Tech Policy Press - Voters Handed Congress a Mandate to Confront Corporate Power and Technofascism
Today is a bad day to be a technofascist. Democrats’ victories in the House and Senate and across state offices represent more than just an opportunity to stave off democratic decline. They are also an instructive referendum on the power of Big Tech and AI, and the broad desire among the electorate to hold tech to account.
Concerns about unfettered power of tech firms and their aggressive AI vision have propelled a popular uprising against the infestation of data centers in communities around the country, fueled the movement against billionaires and the concentration of power in a handful of Big Tech firms, and underpinned discontent with the vast corruption and collusion between the political class and the Trump administration in particular.
When the new Congress takes office in January, the question is: will this majority confront concentrated corporate power and technofascism—or simply oversee its continued expansion?
AI governance, Big Tech accountability, monopoly break-ups, media plurality and press freedom belong on the same agenda.
The states have already shown where popular will is headed in terms of putting limits on permissible types of AI products and design and imposing product liability of AI firms.
Each of these ongoing regulatory dramas is an expression of the same underlying failure of Congress do its job on behalf of the American people. Policymakers have stood by as profit-maximizing corporations built business models on the commercial exploitation of personal and commercial data, rewarding social and psychological manipulation, and encouraging ever more surveillance.
There remains a massive legal vacuum where basic protective frameworks like fiduciary duties, liability standards, enforceable transparency and privacy safeguards simply do not exist that the next Congress can now address. It must take action to reinforce these efforts at the federal level.
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