Uncle Sam is not going to smash Silicon Valley

Just consider what happened after the financial crisis

Your favorite apps are safe.
(Image credit: B Christopher / Alamy Stock Photo)

It must be frustrating to lead the vanguard of what you hope is the 21st century's next great political movement — and have nobody follow you. So far at least, that's what's happening to the most fervent anti-Silicon Valley activists — mostly on the left, but some on the right — who are itching to break up Big Tech or at least heavily regulate it, and are mostly coming up short.

Sure, the media and policymakers are focusing more and more on the growing societal influence of the platform companies. These are the ones that New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo has nicknamed the "Frightful Five": Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google. (Combined stock market value: a bit more than $3 trillion.) These tech titans have been ramping up their public relations and Washington-lobbying efforts for good reason.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.