Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech — from npr.org by Aarti Shahani
Excerpts:
Regulate us. That’s the unexpected message from one of the country’s leading tech executives. Microsoft President Brad Smith argues that governments need to put some “guardrails” around engineers and the tech titans they serve.
If public leaders don’t, he says, the Internet giants will cannibalize the very fabric of this country.
“We need to work together; we need to work with governments to protect, frankly, something that is far more important than technology: democracy. It was here before us. It needs to be here and healthy after us,” Smith says.
“Almost no technology has gone so entirely unregulated, for so long, as digital technology,” Smith says.