The Invisible Tech Behemoth

The problem, as the Biden administration tech-policy adviser Tim Wu might say, is the bigness.

This month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to attempt to undo some 40 years of growth-at-all-costs economic policy, targeting various kinds of monopolies, including airlines, meatpackers, hearing-aid manufacturers, and, of course, technology firms. “Capitalism without competition,” he declared, is “exploitation.” The executive order comes as lawmakers and policy makers are proposing big changes to antitrust law and the enforcement of existing competition rules. Taken in sum, the myriad efforts under way in Washington, D.C., raise the specter that companies may soon have to answer for their sheer size, rather than what they do with it.

Few industries are more at risk from this regulatory fervor than Big Tech (the problem is right there in the moniker, after all). Facebook, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon, and Apple are in different stages of public villainy. However, like technology itself, antitrust scrutiny isn’t yet