The Hopkins Forum - Tech Titans or Tyrants: Should the U.S. Government Break Up Big Tech?
This debate was produced in partnership with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
Topics: Tech, Politics
Release Date: Friday, December 12, 2025 at 10am EST
Has Big Tech become too powerful?
From social media platforms and e-commerce giants to cloud computing and AI, tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft wield unprecedented influence over our economy, democracy, and daily lives. The government is taking notice, with the Department of Justice and FTC pursuing landmark antitrust actions and bipartisan support building for breaking up tech giants. Advocates argue these firms are monopolies that stifle competition and innovation, harm consumers through data exploitation, abuse their market dominance, and wield outsized influence over public discourse. Structural separation, such as forcing Google to divest YouTube or Amazon to spin off AWS, would restore fairness. Others argue that breaking them up would undermine innovation and downgrade the user experience, which benefits from integrated ecosystems. It would serve as a blunt instrument when smarter regulation or self-governance could suffice. These measures could lead to unintended consequences for national security, critical infrastructure, and the broader economy.
As these tech companies grow their influence while under public scrutiny, we debate the question: Should the U.S. Government Break Up Big Tech?
This debate was produced in partnership with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University on Thursday, December 4, 2025, at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center.
ARGUING YES:
Bharat Ramamurti, Founder of The Bully Pulpit; Former Deputy Director of the National Economic Council
Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project
ARGUING NO:
Geoffrey A. Manne, President and Founder of the International Center for Law & Economics
Jennifer Huddleston, Senior Fellow in Technology Policy at the Cato Institute
MODERATOR-IN-CHIEF:
John Donvan: Emmy award-winning journalist
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
This debate was produced in partnership with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, as part of The Hopkins Forum series. It was recorded in front of a live audience on Thursday, December 4, 2025 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center.
Open to Debate, the leading nonpartisan media platform steering the national conversation around the art of debate and the importance of free speech, has partnered with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University to hold a flagship series of live debates in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore called “The Hopkins Forum: A Debate Series from the Johns Hopkins University and Open to Debate.”
Going into this conversation, I would have answered "no," but then I learned that in order to take my daughter to an NBA game, I would have to agree to Google Play's terms of service and conditions. That is because Ticketmaster (who has exclusive rights to sell tickets) requires their app for game entry (no more paper tickets), and their app requires Google Play's API to operate.
I disagree with much of what the "Yes" side offered, but I'm leaning toward the affirmative.
Solid framing of the core tension here. The interoperability argument gets underweighted in these debates imo, where forcing AWS to split from Amazon retail could actually create middle-ground competiton without the nuclear option. Been following FTC cases for a while and the structural remedy conversations feel like they skip over behavioral remedies that might work first. I dunno if wrecking ecosystems is the smart move when you could mandate data portability and watch markets correct organically.