SLOW YOUR CONGRESSIONAL ROLL

A group of former top national security officials on Wednesday issued a call for Congress to conduct additional reviews on a series of antitrust bills targeting tech giants, which they argued would harm U.S. companies and give China the upper hand in the tech race.

In a letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and first obtained by Axios, the ex-officials said that “more deliberate analysis is needed” for the antitrust bills advanced by the House Judiciary Committee in June “to examine the detrimental impact these bills could have on our strategic competition with China.”

“Congress should not proceed with current legislative proposals before understanding the full range of potential consequences,” added the group, which included former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

The officials specifically took issue with “provisions in these bills that target a narrow group of U.S. companies without requiring similar oversight of Chinese tech giants such as Huawei, Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba,” which they asserted “would place these already formidable competitors in a better position to assume global preeminence.”