Will America Again Play Catch Up on Tech?

This letter was originally published in The Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2022.

Regarding your editorial “Breaking Big Tech Bad” (June 6): Success in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing requires critical mass and substantial, sustained financial capital. In the U.S., the major advances in AI and QC are coming from Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon. They have the scale and enormous infrastructure for computational hardware and software. As a result, they lead the world in these areas.

Americans should be concerned that antitrust activity may break up Google, Amazon or others. Although these companies need regulatory guidance, sacrificing scale in the name of domestic competition isn’t a wise strategy for the global marketplace.

China has larger technology companies like Baidu and Alibaba. Let us not make the mistake we made in breaking up AT&T and Bell Laboratories, home of the transistor. Information science and networking technology began its decline and Huawei became a dominant force in 5G. America must lead and not perpetually be catching up.

Big Tech needs rules of the road, but let us introduce these wisely, and not sacrifice scale unnecessarily. Big isn’t necessarily bad, so long as the rules protect the public good.

Em. Prof. Venky Narayanamurti