The Tyranny of Big Tech - New book coming out tomorrow by Josh Hawley (R Senator in MO)

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Amassing unimaginable amounts of personal data, giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple—once symbols of American ingenuity and freedom—have become a techno-oligarchy with overwhelming economic and political power.

Decades of unchecked data collection have given Big Tech more targeted control over Americans’ daily lives than any company or government in the world. In The Tyranny of Big Tech, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri argues that these mega-corporations—controlled by the robber barons of the modern era—are the gravest threat to American liberty in decades.

To reverse course, Hawley argues, we must correct progressives’ mistakes of the past. That means recovering the link between liberty and democratic participation, building an economy that makes the working class strong, independent, and beholden to no one, and curbing the influence of corporate and political elites.

Big Tech and its allies do not deal gently with those who cross them, and Senator Hawley proudly bears his own battle scars. But hubris is dangerous. The time is ripe to overcome the tyranny of Big Tech by reshaping the business and legal landscape of the digital world.

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Where Hawley’s book departs from the standard anti-tech treatise is in his attempt to tie the current moment into a grand theory of American political history. In Hawley’s telling, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are the direct ideological descendants of the original Gilded Age robber barons. Their dominance is the culmination of what he calls “corporate liberalism,” a philosophy in which, he writes, the state and big business conspire to deny the common man his independence and self-government. According to Hawley, corporate liberalism became entrenched a century ago in both major political parties, and today, “Big Tech and Big Government seek to extend their influence over every area of American life.”

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