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Why policymakers must act to preserve information freedom at home and abroad

The Washington Post by Diana Lemberg

January 5, 2020

Topping the very short list of issues that many Democrats and Republicans can agree upon these days are two seemingly unrelated topics: tech regulation and Hong Kong. Political figures across the ideological spectrum, from Elizabeth Warren to Stephen K. Bannon, have criticized the power players of Silicon Valley for threatening free competition and other American values. Meanwhile, over the past several months the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which commits the United States to monitoring civil liberties in the semiautonomous Chinese city, sailed through a bitterly divided Congress and was signed into law by President Trump.

On the surface these two issues have little in common other than being rare displays of bipartisanship. But, in fact, they reveal a genuine consensus that lawmakers must act to preserve information freedom in an age of renascent monopoly capitalism and digitally abetted authoritarianism.

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