[Dave Karpf at Tech Policy Press]

Peter Thiel and other tech oligarchs are seeking to weaponize US foreign policy as a way to enforce their corporate agendas:

"Thiel is developing a blueprint for putting Big Tech’s policy agenda at the center of US foreign policy. Australia’s social media ban is bad for American social media companies. The European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act impose regulatory requirements on very large online platforms that operate within the EU. Peter Thiel expects the US government to do something about that, in the guise of investigating and redressing past wrongdoings.

Tech billionaires like Thiel simply do not believe that their companies and investments should be beholden to governments. And now that they have control of the US government, they are suggesting that, if any other countries interfere with their business, the US government ought to intervene on their behalf."

The thing is, protections like the ones offered by the European Union are really good, and significantly better than we enjoy in the United States. Part of the worry is that if they're allowed to stand, similar restrictions will emerge here too. We're already seeing that in more progressive states like California.

That's an inevitability: as we all get more used to the internet now that most of us are on it, beyond the initial excitement, we're going to make more nuanced policy decisions. Clearly, privacy is an important democratic prerequisite, and countering the internet's tendency to support monopolies is similarly important to prevent outsized centralization of power. When it comes to the free reign moguls have enjoyed to build giant businesses unencumbered, time is ticking. But in the meantime, they'll keep trying to protect their interests - in increasingly dramatic ways.

#Democracy

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