Elizabeth Warren’s Proposed Breakup Of Big Tech Only Reveals Her Ignorance And Hypocrisy

Massachusetts senator and presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren recently released a missive titled “Here’s how we can break up Big Tech.” I have studied it, and I conclude the only thing that needs breaking up is the agglomeration of misunderstandings in Warren’s mind.

“Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn’t exist,” says the senator. “Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world. It’s a great story — but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets.”

Warren claims the government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft during the 1990s “helped clear a path for Internet companies like Google and Facebook to emerge.” She concludes it ought to act similarly now, this time with legislation and direct executive force.

Her proposed laws would set an arbitrary marker of $25 billion of annual global revenue. At or above this, a company would be designated as a “platform utility,” which seems to mean nothing except that the Warren administration would interfere with its business in various ways. The administration’s henchmen, if they deemed a “platform utility” insufficiently compliant, would sue it and fine it.

She promises further to “appoint regulators who are committed to using existing tools to unwind anti-competitive mergers.” By way of example, she proposes divesting Amazon of Whole Foods and Zappos, Facebook of WhatsApp and Instagram, and Google of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick.