Wired - Europe’s Big Tech Hawks Brace for a Post-Biden Future

Europe director Max von Thun explains that under President Biden, the EU feels more empowered to regulate big tech aggressively, as the U.S. is pursuing similar antitrust measures, marking a shift from the cautious approach during prior administrations.

For Europe, the outcome of next week’s US election will have profound consequences. NATO funding is at stake, as is a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Projections suggest a trade war with Donald Trump could hit GDP in the bloc’s biggest economy, Germany, by 1.5 percent. The future of big tech, by comparison, is a sideshow—but a fraught one. President Joe Biden’s administration ushered in a new era of confrontation with the likes of Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia, which all faced legal action during his time in office. A proposal to break-up Google is still pending.

Unlike many other places in the world where US tech reigns, when the European Union makes new rules, these companies pay attention. In the Biden era, the EU found an ally in its ambitions to rein in big tech, says Max von Thun, director of Europe and transatlantic partnerships at the Open Markets Institute. “Under Trump or really even under [former president Barack] Obama, there was this feeling that if the EU went too far, there would be a backlash from the US,” von Thun explains, meaning regulators felt that ordering companies to break up their business was off the table. “Whereas under Biden, because the US is pursuing those types of remedies, the EU thinks, well, we can do that too.”

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