The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
Few people would disagree that America’s largest technology companies hold unprecedented power over our economy, public discourse, and daily lives. For years, conservatives have rightly pointed out the dangers of concentrated power in Silicon Valley, particularly when it is used to suppress political speech and stifle competition. The critical question has never been whether Big Tech needs accountability, but how it should be achieved.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration has chosen a path of radical, ideologically driven deconstruction that threatens to cripple America’s most innovative companies, weaken our national security, and hand a decisive advantage to our primary global adversary: China. Their legal war on Big Tech is not a good faith effort to protect consumers or promote competition; it is a progressive campaign to substitute government control for free market success.
A Crusade Against American Success
Led by Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan and Department of Justice (DOJ) Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the administration has launched a sprawling antitrust assault against nearly every major American technology leader. The DOJ is suing Google over its search and advertising businesses. The FTC has sued Amazon, alleging it uses monopolistic practices against third-party sellers, and previously attempted to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Apple is facing a DOJ lawsuit over its App Store policies, and the FTC continues to challenge Meta’s past acquisitions.
This legal blitz abandons the decades-old “consumer welfare standard,” a cornerstone of American antitrust law that President Reagan championed. For generations, the government had to prove a company’s actions actually harmed consumers through higher prices, reduced quality, or less innovation. The Biden administration’s enforcers have replaced this common-sense standard with a simple, dangerous ideology: big is bad. They are not targeting consumer harm; they are targeting success itself.
This approach views large, profitable companies not as evidence of American ingenuity and efficiency, but as inherently suspect institutions that must be broken apart by government bureaucrats. It is a philosophy that punishes companies for building products that millions of people choose to use every day.
The Conservative Path: Competition, Not Control
There is a smarter, conservative approach to tech accountability. Instead of empowering regulators to dismantle successful companies, we should focus on policies that foster genuine competition and protect fundamental freedoms like free speech.
The real problem for most conservatives is not that these companies are large, but that they engage in specific, harmful behaviors. This includes politically biased content moderation, de-platforming of dissenting voices, and using their market power to crush emerging startups. A targeted approach would use existing laws to punish clear anti-competitive actions and demand transparency in how platforms moderate content.
This is precisely the strategy President Donald J. Trump pursued. His administration’s DOJ initiated the original antitrust lawsuit against Google, but it was grounded in specific evidence of anti-competitive conduct in the search market—not a radical desire to break up the company. More importantly, President Trump’s primary focus was always on holding Big Tech accountable for censorship and protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans online. He understood the problem was political bias and suppression, not size and success.
Weakening America While Empowering China
The most dangerous consequence of the Biden administration’s antitrust war is the devastating impact on American competitiveness. We are in a global technology race with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and artificial intelligence is the main event. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta are our national champions in this contest. They are the ones with the resources, talent, and infrastructure to compete with state-backed Chinese giants like Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu.
Tying up our most important technology companies in years of politically motivated litigation drains resources that could be spent on research and development. It creates uncertainty that discourages investment and risk-taking. While American regulators work to tear down our own companies, the CCP is pouring billions into its AI initiatives, unconstrained by such self-destructive impulses. Every legal blow landed by the FTC or DOJ against an American tech leader is a victory for Beijing.
Forcing these companies to break up or radically alter their successful business models would not create a vibrant new ecosystem of small competitors. It would create a power vacuum that foreign adversaries, particularly China, are eager to fill. In the name of fighting monopolies, the Biden administration is paving the way for Chinese technological dominance.
Innovation, Not Regulation, Is the Answer
Holding Big Tech accountable is essential, but the current strategy is a profound mistake. It substitutes the judgment of government lawyers for the choices of millions of consumers and threatens to reverse decades of American technological leadership. The goal should not be to punish success, but to create an environment where new challengers can emerge and thrive.
The conservative vision for technology is clear: enforce laws against specific anti-competitive acts, demand transparency and fairness, and protect free speech. But above all, we must unleash the power of the free market to innovate. The ultimate check on any dominant company is not a regulator in Washington, D.C., but an entrepreneur in a garage with a better idea. The Biden administration’s war on Big Tech is a war on that very idea, and it is a war America cannot afford to lose.
