Transcripts For CSPAN The Communicators Is Big Tech Too Big

Project. She is the executive director there. And former congresswoman barbara comstock, who is now a Senior Advisor at bagel donelson at baker donelson. Big . G tech too what is your answer to that . I think the obvious answer to that is absolutely. ,he members of the subcommittee both the democrats and a number of republicans, really focused in on the power of the separations and the way we communicate and the way we engage. That was a dominant theme of this hearing, and also got into the guts of how these businesses work, how they abuse their dominance, how they engage in predatory behavior, and other affecting everyday families. It was really quite a remarkable hearing. And we saw this just a couple of Mark Zuckerberg, they really had no idea how the corporations work. So this was a pretty remarkable and the Ongoing Investigation into monopoly power in general but especially as relates to this. Congresswoman comstock . Barbara the gallup has an 18 Approval Rating. Story. American success who have companies Approval Ratings in the 70s and 80s and have gotten us through this pandemic over these six months, five or six months, whether it is connecting us with work, connecting us a company that has really come on during the pandemic, also connecting us with health care. Telehealth has boomed. And connecting our children with look atn, which we now it going in the fall. Helping Small Businesses. That was an area. All of these things i think demonstrate that these Tech Companies are in a world that works, and you think over the past five or six months, what has worked in your life . Your smart phones have worked. You have been able to google things, or if you use another platform, you can connect with family and friends. You have been able to get your loved ones in connection with doctors. And this is the world that works, whereas congress, with their 18 Approval Rating, is not getting things done on and i on the economy, think they are kind of tone deaf, and it has been said that the American Public do not understand, but the American People understand that well, because when they were trying to get those unemployment checks, it was the Tech Companies who had to go into a lot of states and help them upgrade their technology so people would get their unemployment checks. It is the Tech Companies working with the health care providers. They donated money. They are even helping newspapers. They got funds for that. So i think you have a real contrast between the world that works, which i was privileged to represent a lot of these companies, and the ecosystem which they have created. The next facebook, the next amazon. And i think there is a real contrast in that, and you did not hear a lot about the consumer welfare, because the consumers like these companies. Sarah miller . There are not going to be more facebooks, more amazons, and more googles, because our policymakers have allowed this handful of organizations to amass this power over their respective markets to shut down competition and engage in self referencing and editorial behavior that is really hands down in the economy. These corporations rose to power because antitrust laws and policymakers focused on maintaining competition in markets when they were very small, and that focus shifted away. In fact, policymakers have encouraged monopoly power and consolidation across the economy. And i think one thing that really came through in yesterdays hearing was that we hear a lot of rhetoric about standing up for Small Businesses from members of congress, but yesterdays hearing actually put forward the voices of Small Business people who are being preyed upon by these facebook,ns, amazon, google. They have so much power as gatekeepers over our economy and over our commerce, and that really came through. Members of Congress Members of that subcommittee lifted up the voices of Small Businesses whose voices have been arbitrarily cut off by these organizations, businesses and Business Models and products relentlessly copied or acquired for anticompetitive reasons. And that was really, really remarkable. These Companies Understand how they work and understand the predatory practices they are engaging in and maintain and grow their dominance, and they really stood up for the First Time Since i have worked in politics in a meaningful way for Small Businesses, and i think congresss 18 Approval Rating would go up if they did more. Sarah miller, when you talk about predatory practices, can you give an example . Sarah sure. Amazon is a good example of this. Is 200 million businesses reaching customers, even more in the pandemic when they have to reach customers. What amazon also does is sell their own products on that platform. They have the benefit of all of the data that goes through that platform around other merchant businesses and their sales, and what they have done with that data is use it to copy other Business Products and then preference their version above the other businesses, so this is the practice that we saw anecdotally happen regularly, so that is one problem. The other problem is just that they have so much information about these corporations, and they tie their own services together. So if you want to sell a product on amazon, what you see is you might have more ability to reach customers if you use the amazon fulfillment services, so this is something that is not legal and should be enforced against but has not been, and it extracts huge fees. Forerday, the institute selfreliance came out with their report that shows that amazon charges 30 fees for businesses that transact on their platform, up from just 18 a couple of years ago, so that extraction became hurtful for businesses and became a tax on businesses and is one that members of congress yesterday spoke out against and held corporations accountable for. Barbara comstock, what is your response to what you have heard . We did not hear a lot, because a lot was anonymous, and then they did not let the Business Leaders respond in detail, like when they were talking about your information that is online, and somebody tried to explain you can actually delete some things, like your search history, and if you do not know how to do that, you can go on google, how do i delete my search history, and find out, and they really did not want to hear the answers. I thought the hearing yesterday was much like the hearing the day before with attorney general barr, where they had already made their they were telling their stories or anecdotes, and then they really would not let the different Business Leaders try to describe that. Hink they were trying to the ceos, to explain the business, trying to explain that, and it did not quite fit in the sec. That they wanted to tell their story. But i have to strongly disagree with the concept about these companies. Thesee people largely in west complaining about we do not want to have these Big Companies. Well, china has a lot of these Big Companies, and that is their competition here. When you look at the companies in the space, 11 of them are american, nine of them are chinese. The european model, which many want to follow, certainly the chairman of this committee wants to, they do not have any big Tech Companies, because they do not look at the consumer welfare. They are looking at all of the other issues that the democrats were looking at. Now, republicans were attacking them on bias issues and not antitrust issues. The antitrust issue at stake here is consumers and if they have an overwhelming market. Ironically, when they were there, nobody talked about they all compete with each other and with other Big Companies like microsoft. You know, when you look at browsers, you know, Internet Explorer was the top one 10 years ago, and now, chrome is. That came from competition. Yahoo was the original search engine. Remember . To1998, how they wanted search. They are the new aol, and nobody could compete with them, and then this is the 2007 cover of forbes magazine, who said nokia. How are we going to catch up with them . It 2007, the iphone came out. And then americans did compete, and i think 10 years from now, youre going to see a lot of Different Things going on in this space, and these particular leaders understand you have to innovate, or you die. Keeping up with the competition. Just an example of us on zoom. Zoom came out of nowhere. I do not need members of theress when i work with Tech Community a lot, and i would not pretend to be an expert on technology, certainly these members of congress have never run a business, tried to start a company. Their stories come you can read lost theirow they dominance, like yahoo . So lets let the free market work this out. The has always been republican position. I was certainly happy to see sensenbrenner, who has worked on this for a long time, talking about we do not need new antitrust laws. We can look at particular examples and see if there are any violations, but we do not need the new laws being talked about, where we go in and break up our most Successful Companies that are investing billions and billions of dollars. Some of these companies are investing 20 billion in r d. Government research and development, and our biggest competition right now, and the eu lost in the tech space along time ago, and we have some like the chairman trying to advocate for that, where we do not have these Great American Success Stories anymore. Sarah amazon has 75 of ecommerce. Facebook and googlecontrolled Digital Advertising businesses. And apple obviously controls how millions of developers reach consumers, so there is a whole range of issues related to market power and a predatory behavior that that market power enables these to participate in. It was remarkable to me that you essentially had Mark Zuckerberg to jeff bezos admitting acquire competitors to shut down competition rather than investing in innovation that we were talking about. That has been their strategy from the beginning, to buy up competitors, to squash competition, and to maintain their dominance through a strategy of monopolizing markets and through leveraging network effects. On another point, the china talking point is really quite tiresome. I think it is a good topic, but our economy has not been successful because we have a handful of goliaths that do not really innovate, that maintain a dominant position. China has infinite ability to support these large institutions, but our strength as an economy has always been because of our dynamism and because of innovation that real competition creates. So this is really a myth that we should look at the authoritarian, communist regime to model our economy after, and is a 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 putting people out of business. So i think that some of these kind of talking points about china is really a scare tactic, quite honestly, and it is not rooted on what has historically made our economy so strong, which is the ability for someone with a good idea to compete and grow in that way. That is not how these corporations are growing now. In the very beginning, yes. They were innovative. No question about it. And they delivered important services, and they could do that in an environment that was competitive, and basically the failure of the 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 comstocks point, that needs to be updated. We have not seen that type of innovation in years, and that is because you cannot compete anymore in a real way against facebook and google. They can crush you and cut off your ability to reach customers. Barbara i want to make it clear that china has a very different model, and i am not advocating for that at all. I am advocating for us to continue the light touch regulation, not the heavy , like jeff bezos knows how to run a tech company and what pieces need to go together. I think the reason we have succeeded for years in the tech space and have bipartisan weport for them was because have these Tech Companies who are thriving these are american companies. American Success Stories. The opportunity to buy google, and some of these companies say, i am not going to be bought, and they go on to be huge successes, and certainly, if you listened to the ceos yesterday, jeff bezos left his job and started out when the dot com bubble hit in the 1990s. He was not even profitable then. He stayed at it. These are american Success Stories. And zoom, another american success story, but we want to have American Free market principles. We do not want to adopt other models. The chinese model is off the table, but china is competition, when you look at areas like cloud computing. Major investment. They have been helping nih and our Health Care Community to help us with a cure for diseases. Helps our Small Businesses. Certainly, if you want to start up a business, you go with google or amazon and use their tools, you can then go on and start your own company. The next google or the next facebook, coming for the talent that these companies support, and i think that is an important thing that the u. S. Government should invest in, and these companies do, the Talent Pipeline and human capital, and all of these companies are companies that have invested in people and invested in creating , andpipeline with talent they are so important to that, and certainly, u. S. Government, and when i was in congress, it was more money for the tech Talent Pipeline. Those are jobs that are making is united states, and what going to be a talented environment with china, not by adopting china tactics but by adopting the Good American Success Stories that allowed our Tech Community to be number one in the world, and people talk about breaking it up. What is going to come after that . We dont know. We have not run Tech Companies. I have learned from the people who do this to go out and do bloom. D let the flowers allow the ecosystem. The ecosystem for great talent, Great Community and technology, to have that Talent Pipeline, and have companies that can innovate, make mistakes. All of the companies you named before, they had mistakes. They had failures as well as successes. In then i worked virginia community, they have all of these small it is mostly Small Businesses, and it is the ecosystem you want to create. Your tax system. Your regulation system. Regulation, more regulation, will make it harder to get further. People like steve case are going around lying to the rest. Lets create that ecosystem without attacking these companies. , what aboutoman sarah millers comment, that these large Tech Companies are prohibiting smaller entrepreneurs from entering the market . Barbara well, i do not see that, but there are companies, and if they come forward, there is antitrust law where they can look at it, and there is a consumer standard, and they are dominant, the doj guidelines are that they roughly control two thirds of the market. But when you look at search and advertising, there are different ways of calculating it, right . Walmart is a big competitor online now as well as in person selling. In fact, they have both different competitive aspects, and in search, if you are looking for a book, you may not go to google or facebook. You may go to amazon first, because you know they are a bookseller. It depends on what youre looking for. They are all very competitive but if startups are having problems, lets talk to them along the lines of what steve case and other entrepreneurs are doing, trying to get more investment for women , Tech Companies. I am a big advocate of that. I have a Leadership Program at george mason university, trying to promote more women in tech, funding women in tech, funding minority communities who do not have that opportunity, get that in the pipeline. And what can we do to give the startups money and startup funds . What will be more helpful for them to get into that ecosystem in advance . Find business, we going to the next level, the midlevel, and that is where it stops, and there are a lot of issues there that you can look at without breaking up the big Tech Companies, because we want trillionot just 4 companies. I would like to see 40 or 400 and have america lead the world, because i think the world is much safer than having china lead with their bad policies with these things. Miller, what is the American Economic liberties