The political assault on Big Tech is now in full swing

Axios goes big on the mounting political woes for America’s tech giants: “Tech behemoths Google, Facebook and Amazon are feeling the heat from the far-left and the far-right, and even the center is starting to fold.”

I mean, like I have been saying — see here, here, and here — for the past year. This issue really came to my attention when Elizabeth Warren attacked Apple and Google for using their size to “snuff out” competition.

And this summer has seen an acceleration with key events and moments including the EU hitting Google with a $3 billion antitrust fine; President Trump’s constant attacks on Amazon; Google’s firing of memo-writing engineer and amateur biologist James Damore; the release of the Democrats’ “Better Deal” agenda; Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods; and Trump adviser Steve Bannon and conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson both calling for Google to be regulated like a public utility. (See more in my new The Week column.)

From issues including privacy, free expression and speech, competition, economic power, and technological unemployment, “criticism over the companies’ size, culture and overall influence in society is getting louder as they infiltrate every part of our lives,” Axios reporter David McCabe writes. And of course, much of this backlash is ideological, from anti-business leftists who would love to nationalize the internet to Trumpopulists who don’t like the open, globalist values of Silicon Valley.

 
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The political assault on Big Tech is now in full swing

 
Πηγή: American Enterprise Institute