We Must Sustain America’s Big Tech Engines of Innovation

Regulating Big Tech firms involves conundrums. As President Biden recently described, many Americans are concerned that technology giants such as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft may be threatening privacy, fueling misinformation, fostering political polarization, negatively impacting the development of young people, and possibly exacerbating our society’s economic disparities. In response, political leaders from both parties and regulatory officials are clamoring for corporate breakups as a panacea for controlling Big Tech. By contrast, judicial authorities have voiced skepticism about regulatory overreach.

Regulatory debates, however, are missing a key point: Breaking up Big Tech companies could trigger unintended, and possibly irreparable, collateral damage to America’s quest to remain the world’s leader in new technologies. Regulators must grasp the reality that, in today’s voraciously competitive digital world, global preeminence requires Big Tech firms to operate at the frontier of emerging technologies and harness the synergistic co-evolution of research, product development, and manufacturing. 

America’s Big Tech firms must retain the muscle to compete toe-to-toe with overseas giants such as China’s Alibaba, Baidu, TikTok and Huawei, South Korea’s Samsung and LG, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Breaking up America’s Big Tech companies could unintentionally alter the global technology landscape, thereby weakening America’s global competitiveness and our national security.