Report from TechCrunch
In Brief – A coalition of voices in the vanguard of antitrust activism against Big Tech have signed an open letter expressing concern with the UK Government’s recent decision to appoint a former Amazon executive as chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Harkening back to the competition agenda that only last year led to passage of the UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC) that created the Digital Markets Unit (DMU) inside the CMA to regulate the largest digital platforms, the group said that the new regulator needed to be “free from political pressure” if it’s to keep Big Tech in check and “unlock positive economic outcomes for the whole economy.” The letter was spurred by the recent removal of the Chair of the CMA Board of Directors for failing to effectively direct the antitrust regulator to prioritize the government’s economic growth agenda. Doug Gurr, a former Amazon executive who once led its UK business, was named as the CMA’s interim chair, which was taken by many observers as a signal of cooperation rather than conflict with giant tech companies.
Context – Presenting the UK as a more reasonable regulator than the EU, and therefore an appealing market for business investment, was always a theme of the pro-Brexit Conservative Governments. But their tech policies were schizophrenic. The differences between the UK DMCC and the EU DMA, or the UK Online Safety Act and the EU DSA, or the CMA’s Big Tech antitrust portfolio and the EU Competition Authority’s, were in the fine print and the UK’s slower and more orderly regulatory pace. And the Labor Party backed those laws. But AI and associated investment is now a top UK priority and PM Starmer recently said that his government will offer investors “stability, pragmatism and the good sense they would expect from democratic British values.” But there is much more to digital regulation than just AI. And while sacking the Chair of the CMA just as DMCC regulatory processes really ramp up sent one signal, there is the report that Apple is being ordered to end strong encryption by UK security services that will likely resonate negatively with many tech leaders.