WASHINGTON—Commenting ahead of Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, in which President Biden reportedly will call for a bipartisan push for tough regulations on the tech industry, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the leading think tank for science and technology policy, released the following statement from ITIF President Robert D. Atkinson:
In an era of political division, it is commendable for President Biden to call for bipartisan unity against a common threat. But it should be against China, not Silicon Valley.
It is not just balloon incursions we need to be worried about from China, it’s also geopolitical flanking maneuvers in trade and industrial policy. China is seizing market share in advanced industries that are strategically important for America’s economic and national security. The anticorporate, antitech agenda that the White House has outlined is the wrong response. The president and Congress should enact a robust competitiveness agenda that keeps building on last year’s CHIPS and Science Act.
The president has decried U.S. tech companies for destroying privacy, spreading harmful content, and hurting competition. Those alleged abuses are vastly overblown, and the regulatory solutions the president endorses would turn back the clock and undermine the Internet as we know it. Reforms are warranted—particularly on privacy and content moderation, as ITIF has proposed—but singling out “Big Tech” with onerous regulatory schemes would only hurt U.S. competitiveness, innovation, and consumers.
For more on these issues, see:
- Robert D. Atkinson, Daniel Castro, and Aurelien Portuese, “Let’s Unite for US Tech Leadership, Mr. President,” ITIF Innovation Files blog, January 14, 2023.
- Stephen Ezell and Stefan Koester, “Three Cheers for the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022! Now, Let’s Get Back to Work,” ITIF Innovation Files blog, July 29, 2022.
- Robert D. Atkinson, “How to Win the U.S.-China Economic War” Foreign Policy, November 8, 2022.
- Ashley Johnson and Daniel Castro, “Maintaining a Light-Touch Approach to Data Protection in the United States” (ITIF, August 2022).
- Ashley Johnson and Daniel Castro, “Proposals to Reform Section 230” (ITIF, February 2021).
