Intelligence Squared debate: Washington should break up Big Tech

After a 13-month investigation that yielded millions of documents and hundreds of hours of interviews, Congress called the chief executives from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to testify. And they did.

In the historic hearing, the tech titans defended their companies against claims that they’re running afoul of antitrust law and using their market power to crush competition, amass data and drive their own profits.

As the internet giants face more probes from the FCC, DOJ, and a host of state attorneys general, some are calling this Big Tech’s “big tobacco moment.” But are these companies really too large?

In this episode of Intelligence Squared “Agree to Disagree,” host John Donvan asks two experts in antitrust and digital technologies to discuss whether Washington should break up big tech:

Zephyr Teachout, attorney and author of “Break ‘Em Up,” says:

“Nowhere is the problem of concentrated power, and abuses of that power, as dangerous and essentially a threat to democracy as in Big Tech, where you have surveillance-based business models and control over the means of communication and commerce.”

Andrew McAfee, MIT principal research scientist and best-selling author of "More From Less," "Enterprise 2.0," and "Race Against the Machine,” says:

“I fundamentally disagree that democracy is incompatible with large, powerful companies. I just don't think that case has been proven at all. And I don't think these companies have anything like a stranglehold on our ability to communicate.”