Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Communicators Is Big Tech Too Big 20240712

Right, i think the obvious answer to that is absolutely. The members of the subcommittee, both the democrats and a number of the republicans really focused in on the power of these corporations over the way we communicate and the way we engage. That was the dominant theme of the hearing. They also got into the god of how these businesses work and how they use their dominance and how theyre engaged in predatory behavior and how they are hurting other businesses, small, medium and everyday families. It was really quite remarkable hearing, night and day from the hearings that we saw just a couple of years ago when members of congress were grilling Mark Zuckerberg. Yesterday was i think a pretty remarkable moment in the Ongoing Investigation into monopoly power in general, but especially in regards to tech platforms and Digital Markets. Host congresswoman comstock. Guest i think yesterday we saw with Congress According to gallup today had an 18 Approval Rating and was attacking four of the Great American Success Stories and these are companies who have Approval Ratings in the 70s and 80s and they have gotten us through this pandemic over the last five, six months where there is connecting us with work and connecting us, we have zoom here and a new company that has come on during this pandemic but also connecting us with our healthcare telehealth has boomed over these months and connecting our children with education which we now looks like that will go into the fall. Theyve been helping Small Businesses. I think that is an area where we discussed this yesterday but all of these things, i think, demonstrate that the Tech Companies come from the world. When you think over the past five, six months what has work been in your life . Your smart phones have worked. You been able to google things or if you use another platform you can look up information on duck, duck, go and you been able to connect with family and friends through calls like this and able to get your loved ones in connection with their doctors and this was the world at work where congress with their 18 Approval Rating is not getting things done. Covid, the economy and i think they are tone deaf and certainly the chairman has been saying if the American People do not understand what tech is doing an American People understand that pretty well because when they were trying to get those unemployment checks it was the tech comedy that had to go into the states and help them upgrade their technology so they could get their unemployment checks. If the Tech Companies are working with Healthcare Providers and a lot of that they have done that voluntarily and donated money and even helping newspapers and theyve got funds for that so i thank you got a real contrast between the world at work which i was privileged to represent a lot of these companies in the ecosystem they create witches although Small Businesses and the next facebook or the next amazon and i think there is a real contrast and that we did not hear a lot about the consumer welfare because the consumer like these companies. Host sarah miller. I think one thing to note is that there arent going to be more facebook, more amazon and more googles. Our antitrust workers and policymakers have allowed these handful of corporations to amount an enormous amount of power over their respective markets and to shut down competition and engage in predatory behavior that has really tamped down on the economy. These corporations rose to power because antitrust laws and policy makers focused on maintaining competition and markets when they were very small and that focus shifted away and in fact, policymakers have encouraged this monopoly power in tech and across the economy and one thing that came through in yesterdays hearing was that we hear a lot of rhetoric about standing up for Small Businesses and yesterdays hearing actually put forward the voices of Small Business people who are being preyed upon by these corporations, amazon, facebook, google, they have so much power as gatekeepers over our economy and commerce and that really came through. Members of congress or members of that subcommittee listed up the voices of Small Businesses whose livelihood have been arbitrarily cut off by these corporations or businesses or Business Models and products have been relentlessly copied or acquired under anticompetitive reasons and that was really remarkable. These numbers understood how the companys work and understand the predatory practices they are engaging in to maintain and grow their dominance and they stood up for the first time in my work in politics in a meaningful way for small better businesses. I think congress is 18 Approval Rating would go up we found more of this. Host sarah miller, when you talk about predatory practices, could you give an example . Sure, amazon owns a platform that is more than 2 million businesses used to reach customers. Even more in the pandemic when so many businesses have to reach customers through online means. What amazon also does is sell their own products on that platform. They had the benefit of seeing all the data that goes to that platform through that other merchants and businesses in sales. What they have done with the data is use it to copy other visits products and the preference their version above the other products. This is a practice referred anecdotally happened regularly. That is one problem. The other problem is just that they have so much information about the corporations and they tied their own services together. If you want to sell a product on amazon what you see is you might have more ability to reach customers if you use amazons fulfillment services. This timing is something that is not legal and should be enforced against and hasnt been and and extracts huge fees from Small Businesses. Yesterday [inaudible] came out with a report saying amazon charges 30 fees for businesses that transact honest platforms up from just 18 a couple of years ago. That extraction hurts Small Businesses and attacks on businesses and it is one that members of congress yesterday spoke out against and held the corporations accountable for. Host Barbara Comstock, what is your response to what you have heard . Guest i think we heard a lot but i think the things they were talking about were often anonymous and then they wouldnt let the different Business Leaders really respond to the detail like knowing when they were talking about your information as someone would try to explain that you can delete your Search History and if you dont know how to do that you can go onto google and how do i delete my Search History and you can find out but they did not want to hear the answers and i thought the hearing yesterday was much like the hearing the day before with attorney general barr where they had already made their decision and they were telling their stories or anecdotes and they wouldnt really let the different Business Leaders trying to describe that. I think they were trying, the business, ceos were trying to explain the business that we run and trying to explain it and it didnt quite fit in their 30 seconds they wanted to tell the story but i think when you or i have to strongly disagree with the concept that we arent going to see more about these companies and you see people largely on the left complaining about we dont want to have these Big Companies but china has a lot of the Big Companies. That is our competition here. When you look at the Tech Companies 11 of them are american, nine are chinese. European model which many want to follow and certainly the chairman of this committee wants to, they dont have big tech because they dont look at the consumer welfare and they are looking at all these other issues that the democrats were looking at. Republicans were attacking the more [inaudible] issue and not the antitrust issue but the antitrust issue at stake here is consumer welfare and if they have an overwhelming market. Ironically, those were their nobody talked about, they all compete with each other. And with other Big Companies like microsoft. When you look at browsers, Internet Explorer was the top 110 years ago and now chrome is prayed that came through competition. Yahoo was the original search engine. Remember yahoo . There was a 1998 company that said how they won the search wars and they are the new aol and no one can compete with them. And then this is a 2007 cover of Forbes Magazine where they said nokia and who will how it will be catch up with nokia . In 2007 the iphone came out and then you have Americans Companies did compete. I think ten years from now you will see a lot of Different Things going on in this space and in these particular leaders understand you have to innovate or you die. Keeping up but the competition is the example of we are on zoom. Zoom came out of nowhere and was a winner essentially during the pandemic because they provided aid service to consumers but i dont mean members of congress i worked with the Tech Community a lot but i would not pretend to be an expert on technology and certainly these members of congress have never run a business or try to start a company. They are stories that you can read books and yahoo lost their dominance so i think lets let the free market work this out and that has always been the republican and i was certainly happy to see [inaudible] whose work on this a long time to talk about we dont need new antitrust laws but we can look at particular examples and see if they are in violation but we dont need the kind of new laws that the chairman is talking about when we go in and break up our most Successful Companies and investing billions and billions of dollars and some of these companies are investing 20 billion in r d so that we can compete and combine governments with certain development and the e you lost in the tech space a long time ago and the chairman is trying to advocate for the use dominance and we wont have these Great American Success Stories anymore. Host ms. Miller. These corporations extreme market dominance, amazon has 75 of the ecommerce. Facebook and google controlled Digital Advertising markets and have a monopoly and apple controls the app world which is out millions of developers reach consumers but there is a whole range of issues both related to market power and the predatory behavior that that market power enables these companies to participate in. It was remarkable to me that you essentially had Mark Zuckerberg and jeff pesos admitting to acquiring competitors to shut down competition rather than investing in innovation that congresswoman comstock is talking about. That has been the strategy from the beginning to buy up competitors, squats competition and to maintain their dominance through strategy of monopolizing markets and networking if expert on another point, its a good scare tactic but our economies have not been successful because we have a handful of goliaths that do not innovate and maintain a dominant position. China has infinite state capital to support the large institutions but our strength in the economy has always been because of our dynamism and because of the invasion that real competition creates so this is a myth we should look towards in our authoritarian communist regime to model our economies after and its really dangerous one. Facebook, amazon, google, they are all squashing innovation and crushing competition and at the same time hurting businesses all across the country and really making or putting People Livelihood out of business. I think that some of these talking points about china is a scare tactic quite honestly. It is not rooted in a historically made our economy so strong which is our ability for somebody with a idea to compete and grow that way. That is not how corporations are growing out. In the very beginning yes, they were innovative, no question. They delivered Important Services but they can do that in an environment that is competitive and essentially the failure of antitrust and policymakers to understand how these corporations were achieving dominance and to buy into their talking points about being innovators really has been a huge problem for the last 12 years or so so i think congresswoman comstock point about 2007, early 2000 needs to be updated. We have not seen that innovation in years and that is because we cannot compete anymore in a realistic weight against facebook and google. They can crush you and cut off your ability and amazon. I want to make clear that my point on china is china has a very different model and im not advocating for that at all. Im advocating for us to continue the light touch regulation, not the heavy government invest in [inaudible] is telling us he knows how to run a tech company and to decide what pieces should be together or not and i think we need, the reason we have succeeded for years in the tech space and had bipartisan support was because we have the Tech Companies who are thriving on the American Companies and american Success Stories and yahoo passed up the opportunity to buy google and some company said i will not be bought and then they go to be huge successes. Certainly if you listen to ceos yesterday when jeff besos left his job and started out when the. Com bubble hit in the late 90s he wasnt even profitable then but he stayed at it. These are american Success Stories that are working and here we are on zoom and another american Success Stories but we want to have American Free market and what were saying is we dont want to adopt the european model. The chinese model is off the table but china is competition when you look at areas like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, our major Tech Companies are making Major Investments and they have been helping nih in our healthcare communities to make sure and to help us with cure for diseases. They are grow with google or help Small Businesses and certainly if you want to start up a business we grow with google or with amazon and use their tools you can go off and start your own company. The next google or the next facebook will calm from the talent pool that these companies support. I think the most important thing that the u. S. Government should invest in and these companies certainly do is the Talent Pipeline and Human Capital and all of these companies are companies that have been invested in people and invested in education and creating that pipeline and talent and they are so important to that and certainly the u. S. Government are the things i worked on in congress for more money with the tech Talent Pipeline because those are the jobs of the future and those are the jobs that will make the United States able to [inaudible] and it will be a challenge for the environment with china and the threats we face with them, not by adopting china tactics but by adopting the Good American Success Story that has allowed our tech communities to be number one in the world and people who talk about breaking it up, what will come after that . You dont no, you and i cannot run Tech Companies. I want to the people who know how to do this to go out and do this and let thousands of flowers bloom and allow the ecosystem for the great talent and community is to have that Talent Pipeline and have companies that can innovate, make mistakes and all the companies you had it before have made mistakes and event failures as well as successes and that is the story of technology and when i work and i remember in virginia when we lost the community and they have all these its mostly Small Businesses and it is the ecosystem that you want to create, not your tax system or regular system but galatians will make it harder, more regular will make it harder for that next start up to get further. People like steve kaser are going around talking about the rise of the rest so lets create that ecosystem without attacking the countries or companies sor sorry. Host congresswoman, what about sarah Millers Point that these large Tech Companies are prohibiting smaller entrepreneurs from entering the market . Guest i dont see that but if there are companies and they come forward and there is a system under current antitrust law where they can look at it and its a consumer standard and if they are dominant in the markets and the doj guidelines usually indicate, do they control two thirds of the market and when you look at things like search and advertising there are different ways of calculating it. Walmart is a big competitor in online selling now as well as in person selling and in fact, they have both different competitive aspects. Yet, if you are looking for a book you may not go to google or facebook but may go to amazon first because you know they are books there so it depends on what youre looking for. These new markets are all very competitive right now but they also still allow for that to come in and of start ups of having problems lets talk to them along the lines of what steve and other entrepreneurs are doing trying to get more investment for women Tech Companies. Im a big advocate of that period of a young womans Leadership Program at George Mason University we are trying to get more women into tech. Funding women in tech, funding that dont have that opportunity and get that in the pipeline. That is how and what can we do to get startup money and start up funds and what will be more helpful for them to get into that ecosystem in advance and often times we find it Small Business going to the next level and that is where it is stopped and there is a lot of issues there that if you look at without breaking out the big Tech Companies because we want to have it not just for trillion Dollar Companies but i would like to see 40 or 400 and have american lead the world because i think that is a world much safer than having china lead with their bad policies where the do these things. Host sarah miller, what is the American Economic liberties project . Sure, we use social and economic challenges of the monopolization and that is extraordinarily in a tech sector but it goes across many sectors in the economy, large and small. What we have seen is over the last 40 years in particular is workers embraced this consumer welfare standard which doesnt prioritize looking at actual competition in markets but prioritizes projections around [inaudible] only. We have seen that as theoretical approach to antitrust which has not been the way antitrust was enforced for much of our countrys history and proven to be a failure. Its been a pro monopoly approach and a lot of the [inaudible] around price have proven to be true. They found the average family faced 5000 more because of the concentration in the economy compared to when we had a much more dynamic economy in 1980. We essentially have an economy that is structured to be very concentrated and i would say private regulators, private taxation because of the power of these large behemoths. Small businesses in a survey recently found 70 of their or 70 of them responded that their biggest concern was actually amazon, not taxes or regulation. What we are seen is private institution, private corporations who are not democratically accountable and that is in as regulators and in text smaller businesses and that is into structure markets so they benefit themselves and enhance their own power. This is at the expense of everyone else they have an economic relationship. This idea that we are helping consumers is not true and in fact, another study found after mergers and host Barbara Comstock served in congress from 20152019. Currently a Senior Advisor at Baker Donelson among other things and which Tech Companies are you working with on this one . Guest i work with that choice the works with a number of Tech Companies. We supported data centers which provide all the ecosystems that we can all be on line all the time and that we are now and that has worked spectacularly through this entire pandemic and then i also do work with google. I was an advocate when i was in congress of these Tech Companies, both small and large, because i saw how they improved our daily lives, particularly when i was in congress focused on healthcare. I had a hearing on how we can use apps and technology to be able to map our diseases and look at who has diabetes or get tools to track on their smart phone what their lead sugar is like and their parents could monitor it at the same time because they could be in school and two things but modern technology in healthcare field has now advanced in telehealth over the past few months by removing a lot of the regulations that existed before. I dont think we will go back to that relation because weve had years of advanced in just a few months because we removed some of the things that were holding it back. I think we got to go to those entrepreneurs and find out what tools we can give them to advance and help them start that next Successful Tech Company but it is not breaking up the american Success Story that we are challenging and they have a challenge with google and the aol and remember, myspace was before facebook. It is still up there but people dont use it and there are other browsers. You can use being and duck, duck, go. You dont know what it will be ten years from now but we have a very competitive tech ecosystem and i think we need to let it thrive and grow and continue to solve the problems that we have seen them address and they have put their money in and the research, in helping disadvantaged communities, and helping Education Community and nobody has been better throughout this pandemic than our Tech Companies which is why when congress was at 18 , 89 of americans of said thank you, its helped my life to have this type of technology available. Host sarah miller, what in your view would be a solution to the problems you have described . One thing that i would note is that its hard to find defenders of the Tech Companies who arent on your payroll. I whirls on a radio so not that long ago with an academic who ended up agreeing with me that facebook never should have been allowed to buy instagram. I think its Common Knowledge that these Digital Markets are extraordinarily consolidated and because of the Network Impact keeping power that will not change as policymakers dont ask. I would ask the congresswoman to dive into the investigation that the antitrust committee is under scheme because it has elevated time and time again the voices of entrepreneurs, Small Business and mediumsized businesses who are being abused by these corporations and are preventing the next wave of innovation and technology from taking place. That is one thing that has been remarkable about this investigation is understanding about the markets operate in a very sophisticated way. I think there are two ways to think about dissolution. All these corporations are different they operate in different ways and at different problems and that not like the Tobacco Companies were there very similar. The all have unique solutions. At a basic level their power needs to be dealt with and their power needs to be dealt with because its crushing competition and because it is fundamentally a threat to democracy as the chairman noted in his statement yesterday. They have these huge behemoths that have great economic and political power that can blanket washington with the lobbyists and confront institutions like George Mason University and that can exert their influence, both in indirect and direct ways and thats dangerous. For all the people in all the businesses that dont have those resources at their disposal so i would say from a solution standpoint structural reform, structural separation, you know fixing the mistakes the enforcers in the past have made under this very narrow consumer focused framework is critically important and its important to see so much focus on power and market structure. I think the other thing that has to happen and its different for different corporations but clear roles of the road and enforcing laws that are in fact already on the books that have not been enforced in a very long time that protect other businesses and consumers in many cases from predatory behavior and things like predatory pricing which amazon engages in regularly with really no accountability. Things like copying competitors, amazon, google, facebook, apple and things like discriminating between different sellers or different entities which have an economic relationship. Apple gives amazon a sweetheart deal in the app store and everyone else has to pay top dollar. These are all types of predatory activities that in the past we have enforced against protect the economic dynamism and help people move from having a good idea to being able to grow to be large and to scale. Theres not a problem with bigness but problems with monopoly power. That is what we are in seen in Digital Markets without question and that is also what we see throughout a range of Different Industries in the economy, whether agriculture or hospitals or media. This is a systemic challenge and that is what our organization focuses on that the tip of the spear has been Digital Markets. Yesterdays hearing was, i think, a watershed moment with congress coming together both democrats and the number of republicans to really ask some very serious and important questions about the monopoly power institution. Host we are already over our allotted time but i have a final question for each of you. Sarah miller, we will begin with you. Tim cook, Mark Zuckerberg and jeff bezos for the first time on hill for mr. Jeff bezos but what did you hear from one of those poor ceos that really caught your ear, either positively or negatively . One thing that struck me and was very early, i think it was in one of the first questions was Mark Zuckerberg essentially admitting that they purchased instagram in order to prevent a competitor from rising up that could threaten their dominance. He admitted that in an email that the committee had and then he also admitted that in the hearing yesterday. Jeff bezos made a similar mention when he said hes purchased other corporations to achieve market suspicion. These are mergers that essentially should not have been approved in the first place and that we need to make sure we can protect against in the future. I think Congress Enforcement will taking a very serious look at it. Host congresswoman comstock, your former colleague jim jordan called out the Tech Companies for having an anti conservative bias. Do you agree with that . No, i dont. I thank you also, youve got some businesses or companies and groups that have complained that they have been discriminated against and you hear complaints from both sides but i find these tools very effective great what i heard from those leaders and those businesses was the american Success Story and all the things they are doing to help our current economy thrive, grow and how to make america the most competitive tech ecosystem in the world and i believe those tools are in place now and can be and in the antitrust laws are included there but what i didnt hear democrats say anything about was how it is harming consumer welfare and that is the standard. You cant call the company a monopoly when they have three or four competitors. They are saying they are a monopoly but they are not a monopoly in search when you are sitting there and google, amazon, facebook, pinterest and all these companies are search companies. That is not a monopoly. You notice they never put the numbers out there or they create numbers they dont have but you can go through each others faces and see their competitors, weather phones, apps, whether it is search, whether it is ads and they all have competitors and dont reach that two thirds or more threshold and they certainly are not monopolies. I dont think they understand what the word monopoly means when they call any of these companies who are in a very, very competitive market which i think they demonstrated by other talking about how they compete with each other as well as Smaller Companies and everybody is competing with zoom now on streaming and that is a good thing. Streaming market netflix, disney, hulu that is ascribed during the pandemic and i dont think that will change. People dont just get one but its a whole new ecosystem that nobody thought would have one or two competitors before now. Host former congresswoman Barbara Comstock, sarah miller, executive director of the americans liberties project. Thank you for being on the communicators. Thank you. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and be a part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feeds. Cspan, greeted by americas table Television Company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month we are featuring booktv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan2. Next, new york staff writer provides her take on life in the u. S. Since the election of president trump. Then chief economist for Bloomberg Economics on why the chinese economy never collapses and what would happen if it ever does. Later Hoover Institution fellow talks about