Big Tech: Free Markets and Democracy at Stake with Robert Atkinson and Francis Fukuyama

Hosted by Duke Fuqua and UNC Kenan-Flagler
April 20, 2021
Robert Atkinson is president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the world’s top think thank for science and technology policy. Dr. Atkinson has testified numerous times before Congress and written extensively on competitiveness in the market and how big tech has emerged as an advanced industry that helps drive U.S. competitiveness, innovation, job creation, and economic growth.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Normellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and Director of Stanford's Master's in International Policy Program. Dr. Fukuyama is a principal investigator for the Program on Democracy and the Internet in partnership with the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and Stanford Law School. His recently published report focuses on the various harms of dominant technology platforms, including economic threats and threats to democracy.
The event was moderated by New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize awardee, Steve Lohr who has covered technology, business, and economics for more than 20 years.
Discussion begins at 3:15.

[@juliancochran]

Yes, it really is nonsense. Amazingly few people realise that just about every component in your iPhone and the original early, non-profitable, innovative and risky work, from the state sector or firms funded by state customers earlier on (particularly the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s). Just about every internet protocol, satellites themselves, Algol-69 from which just about every language is now derived as a minor modification, VN machine, the silicon chip design, silicon chip manufacturing, GDP, you simply cannot easily name any part of the phone that came out of the private sector other than the profitable low-risk incremental work, yet we are constantly cheering how wonderful the free market is. It is quite the opposite, with nearly all the innovation in the state sector, and then when the hard work is handed over to the private sector, the profitable and more predictable incremental low-risk work takes place there.