"White House signals coming antitrust push with Tim Wu appointment"
Wu will be serving on the National Economic Council as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, the White House said this morning. Wu confirmed the news in a tweet.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/tech-critic-tim-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26372971)
Most likely is that after a few years, any company targeted with anti-trust action will agree to some changes in the way they do business and maybe a fine. Then all will be forgotten. It's likely that the changes will be pro-consumer, but I think it's unlikely that any company will be broken up.
Labor’s politics usually doesn’t match capital’s and management’s. In the auto industry owners and managers long voted Republican and workers voted Democrat, for obvious reasons. I’ve always found it odd that didn’t seem to be true for tech. At the very least, it’s a pretty aggressive bet on the AOC/Warren wing never taking power.
This is not a comment on the merits. I think Wu is a bright guy and some antitrust scrutiny of tech is probably in order.
There have been several notable names. Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, and Scott McNealy, off the top of my head.
Most Trump supporters kept it pretty much on the down low. Doug Leone (Sierra Capital) seems to be named most often, though even he broke after the January 6 Coup. Brian Krzanich (Intel) was, so long as nobody heard about it. Palmer Luckey (Facebook), David Blumberg (Blumberg Capital).
Vocally opposed: Meg Whitman, Marc Andreessen, and John Chambers (ex-Cisco), all notably conservative.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/17/20869679/donald-trump-s...
Keep in mind too that dark money and Citizens United most especially makes true support difficult to trace. Arguing that there are no names whilst the names that exist can and often do utilize secret funding mechanisms is highly disingenuous.
Antitrust action in technology will oxygenate the space and restore healthy competition, something tech desperately needs and which users deserve.