| Hi, it’s antitrust reporters Josh in San Francisco and Leah in Washington. In the first of our look-back, look-ahead Tech Daily newsletters to cap off 2024, we assess whether major tech firms can expect anything different from the incoming Trump administration. But first... Three things you need to know today: • OpenAI unveiled an AI model with more advanced reasoning capability
• US authorities accused a dual Russian and Israeli national of working with the LockBit ransomware group
• Samsung and Texas Instruments concluded deals for billions of dollars in Chips Act grants and loans for new manufacturing plants in the US. The next round of antitrust | Under the Biden administration, the world’s biggest tech companies have been fighting regulatory battles on several fronts including privacy, national security and competition. The antitrust efforts have the greatest potential to reshape the industry, change business models and even break up companies. Scrutiny of the market power exhibited by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Apple Inc. first gained steam during the first term of President-elect Donald Trump and picked up over the past four years under Joe Biden. A second Trump administration isn’t likely to be much of a reprieve. “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump said in a social media post when he announced Gail Slater, an economic policy staffer to Vice President-elect JD Vance, as his pick for Justice Department antitrust chief. Expect the incoming administration to focus on the perceived power of the tech giants to suppress conservative viewpoints. Take, for example, incoming Federal Trade Commission Chair (and current commissioner) Andrew Ferguson’s recent statement in a case over inadequate return policies by an online sneaker retailer. Ferguson called for an investigation into tech platforms “for banning users and censoring content.” “For years, the major speech platforms seemed to censor in lockstep,” he wrote. “They banned dissent on the origins of Covid-19, mask mandates, the efficacy and safety of Covid-19 vaccines, transgenderism, and the integrity of the 2020 election.” Most of the antitrust efforts in the tech sector are already in motion. A two-week hearing is scheduled for April for a federal judge in Washington to decide whether to force Google to sell its Chrome web browser and make other changes that could reshape how people find information online. And across the river in Arlington, Virginia, another federal judge is expected to rule soon in a separate case on whether to break up Google’s advertising technology business. Also in April, the FTC will head to trial against Meta in a long-running case filed in late 2020 to force the social media company to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. The Justice Department’s case against Apple and the FTC’s lawsuit against Amazon have longer timelines; the Amazon case isn’t set for trial until 2026, while a federal judge in Newark is still deciding whether prosecutors can start moving forward in their case against Apple. The one major tech company to stay out of regulators’ line of sight had been Microsoft. But just last month the FTC kicked off what could be a years-long investigation of the OG tech monopolist. Tech chief executive officers are filing into Mar-a-Lago to speak with Trump and ensure they stay in his good graces. We’ll also likely see a steady stream of quiet and public pleas in the coming months for the new administration to ease up. DOJ famously settled its Microsoft antitrust case in 2001 shortly after President George W. Bush entered the White House. Though it would be a drastic and unlikely move, a Trump administration could simply drop any Biden-era cases it doesn’t like. The CEO lobbying efforts may be futile. “The most notable point of bipartisan consensus is the vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws to address big tech monopoly abuses,” said Roger Alford, a University of Notre Dame law professor and Justice Department antitrust official in the first Trump administration, at a US Senate hearing in December. Alford said it can be assumed that “the antitrust cases filed by the Biden administration will be pursued by the Trump administration.” The greatest shift may be in the agencies’ approach to mergers. While the first Trump administration challenged some high-profile transactions, such as Visa Inc.’s move to buy fintech startup Plaid Inc., and AT&T Inc.’s successful bid for Time Warner, it generally took a friendlier approach, often allowing major deals to move forward with conditions. “I think this may be the point of largest difference between the two administrations,” Alford said. The incoming Trump White House will “balance hostility toward big tech with sympathy toward innovators and startups.” —Josh Sisco and Leah Nylen Demand for servers and data centers to satisfy artificial intelligence workloads is driving an enormous effort to secure sources of electricity in the US. Power demand is expected to climb almost 16% over the next five years, more than triple the estimate from a year earlier. “The impact of AI on the power grid came on fast,” said Timothy Fox, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners. “We’re seeing load-growth projections that are unprecedented.” AT&T wants to get rid of its copper networks by selling consumers who still have land lines on a new type of wireless home phone. Foxconn’s interest in a deal for Nissan is said to be on hold while the automaker negotiates a potential merger with Honda. Nvidia’s deal for Israeli startup Run:ai was cleared by European Union antitrust regulators. | 
