Much Of The Assault On 'Big Tech' Is Being Driven By 'Big Telecom'

Over the last few months, Google, Amazon, and Apple have all taken a significant beating on Wall Street amidst rumblings of looming antitrust investigations by the DOJ and FTC. Google, we're told, is subject of a looming antitrust probe by the DOJ. Amazon, we've learned, is facing growing scrutiny from the FTC. Apple stock also briefly did a nose dive on the news that it too may soon be subject to a significant new antitrust probe.

On its surface, many of these actions aren't all that surprising. After all, experts have noted for a decade than US antitrust enforcement has grown toothless and frail, and our definitions of monopoly power need updating in the Amazon era. Facebook's repeated face plants on privacy (and basic transparency and integrity) have only added fuel to the fire amidst calls to regulate "big tech."

But while Silicon Valley faces an endless cavalcade of outrage, the telecom sector is suddenly seeing no scrutiny whatsoever. Whether it's the speed at which the problematic T-Mobile merger is being shoveled through the DOJ and FCC or the blind eye being turned to major telecom privacy scandals (like location data), telecom lobbyists have been on a successful tear convincing well-heeled DC lawmakers to ignore the massive, obvious monopoly, privacy, and competition issues inherent in telecom to focus exclusively on the problems in "big tech."

Yet somehow, this asymmetrical policy paradigm is still treated as entirely coincidental in press coverage. Only recently have some news outlets started to notice how well things have been going for telecom lately in DC (Axios calls it telecom's "sweet summer of revenge"). Outlets have even started to finally realize that with former telecom lawyers now running the FCC and DOJ (Ajit Pai and Bill Barr), that is not coincidentally being reflected in federal policies attempting to hamstring telecom's competitors:

"In a June speech, DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Makan Delrahim laid out ways his agency could could go after Big Tech for anti-competitive behavior.In a June Senate hearing, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, "The greatest threat to a free and open internet has been the unregulated Silicon Valley tech giants that do, in fact, today decide what you see and what you don't," he said."

It's routinely understated how telecom lobbying, not a sincere worry about market power or privacy, is what's driving much of this current policy paradigm in DC (including much of the hyperventilation over nonexistent Censorship of Conservatives). The telecom sector is pushing hard into an online advertising sector traditionally dominated by Silicon Valley. As such, telecom lobbyists have spent several years now pushing to hamstring their direct competitors with the help of cash-compromised lawmakers and full blown regulatory capture.

That includes successfully convincing government that a sector filled with natural, historically-predatory monopolies should see no guard rails whatsoever (see the killing of net neutrality and the neutering of the FCC as example A). Yet somehow, there are still a lot of folks in tech policy circles who see the lopsided focus on "big tech" as entirely authentic, and any failure to police telecom as somehow coincidental. But folks in DC (like former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn), are well aware that much of this current policy paradigm is highly-produced theater and, shockingly, all about money:

The larger point is that the focus on big tech to the benefit of big telecom, cable & media is no accident. It's part of a concerted campaign & it is working big time.

- Gigi Sohn (@gigibsohn) September 3, 2019

Again, none of this is to say that there aren't massive problems with Silicon Valley giants and plenty of authentic calls for reform. But it is a reminder that an oversized portion of the current anti big tech sentiment in DC is telecom driven. Intellectual inconsistency and campaign finance data usually makes it clear which lawmakers are telecom sector marionettes. More often than not consumer rights, market power, or healthy competition are the very last thing on the minds of those pushing lopsided regulatory solutions to a "big tech" problem they don't actually care all that much about.