WASHINGTON (September 12, 2019) CNBC Worldwide Exchange anchor and senior national correspondent, Brian Sullivan, discusses a variety of technology business and policy issues as a featured guest on a recent edition of the Technology Policy Institute’s Two Think Minimum podcast.
Sullivan is joined by Laura Martin, managing director of Needham & Company and a TPI board member, and TPI President and Senior Fellow Scott Wallsten, who moderates the discussion. Topics include technology companies, e-sports, data privacy, competition and other technology sector and policy developments.
The podcast was recorded on the sidelines of TPI’s annual Aspen Forum on August 20. Wallsten began the podcast by asking what each guest thinks about national policymakers’ handling of technology issues in Washington.
“I think [policymakers] are late,” said Laura Martin, citing competition between platform aggregators, as they get into each other’s businesses and many seek to enter video. “The government is saying they are monopolies…well that may have been true two years ago.
“The FAANGs [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google] are the past,” Martin said. “They got big and now they are being looked at. But the thing that is going to get big based on consumer time will get ignored until it gets really big and hurtful [and] people are writing letters.”
Like Martin, Sullivan says the marketplace is changing very quickly. “The 18-year-old in America isn’t googling…, he’s playing Fortnite” while ordering pizza through Siri, he said.
Martin predicts significant market shifts, including likely tech company failures, because, among other reasons, “eSports and the rise of video game dominance in five years is going to have taken over consumers’ time.”
Concerning federal and state collaboration on potential government investigations of technology companies-a breaking news story Brian Sullivan advanced that morning during his on-stage, Aspen Forum interview of DOJ antitrust czar Makan Delrahim-Sullivan said, “Antitrust takes so long that…by the time [a case is] over, [the decision] is almost irrelevant.”
You can listen to the episode and others on TPI’s blog. If you liked that one, find other Two Think Minimum episodes on Soundcloud, Blubrry, Spotify, Google Play Music, and iTunes.
Previously on the Two Think Minimum Podcast…
- Big Tech and Antitrust: A Discussion With Randal Picker
- What’s the Answer to the C-Band Conundrum?
- Tyler Cowen and Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero
- Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies
- Privacy Legislation in 2019? Maureen Ohlhausen and Alan Raul
Contact: David Fish, 571-389-4446, [email protected]
The Technology Policy Institute
The Technology Policy Institute is a non-profit research and educational organization that focuses on the economics of innovation, technological change, and related regulation in the United States and around the world. More information is available at https://techpolicyinstitute.org/
