No, Tech Monopolies Don’t Serve National Security

In what appears to be a “throw spaghetti on the wall approach” to stopping antitrust reform targeting Big Tech, a few Members of Congress and a range of former military and intelligence officials wrote a letter asserting that these companies need to be protected for national security. It’s a spurious argument that seeks to leverage fear of China to prevent changes desperately needed for consumer choice and innovation.

The argument they make is that gigantic tech companies are the only ones who can innovate and compete with China. But this completely misses the point on innovation. When companies have monopolies, they have no reason to innovate since they have captured the market. There is no need to compete to have the best product when you are the only product. Innovation depends on the best ideas from everyone being put forth to the public.   

Now, we don’t know if these folks actually believe in the argument or if they think the rest of us will believe in the argument because they say it, but this letter is really only about delaying legislative antitrust action through raising not just fictional concerns, but completely bogus takes on how innovation happens on the internet.

This Has Been Tried Before, and It Didn’t Work Then

The irony about the national security argument is that it takes a page straight out of the AT&T monopoly playbook and history. Forty years ago, AT&T was the largest corporation in the world and was facing antitrust action both in Congress and the courts. In a Hail Mary effort to get the Department of Justice to abandon its lawsuit, AT&T lobbyists went to the Department of Defense and convinced them that a monopoly communications network was essential for national security.

The plan was to convince then-President Ronald Reagan th

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