Op-Ed: Zach Lilly: Elizabeth Warren’s anti-tech chickens come home to roost
Americans realized that Republicans are the party of free speech, good jobs, high wages and a prosperous, hopeful future, Zach Lilly writes in his latest op-ed. Sen. Elizabeth Warren can take credit.
The historic inauguration of Donald Trump as 47th President of the United States has the far-left in Congress up in arms. Flanking the stage were the CEOs and Chairmen of America’s leading technology companies: Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Ma.) wasted no time whipping up a lot of hot air — ironically, on social media — about how awful it is that tech leaders support a president who champions innovation. Nowhere does Sen. Warren mention that she was the intellectual architect of the Left’s war on American tech during the Biden years.
When President Joe Biden came into office, he did so with the message that he would be a transitional leader governing from the center. Instead, Sen. Warren coordinated with the Biden White House to make a series of appointments that would attempt to dismantle the global leadership of America’s tech sector. She successfully lobbied to place radical progressives in top jobs with proven anti-tech track records, including Lina Khan at the FTC, Jonathan Kanter at the DOJ’s antitrust division, and Warren’s former staffer, Rohit Chopra, at the CFPB. Each would use their ideology and connections to progressive groups to wage a coordinated attack on the free market and on innovation more broadly.
Luckily, socialists are bad on the law. While many regulations were promulgated and lawsuits were filed, very little seemed to stick. For example, most of former FTC Chair Khan’s novel legal theories on antitrust were laughed out of the courtroom and Congress. She had spent too much time trying to line the pockets of her benefactors and too little time empowering American consumers. At the same time, Sen. Warren whittled away her time by calling for a new federal agency to control online speech and blaming grocery stores for the Biden administration’s inflationary spending habits. While all of this was happening, tech leaders woke up.
President Trump capitalized spectacularly on this dynamic. He understood before anybody else that there was a vacuum he could step into. Using his political insight and his business acumen, he built a political platform centered around the power of American innovation. Instead of hamstringing growth, companies should be allowed to compete. Instead of demonizing new tech, AI and energy abundance will be the key to the next century of American leadership and prosperity.
While progressives demanded a backward-looking fear and loathing, Trump set his sights on a brighter national future. The American people — and American tech — chose to follow a more positive path forward.
Companies aren’t political entities. That’s a good thing. They should be spending their time creating innovative products for consumers and returning value to their shareholders. But it seems as though all of Silicon Valley has woken up to the fact that, somewhere down the line, progressives declared war on the future. In tech, energy and financial policy, the goal of Sen. Warren and her allies seems to be returning America to a point in time where the average American was poorer and less in control of their own destiny. To do this, they need to attack the very companies that are driving American wages up, lowering costs and giving everyday citizens access to alternative opinions and ways of thinking. Tech doesn’t want to be the punching bag anymore.
Sen. Warren gifted President Trump an overwhelmingly powerful political position. Today, in the minds of the average American, the Republicans are the party of free speech, good jobs, high wages and a prosperous, hopeful future. They must now embrace this as they govern and refuse to follow Sen. Warren and her coalition’s mistakes. She is desperate to assign fault. She only has herself to blame.
Zach Lilly is Deputy Director of State and Federal Affairs at NetChoice, a trade association committed to keeping the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression. He has also served in the Commerce Department and as a policy adviser to former Rep. Dave Reichert (R., Wash.).
