Big Tech Trembles as Bannon Denounces ‘Lords of Silicon Valley’

The conservative uprising against the concentrated corporate power of Big Tech is growing.

In a speech Friday to the California Republican Party convention, Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon attacked the “Lords of Silicon” as part of an axis of elites that includes Wall Street, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C.

Axios interviewed a “Bannon ally” who explained that many at Facebook and Google, for example, have been “weaponized against conservatives.”

“Steve looks at Silicon Valley and says, ‘Today, corporate power is centered there,'” the ally said. “He is saying that these are the guys running our lives, keeping our data, our content, and our communications.”

“Silicon Valley is the new Wall Street,” the Bannon ally added.

Bannon has said that some of the big tech companies should be regulated like utilities. Others in the economic nationalist movement would go further and break up the largest tech companies, perhaps by prohibitting those that own communications technology from also owning commerce and media entities.

Such break-ups are not without precedent. The United States government broke up banking trusts in the early twentieth-century, first by forbidding banks to own commerical enterprises and later by forcing banks to divest themselves of securities and insurance businesses. It also broke up the telephone monopoly, helping spark a new era of innovation and greatly helping consumers by fostering competition and lowering prices.