Since 2016, we know that U.S. presidential elections are open season for foreign powers keen on getting their favorite candidate ensconced in the White House. No longer should we assume that American democracy is the exclusive enclave of American voters. Among the multitude of Democratic contenders in the coming elections, who is likely to elicit the greatest foreign interest? Consider Elizabeth Warren, senator from my home state of Massachusetts, who has been gaining ground; if her surge continues, she would attract plenty of interest, especially since she has laid out several detailed policy positions on hot-button issues, the most attention-grabbing being a proposal to break up Big Tech, the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. She will be getting her biggest opportunity to showcase herself in a debate with a partial list of fellow Democrats on June 26– as the most prominent one of the pack. Her tech-busting proposal has polarized opinions already, dividing those who vehemently agree and those who don’t. This begs the question: given the world wide interest in Big Tech, where would motivated foreign powers stand? Might any of these powers be tempted to interfere in the 2020 elections to help secure a Warren White House?
A frivolous question, you say? Don’t be too sure. There is one important way in which breaking up Big Tech today breaks with past analogies, such as Standard Oil or Microsoft: Big Tech’s power has global and geopolitical ramifications. Let’s take a quick spin around the world to find out what this might mean for Senator Warren’s chances for getting some outside help.
Our first stop, without question, would be China. The U.S. and China are locked in a contest for global digital supremacy. The Chinese government has ensured that the U.S. tech companies are mostly excluded from the current Chinese market. This has made room for homegrown tech giants, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, that have created a parallel Internet economy in the country. However, a worldwide head-to-head contest is building up with a future digital economy and national security environment powered by emerging technologies, such as 5G and artificial intelligence. The Chinese government has a deep interest in championing China’s dominance in these emerging arenas. The race is on between the U.S. and the Chinese companies to accumulate data, which can be used to train algorithms that will, in turn, be the key to the next frontier of competition. Given this state of affairs, the Chinese government should prefer a disaggregated U.S. rival, with reduced access to data pools and multiple platforms that can scoop up a greater variety of user activity. Given that the Chinese government has pulled together the Chinese tech industry into an AI “national team”, it seems reasonable to assume that the Chinese wouldn’t be averse to seeing a tech-buster at the helm in the U.S.
The next stop in our journey ought to be Russia. After all, the Russians were so engaged in the previous presidential elections; and no doubt, they would like to continue what they started. It is natural to ask if Senator Warren might be their preferred candidate this time around.
Let’s try out the following scenario. President Vladimir Putin sits down with his crack digital disinformation team to map out Russia’s 2020 campaign for the U.S. presidential elections. Borrowing from the 2016 playbook, the team has plans to infiltrate social media with divisive messages and ads that reach as wide an audience as possible. What would be best to execute on this plan? The biggest platform of opportunity is, of course, Facebook, which had announced its intention to integrate the back end of its various messaging apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp and Messenger. Such integration would be mighty convenient as it would give Russian fake news and divisive messaging cross-platform visibility. In addition, if Facebook were to make this back end platform end-to-end encrypted, as it intends to, this would make it even harder for sleuths to trace the origins of the Russian interference. Senator Warren’s proposal would break Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp up into individual companies, which would make infiltration so much more inconvenient. The senator ought to expect little help from the Russians.
Next, let us consider India, a rising power and, arguably, the most promising growth market for Big Tech. Senator Warren’s complaint that the Big Tech players ought not to be players and umpires at the same time would go down well with India’s homegrown companies and aspiring digital baron, Mukesh Ambani. Prior to the Indian elections, the Narendra Modi administration, perhaps encouraged by the homegrown actors, presaged Senator Warren’s proposal, limiting the likes of Amazon only to products from third-party sellers; its own inventory was off-limits. Specifically, the Indian government declared that Amazon cannot strike deals with companies to offer products exclusively on their platforms and cannot sell products in which they have invested. If the troll armies of Modi's party, the BJP, wish to turn their highly effective machinery on a new cause, boosting Senator Warren’s candidacy would be a perfect new challenge.
How about the European Union? While it is hard to pin-point the attitude of the leadership of a specific country towards U.S. Big Tech, it is fair to pick Margrethe Vestager as a test case. Vestager, as the European Commissioner for Competition has been the primary face of Europe when it comes to the region’s collective stance on Big Tech. In an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Vestager said that a tech break-up would be “very far-reaching” and advocated, instead, for “more mainstream tools.” This position may seem to be the most counter-intuitive of them all. After all, Vestager has made it her mission to be a nemesis of Big Tech, doggedly taking action to check its market power. Why would she let Big Tech off the hook, when there is a chance that a US presidential contender actually has a plan to break them up?
An explanation for this paradox might draw from a theory posited by Richard Posner of the University of Chicago, that regulation also serves as a way to collect taxes. Breaking up a company would erode this tax base and in turn, reduce the pool of resources that the regulator has available to subsidize a public service or some other segment of society that is key to the regulator’s political support base. By this logic, breaking up tech would diminish the tax base, thereby eroding Vestager’s political support. If this theory holds, then she would prefer Big Tech, as is: i.e. big. You might not be spending sleepless nights worrying over whether European regulators would interfere in U.S. elections. But now, rest assured; there is little to suggest that they will.
Elsewhere in the world, consider two more countries, Brazil and Nigeria, simply because both were profoundly affected by messages spread on social media. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is alleged to have been helped by an “industrial use of disinformation” over WhatsApp during the recently concluded elections. Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari encountered the perils of fake news circulated on YouTube and WhatsApp; it was rumored that he had died and had been replaced by a Sudanese look-alike. Might this suggest that Brazil’s Bolsanaro would be thumbs down on Senator Warren -- for the same reasons that the Russians would prefer Facebook integrating its apps-- while Nigeria’s Buhari would be a thumbs up and would prefer the apps’ power weakened?
There you have it. The behemoths of Silicon Valley may be a uniquely American phenomenon, but their products are global, making America’s most valuable businesses everybody’s business. Any U.S. politician taking on Big Tech can split the world into two opposing camps. Brace yourselves. Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy might prove to be an excellent test of the geopolitical – in addition to the market -- power of Silicon Valley.
