London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Nov 13, 2025

Big Tech had its first big debate moment, and Democrats came out swinging

Big Tech had its first big debate moment, and Democrats came out swinging

The presidential candidates agreed that tech consolidation is an issue, but not all agreed to go as far as a break up.

Presidential candidates at the Democratic debate Tuesday night were asked about how tech companies should be regulated, if at all.

Warren’s plans to “break up Big Tech” have steered much of the conversation around how to deal with the industry.

The presidential candidates agreed that tech consolidation is an issue, but not all agreed to go as far as a break up.

Big Tech had its first big moment in the 2020 presidential election during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate.

The big question from the debate moderators: Do the largest tech companies need to be broken up?

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s call to break up Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple framed much of the discussion around tech regulation. While each candidate who responded to the question agreed that unregulated power of these large firms poses a problem, few committed as firmly to break them up.

Here’s how each candidate answered the question of how Big Tech companies should be regulated:


Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur himself, has been something of a darling to Silicon Valley tech workers. The top three groups of contributors to his campaign are employees from Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft. But even Yang said the tech industry deserves more oversight.

“As usual, Senator Warren is 100% right in diagnosing the problem,” Yang said at the debate. “There are absolutely excesses in technology and in some cases having them divest parts of their business is the right move. But we also have to be realistic that competition doesn’t solve all of the problems.”

Yang said no one “wants to use the fourth-best navigation app” and that breaking up Big Tech companies won’t necessarily “revive main street businesses around the country.” Antitrust action also won’t solve health problems that are correlated with children’s early exposure to technology, Yang said.

Yang suggested that the current antitrust framework, developed in the 20th century, is not adequate to deal with today’s industries.

“We need new solutions and a new toolkit,” he said.

Later in the debate, Yang proposed an alternative solution to giving consumers more power in comparison to Big Tech companies.

“The best way we can fight back against big tech companies is to say our data is our property,” Yang said. “Right now, our data is worth more than oil. How many of you can remember getting your data check in the mail? It got lost, it went to Facebook, Amazon, Google. If we say this is our property and we share in the gains, that’s the best way that we can balance the scales against the Big Tech companies.”


Elizabeth Warren

Warren’s rhetoric around the Big Tech companies has steered much of the conversation around how to regulate the industry. The senator came out with her plan to “break up Big Tech” back in March and announced prior to the debate Tuesday that she would not accept donations from Big Tech executives over $200, widening the pool of donors from which she won’t accept large contributions. Warren has also said she won’t take large donations from executives at big banks, Big Pharma or fossil fuel companies.

“You can’t go behind closed doors and take the money of these executives and then turn around and expect that these are the people who are going to actually finally enforce the laws,” Warren said on the debate stage.

Addressing her stance on Big Tech, Warren used Amazon as an example, saying the company “runs the platform, gets all the information, and then goes into competition with those little businesses. Look, you get to be the umpire in the baseball game or you get to have a team, but you don’t get to do both at the same time. We need to enforce our antitrust laws, break up these giant companies that are dominating Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Oil, all of them.”

One area where Warren did not push as hard on tech was over Twitter’s decision to keep President Donald Trump’s tweets and account on the platform. Asked by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., why Warren didn’t join her call for Twitter to suspend his account, Warren said, “I don’t just want to push Trump off Twitter, I want to push him out of the White House.”


Kamala Harris

Addressing her call for Twitter to suspend Trump’s account, Harris said it is “a grave injustice when rules apply to some but not to all, and in particular when the rules that apply to the powerless don’t apply to the powerful.” Harris wrote a letter to Twitter’s CEO earlier this month requesting he consider suspending Trump’s account for allegedly attempting to “target, harass” and “out” the whistleblower who made Trump the subject of an impeachment inquiry.

Harris separately addressed a question about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that splitting up large tech companies would make it harder for those companies to tackle problems like disinformation around elections.

“That’s a ridiculous argument he’s making,” Harris said.


Amy Klobuchar

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., pointed out her position as the ranking member on the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, which has been heavily involved in the conversation around Big Tech by questioning tech executives about their practices as well as the agency heads investigating the large tech firms. Klobuchar said that in her private sector experience representing companies trying to enter the telecom market, she saw prices go down in the long distance market once more competition was introduced. She called the current moment “another Gilded Age.”

Klobuchar suggested taking a different approach to the antitrust conversation, however.

“Start talking about this as a pro-competition issue,” Klobuchar said. “This used to be a Republican and Democratic issue, because America, our founding fathers, actually wanted to have less consolidation, we were a place of entrepreneurship.”


Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., seemed to take a similar stance to Warren on the debate stage, condemning the consolidation of industries including not just tech but also finance and media.

“We need a president who has the guts to appoint an attorney general who will take on these huge monopolies, protect small business and protect consumers by ending the price fixing that you see every day,” Sanders said.


Beto O’Rourke

Beto O’Rourke said the key to tech regulation is treating companies like publishers rather than utilities. The former Texas congressman pointed to the false ad Warren recently ran on Facebook to see how far the company would go in refusing to fact check ads by politicians.

“We would allow no publisher to do what Facebook is doing, to publish that ad that Senator Warren has rightfully called out, that CNN has refused to air because it is untrue and tells lies about the Vice President,” O’Rourke said. “Treat them like the publisher that they are, that’s what I will do as president.”

O’Rourke said he would “be unafraid to break up big businesses if we have to do that,” but made a subtle jab at Warren by saying he doesn’t believe “it is the role of a president or a candidate for the presidency to specifically call out which companies will be broken up. That’s something that Donald Trump has done in part because he sees enemies in the press and wants to diminish their power, it’s not something that we should do.”


Cory Booker

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the problem with tech is not just potentially anticompetitive behavior, but also how it is used “to undermine our democracy.”

“We have a reality in this country where antitrust from pharma to farms is causing trouble. And we have to deal with this,” Booker said. “As president of the united states I will put people in place that enforce antitrust laws.”


Julian Castro

Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro did not specify how he would tackle the Big Tech companies but said he believes “that we’re on the right track in terms of updating how we look at monopolistic practices.”

Castro said, “We need to take a stronger stance when it comes to cracking down on monopolistic trade practices, and that’s what I would do as president.”


Tom Steyer

Billionaire entrepreneur Tom Steyer said he agrees with Warren that “monopolies have to be dealt with,” but left regulation open as an alternative to a break up. Steyer said that to beat Trump, candidates must focus not only on how it will break up businesses, but also how it will help the economy grow in other positive ways.

“We’re going to show the American people that we don’t just know how to tax and have programs to break up companies but also talk about prosperity,” Steyer said. “Talk about investing in the American people. Talk about harnessing the innovation and competition of the American private sector.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK Upholds Firm Rules on Stablecoins to Shield Financial System
Brussels Divided as UK-EU Reset Stalls Over Budget Access
Prince Harry’s Remembrance Day Essay Expresses Strong Regret at Leaving Britain
UK Unemployment Hits 5% as Wage Growth Slows, Paving Way for Bank of England Rate Cut
Starmer Warns of Resurgent Racism in UK Politics as He Vows Child-Poverty Reforms
UK Grocery Inflation Slows to 4.7% as Supermarkets Launch Pre-Christmas Promotions
UK Government Backs the BBC amid Editing Scandal and Trump Threat of Legal Action
UK Assessment Mis-Estimated Fallout From Palestine Action Ban, Records Reveal
UK Halts Intelligence Sharing with US Amid Lethal Boat-Strike Concerns
King Charles III Leads Britain in Remembrance Sunday Tribute to War Dead
UK Retail Sales Growth Slows as Households Hold Back Ahead of Black Friday and Budget
Shell Pulls Out of Two UK Floating Wind Projects Amid Renewables Retreat
Viagogo Hit With £15 Million Tax Bill After HMRC Transfer-Pricing Inquiry
Jaguar Land Rover Cyberattack Pinches UK GDP, Bank of England Says
UK and Germany Sound Alarm on Russian-Satellite Threat to Critical Infrastructure
Former Prince Andrew Faces U.S. Congressional Request for Testimony Amid Brexit of Royal Title
BBC Director-General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness Resign Amid Editing Controversy
Tom Cruise Arrives by Helicopter at UK Scientology Fundraiser Amid Local Protests
Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson Face Fresh UK Probes Amid Royal Fallout
Mothers Link Teen Suicides to AI Chatbots in Growing Legal Battle
UK Government to Mirror Denmark’s Tough Immigration Framework in Major Policy Shift
UK Government Turns to Denmark-Style Immigration Reforms to Overhaul Border Rules
UK Chancellor Warned Against Cutting Insulation Funding as Budget Looms
UK Tenant Complaints Hit Record Levels as Rental Sector Faces Mounting Pressure
Apple to Pay Google About One Billion Dollars Annually for Gemini AI to Power Next-Generation Siri
UK Signals Major Shift as Nuclear Arms Race Looms
BBC’s « Celebrity Traitors UK » Finale Breaks Records with 11.1 Million Viewers
UK Spy Case Collapse Highlights Implications for UK-Taiwan Strategic Alignment
On the Road to the Oscars? Meghan Markle to Star in a New Film
A Vote Worth a Trillion Dollars: Elon Musk’s Defining Day
AI Researchers Claim Human-Level General Intelligence Is Already Here
President Donald Trump Challenges Nigeria with Military Options Over Alleged Christian Killings
Nancy Pelosi Finally Announces She Will Not Seek Re-Election, Signalling End of Long Congressional Career
UK Pre-Budget Blues and Rate-Cut Concerns Pile Pressure on Pound
ITV Warns of Nine-Per-Cent Drop in Q4 Advertising Revenue Amid Budget Uncertainty
National Grid Posts Slightly Stronger-Than-Expected Half-Year Profit as Regulatory Investments Drive Growth
UK Business Lobby Urges Reeves to Break Tax Pledges and Build Fiscal Headroom
UK to Launch Consultation on Stablecoin Regulation on November 10
UK Savers Rush to Withdraw Pension Cash Ahead of Budget Amid Tax-Change Fears
Massive Spoilers Emerge from MAFS UK 2025: Couple Swaps, Dating App Leaks and Reunion Bombshells
Kurdish-led Crime Network Operates UK Mini-Marts to Exploit Migrants and Sell Illicit Goods
UK Income Tax Hike Could Trigger £1 Billion Cut to Scotland’s Budget, Warns Finance Secretary
Tommy Robinson Acquitted of Terror-related Charge After Phone PIN Dispute
Boris Johnson Condemns Western Support for Hamas at Jewish Community Conference
HII Welcomes UK’s Westley Group to Strengthen AUKUS Submarine Supply Chain
Tragedy in Serbia: Coach Mladen Žižović Collapses During Match and Dies at 44
Diplo Says He Dated Katy Perry — and Justin Trudeau
Dick Cheney, Former U.S. Vice President, Dies at 84
Trump Calls Title Removal of Andrew ‘Tragic Situation’ Amid Royal Fallout
UK Bonds Rally as Chancellor Reeves Briefs Markets Ahead of November Budget
×