The recent increase in economic concentration and monopoly power make the United States “ripe for dictatorship,” claims Columbia law professor Tim Wu in his new book, The Curse of Bigness. With the release of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to “break up” technology companies like Amazon and Google, fear of bigness is clearly on the rise. Professor Wu’s book adds a new dimension to that fear, arguing that cooperation between political and economic power are “closely linked to the rise of fascism” because “the monopolist and the dictator tend to have overlapping interests.” Economist Hal Singer calls this the book’s “biggest innovation.”

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On March 1, 2019, ICLE Research Fellow Alec Stapp appeared on a panel discussing “Big Brother in Big Tech” and the privacy implications associated with large tech platforms like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. This panel is part of a day-long conference— “Who’s Afraid of Big Tech”—that will explore the larger legal and policy issues that arise around the privacy, censorship, and competition concerns that have been raised about the large tech platforms. Video of the panel is embedded below.