Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters wants to break up Big Tech and ban their business practices he believes are harmful.
“I think Republicans need to reacquaint themselves with their history of antitrust enforcement, and realize huge concentrations of power in private hands can violate people’s liberties just as much as the government,” Masters said in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Masters, who announced his candidacy in July, serves as chief operating officer at investment firm Thiel Capital and runs the Thiel Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by billionaire investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. He competes in a crowded Republican primary with fellow candidate and current Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich for the chance to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in 2022.
If elected, Masters would join a growing contingent of Republican lawmakers, including Colorado Rep. Ken Buck and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, advocating for breaking up Big Tech. Hawley has proposed several pieces of antitrust legislation targeting monopolies in digital markets, while Buck led the introduction of a series of bills in the House Judiciary Committee regulating tech companies’ alleged anticompetitive business practices.
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