Biden Executive Order Takes on Big Tech Monopolies. Will It Be Enough? – The New Republic

On Friday, the White House announced a potentially important, if modest, effort to further tamp down the power of the technology industry. This time the instrument is an executive orderthe kind of wide-ranging declaration that often gets called sweeping or major, though its efficacy may take years to gaugethat covers everything from competition in the economy to drug prices to reforming a tech sector that is defined by a handful of seemingly unstoppable titans. Offering a mix of general recommendations, requests for action from other government agencies, and new administration policies, the Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy may be just what our overconsolidated economic system needs. But in tackling the power of a tech sector that has not only wrested control of the economy but remade it in its own data-hungry image, the Biden administration is still throwing pebbles at its enemys parapets. The tech industry has had 20 years to establish a stranglehold over our personal data, attention, and consumer choice. To tackle these problems, we need more, much more.

Despite promising to take on the power of Big Tech, President Joe Biden and his administration have so far taken a cautiously incrementalist approach. Hes appointed tough industry critics like Lina Khan to be commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, but he has yet to name a head of the Justice Departments antitrust division, a key role for any future enforcement action. In Congress, Democrats have introduced six smallish antitrust bills, but their path out of the House is murky, as ongoing disputes between Republicans and Democrats over how to fight this legislative battle mean that the final bills could look much different than they did in committeeif they make it to a floor vote at all. (It doesnt help that some Silicon Valleyadjacent Democratic politicians, like Representative Ted Lieu and Representative Ro Khanna, have been less than supportive of the bills.)

As federal and congressional leadership lag, states have forged ahead, with dozens of attorneys general coming together in lawsuits like one, filed this week, accusing Google of anti-competitive practices. Other ongoing antitrust suits include one against Amazon over pricing issues; another lawsuit (this one with DOJ participation) against Google; and two others against Facebook that a judge recently threw out. In this proliferating legal war against Big Techpremised on a lack of competition and companies abusing their monopoly statusany of these cases could yield billion-dollar fines for one of the tech giants. But fines are easily paid. Whether these suits can lead to meaningful reform, to breaking up companies and redirecting business practices away from the current dominant model of user surveillance and bulk data collectionthat is far less clear. As with proposed legislation in the House, bipartisan legal efforts may be sundered on the altar of competing partisan priorities, with Republicans focusing on alleged censorship and Democrats more focused on economic competition and user rights.

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Biden Executive Order Takes on Big Tech Monopolies. Will It Be Enough? - The New Republic