White House adds Big Tech critic
The White House on Friday announced that notable big tech critic Tim Wu is joining the Biden administration in a role focused on addressing the market power of tech giants.
The Columbia University Law School professor and author of “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age,” will serve as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) touted Wu’s appointment as a signal that the Biden administration is “serious about promoting technology in the U.S.”
But Aurelien Portuese, the director of antitrust and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said there are some risks to Wu’s appointment. Portuese said Wu’s “anti-bigness” stance may pose a risk to American innovation.
Pressed during a briefing on whether President Biden will pursue a policy to break up big tech companies, press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration doesn’t have a new policy to announce on that front.
“The president believes, as he has talked about before, that it’s important to promote competition and address monopoly and market power issues. But we don’t have a new policy to announce. We are six weeks into a new administration, but certainly we welcome the expertise of individuals like Tim Wu,” Psaki said.
