Foreign Affairs - 03.2020 - 04.2020

(Frankie) #1

116 «¬® ̄°±² ³««³°® ́


GANESH SITARAMAN is Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School and the author of
The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America.

Too Big to Prevail


The National Security Case for Breaking


Up Big Tech


Ganesh Sitaraman


W


hen executives at the biggest U.S. technology companies are
confronted with the argument that they have grown too
powerful and should be broken up, they have a ready re-
sponse: breaking up Big Tech would open the way for Chinese dominance
and thereby undermine U.S. national security. In a new era o’ great-
power competition, the argument goes, the United States cannot aord
to undercut superstar companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Alpha-
bet (the parent company o’ Google). Big as these companies are, con-
straints on them would simply allow Chinese behemoths to gain an edge,
and the United States would stand no chance o’ winning the global arti-
¥cial intelligence (³°) arms race. That technology executives would prof-
fer these arguments is not surprising, but the position is gaining traction
outside Silicon Valley; even Democratic politicians who have been critical
o¤ Big Tech, such as Representative Ro Khanna o’ California and Senator
Mark Warner o‘ Virginia, have expressed concerns along these lines.
But the national security case against breaking up Big Tech is not just
weak; it is backward. Far from competing with China, many big technol-
ogy companies are operating in the country, and their growing entangle-
ments there create vulnerabilities for the United States by exposing its
¥rms to espionage and economic coercion. At home, market concentra-
tion in the technology sector also means less competition and therefore
less innovation, which threatens to leave the United States in a worse
position to compete with foreign rivals. Rather than threatening to un-
dermine national security, breaking up and regulating Big Tech is neces-
sary to protect the United States’ democratic freedoms and preserve its
ability to compete with and defend against new great-power rivals.
Free download pdf