What to Expect From Microsoft’s Antitrust Lawsuit
Trump believes the less regulation of big business the better. Therefore, we can expect it to put an end to antitrust litigation in the technology industry. But that is not necessarily the case.
There is little doubt that Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who has aggressively pursued antitrust prosecutions of technology, will be fired after Trump is elected. And many of Trump’s allies, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, want tech antitrust prosecutions to stop.
But some advisers close to Trump, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, want the administration to sanction Big Tech. The main reason is to prevent Meta and other social media companies from cracking down on misinformation, white supremacy, public health deception, and election fraud.
Microsoft has largely avoided prosecution by the FTC, even as the Biden administration has targeted Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Apple. The FTC’s recent antitrust action against the acquisition of gaming giant Activision did not go down well for the administration. The judge allowed the acquisition, and the FTC later appealed.
Because of this, you might think Microsoft is safe under President Trump. However, the Washington Post reported that the FTC will investigate anti-competitive practices in Microsoft’s cloud business. Additionally, the FTC’s appeal of the Activision case is still pending, so the case could be revived.
Trump could demand that whoever he appoints as FTC chairman stops these actions. But that’s unlikely, thanks to entrepreneur Elon Musk, Trump’s main technology advisor. Musk’s AI startup, xAI, is competing directly with Microsoft and is currently valued at $50 billion after receiving investment from Andreessen and others this spring. Musk also added Microsoft as a defendant in the antitrust lawsuit he recently filed against OpenAI.
Thanks to Musk’s influence, it wouldn’t be surprising if Trump’s FTC not only continues Lina Khan’s investigation into Microsoft, but also files AI-related lawsuits.
Trump, Microsoft, and Climate Change
Trump believes climate change is a hoax and has pledged to roll back environmental regulations and attack green energy. Trump’s campaign slogan “Drill, Baby, Drill” and his close friendship with the oil industry make it clear that he will do everything he can to increase dependence on fossil fuels and kill clean sources of power.
He was also a supporter of nuclear power during his first term in office, but was not very enthusiastic about it during the election campaign. Nevertheless, the day after Trump was elected, the stock prices of nuclear energy-related companies soared, and most people expect Trump to become a supporter of nuclear energy.
How will Trump’s environmental policies affect Microsoft? Microsoft has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, and Trump’s assault on green energy will make it harder to find clean energy sources.
What makes Microsoft’s climate change commitments even more difficult is the fact that the data centers that run its AI require enormous amounts of power. As mentioned earlier, this could lead Microsoft to abandon its commitment to fight climate change. Billions of dollars could be poured into reviving nuclear energy, with a proposed contract to restart Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history.
Given his views on climate change and his support for AI, Trump will likely do everything he can to give Microsoft and other AI companies all the electricity they want, regardless of the environmental impact. It is also likely that nuclear power will be allowed to move forward at full speed. In fact, Microsoft President Brad Smith recently said that he expects Trump to relax environmental regulations so that Microsoft can provide its AI data centers with all the power they want.
Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who worked on AI-related work at the Department of Defense under Presidents Trump and Biden, agrees. Allen said Trump “could invoke emergency powers and waive many environmental regulations to allow new nuclear and other power generation capacity to be built to power data centers.” He added, “I expect this to happen early in the Trump administration.”
Trump’s Resentment and Dissatisfaction
President-elect Trump is more influenced by resentment and dissatisfaction than policy. And there are many complaints about technology.
In the 2020 presidential election, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife founded the foundation “to ensure that everyone can vote and that every vote is counted.” Afterwards, Trump threatened to investigate Zuckerberg and send him to prison if he is re-elected, saying, “We are watching him closely, and if he does something illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Perhaps because of this, Zuckerberg said after last summer’s assassination attempt, “The sight of Donald Trump getting shot in the face and rising up and raising an American flag and clenching his fist in the air was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life. As an American, on some level, that’s the spirit of it.” “It’s hard not to feel emotional about that fight, and I think that’s why so many people like him,” he praised.
And then there’s Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. During his presidency, Trump frequently singled out Amazon and Bezos for the Washington Post’s publication of articles that made him angry. In addition to his criticism and threats, Trump also canceled a multibillion-dollar cloud contract between Amazon and the Department of Defense.
This time, Bezos is following Trump’s lead. Bezos canceled plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris at The Washington Post, which has endorsed several presidential candidates for decades. After Trump was elected, Bezos praised him, writing on
These are just two of the tech titans who have praised Trump despite being his targets. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has so far failed to please Trump. Nadella only gave Trump a formal congratulation, but did not actively praise the president-elect.
However, as Musk is a close ally of Trump and the new administration is likely to focus on AI, it is unclear whether Nadella will be able to avoid Trump’s notice. It’s also unclear how Nadella would respond if Trump threatened him, and what impact that would have on Microsoft’s financial future and its perception of itself as a moral company.
editor@itworld.co.kr
Source: www.itworld.co.kr
