Why Do Josh Hawley's Cures For 'Big Tech' Always Oddly Omit 'Big Telecom'?

Over the last year, giants like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple have all faced growing calls for greater regulatory oversight and antitrust enforcement, something that isn't particularly surprising. After all, experts have noted for decades than US antitrust enforcement has grown toothless and frail, and our definitions of monopoly power need updating in the Amazon era. Facebook's repeated face plants on privacy (and basic transparency and integrity) have only added fuel to the fire amidst calls to regulate "big tech."

But while Silicon Valley giants now face an endless cavalcade of outrage in DC, the telecom sector is suddenly seeing no scrutiny whatsoever. Whether it's the speed at which the problematic T-Mobile merger is being shoveled through the DOJ and FCC, or the blind eye being turned to major telecom privacy scandals (like location data), telecom lobbyists have been on a successful tear convincing well-heeled DC lawmakers to ignore the massive, obvious monopoly, privacy, and competition issues inherent in telecom to focus exclusively on the problems in "big tech."

This crusade against "big tech" has seen no shortage of advocates who've historically been absent on glaring and painful monopoly and consumer protection issues in other sectors. Like Marsha Blackburn, who has rubber stamped every fleeting monopolistic and privacy-violating whim AT&T executives have ever had, yet is now branding herself as some sort of consumer advocacy and privacy expert as she rails against "big tech."

Another major voice in the "battle to fix 'big tech'" has been Josh Hawley, who has been endlessly vocal about the issues with big tech, but just as absent as Blackburn when it comes to criticizing the same exact problems plaguing the telecom sector. Last week, Hawley unveiled a plan to fix the FTC (pdf) -- an agency, he correctly notes, that has been largely feckless when it comes to reining in the bad behavior of lumbering giants like Facebook:

"As it stands today, the FTC lacks teeth. Its jurisdiction is divided. It wastes time in turf wars with the Department of Justice (DOJ) while failing to confront the increasing concentration in our economy, in the tech sector most obviously. And it is woefully unaccountable. The agency as presently constituted is in no shape to ensure competition in today’s markets, let alone tomorrow’s."

He's certainly not wrong on that. If anything, he undersells the problem. The FTC has somewhere around 8% of the staff focused on resolving privacy issues as its counterpart in the UK, despite the UK having a fifth as many people as the US. The FTC is also a cesspool of revolving door conflicts, with most employees having either recently left the companies they're supposed to hold accountable, or simply biding their time until they can go lobby for those same companies. And, like the FCC, its partisan majority makeup results in whiplash as the parties jerk the reins of policy from one side of the spectrum to the other.

This is not some inadvertent error. An understaffed, underpowered FTC is the intentional lobbying byproduct of giant U.S. companies that don't find taxpayer or regulatory accountability particularly exciting. It's why even when the FTC finally acts on an issue, its solutions (as we saw with Equifax or