asks the snarky congresswoman.The citizen shrugs and replies, What choice did I have?

Self-determination is impossible under a centralized system of control, whether it be corporate monopolies or communist rule. For a fleeting moment, the American public is being presented the opportunity to take the wheel. Can we cooperate long enough to correct the course?

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In New Book, Josh Hawley Takes On The Tyranny Of Big Tech - The Federalist