Lawfare Daily: Tim Wu on ‘The Age of Extraction’

Summary

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The Lawfare Podcast

Episode: Lawfare Daily: Tim Wu on ‘The Age of Extraction’

Date: November 12, 2025
Host(s): Kate Clonick (Senior Editor, Lawfare), Alan Rosenstein (Research Director, Lawfare)
Guest: Tim Wu (Julia Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology, Columbia Law School)
Main Theme:
A deep dive into Tim Wu’s new book “The Age of Extraction,” examining how dominant tech platforms transitioned from catalyzing prosperity and innovation to becoming engines of economic and social extraction. The conversation explores what makes the current generation of tech monopolies unique, the concept of 'extraction', and the policy solutions for curbing their power.

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Episode Overview

Tim Wu joins Lawfare’s Kate Clonick and Alan Rosenstein to discuss his new book, “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.” The conversation examines how tech platforms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have shifted from promises of open opportunity to sophisticated engines of economic rent-seeking and social control. The discussion covers the nature of "extraction," distinctions from previous monopolies, intersections with free speech and platform power, diagnoses of "enshittification", and a debate on the viability and necessity of structural reforms versus taxation and regulation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Age of Extraction: What’s Changed?

[06:01] Alan Rosenstein:

• Kicks off the discussion by asking Wu to define the core thesis of "extraction" and what makes contemporary tech monopolies like Amazon and Google different from legacies like Standard Oil.

[06:20] Tim Wu:

• Core Thesis: The modern tech economy's problem is “too much extraction by an essential infrastructure.”
• Promise vs Reality: Platforms originally promised to catalyze broad wealth, democracy, creative liberty—this promise was partly realized, but the narrative shifted.
• Modern Platforms: Now, platforms are “the most sophisticated tools of wealth extraction and other resources from us, from humanity, ever designed.”
• Difference from Old Monopolies: Historic infrastructure (roads, electricity) was essential but didn’t “take from everything.” Modern platforms mediate almost all aspects of commerce, socialization, and information, aggregating both wealth and data.

“You have these essentials to commerce that are mainly monopolies… extracting a large amount not only of wealth from every transaction... but also of the most important data, time, attention and so forth.”
— Tim Wu [07:46]

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2. The Evolution of Amazon as a Case Study

[09:02] Tim Wu:

• Early 2010s: Amazon realized the internet’s promise—marketplace was open, fees low, thousands launched small businesses.
• “High Point": Lowest barrier to entry, inspired a generation of entrepreneurs (“the army of Davids”).
• Change to Extraction:
  • Monopoly Emerges: Once Amazon dominated both sellers and buyers (Prime) and outcompeted eBay, it began “turning the knob on the fees.”
  • Introduction of sponsored placements and ad fees (now a $57B revenue stream, surpassing global newspaper revenue).
• Economic Restructuring: Money and value began flowing overwhelmingly into the platform, not the ecosystem of small sellers.

“The significant thing is what it meant for the structure of the economy… Money is flowing into the platform.”
— Tim Wu [13:10, paraphrased from a longer segment]

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3. Defining Extraction: Visceral and Technical

[14:18] Tim Wu:

• Visceral Definition: When platform power lets sellers charge whatever “you’ll pay” (airlines raising ticket prices at the last minute, Ticketmaster pricing).
• Technical Definition: From microeconomics—“extracting rent” means extracting profits enabled solely by monopoly power, not by superior product or efficiency.
• Business Mindset: The search for extraction points is increasingly central to business strategy, rather than delivering value.

“So much of business school teaching is now trying to find points of extraction... It’s like in poker, when you’ve got the best hand, the nuts, and you can really take at that moment.”
— Tim Wu [15:40]

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4. Extraction and Power—Across Economic and Speech Contexts

[17:54] Tim Wu:

• About Power: Extraction is fundamentally about power—the ability to make someone do something they wouldn’t otherwise do.
• Convenience as Strategy: Platform extraction increasingly leverages convenience, inertia, and “lock-in,” making the cost of quitting higher than tolerating extraction (e.g., paying for extra Gmail storage as the “easier” path).
• Feeling of Powerlessness: The modern consumer often feels compelled, not free—reflecting a systemic “loss of control” in both economic and privacy choices.

“When you think about your life—it’s worth asking: how actually do you feel in control of your own life…as opposed to you do this stuff because you don’t really realistically feel like you have a choice?”
— Tim Wu [18:33]

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5. Platforms: Commerce vs. Speech

[23:40] Kate Clonick:

• Raises the intellectual challenge of defining “platform” both in economic (marketplace) and speech (free expression) terms.
• Notes that while economic harm from extraction in commerce is clear, it’s harder to analyze similar power when platforms are intermediating speech—not simply “selling us things.”

[24:21] Tim Wu:

• Argues that the “somewhere” where things happen—commerce, speech, relationships—is central to civilization; platforms shape what’s possible.
• Historical analogy: The Roman Forum as the original "platform," showing how physical fora define the structure of society and opportunity.
• Open, accessible platforms are prerequisites for economic and democratic multiplicity (e.g., independent sellers, robust debate).

“The rules of the central forums—once again—define how open or how closed the society we live in.”
— Tim Wu [26:02]

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6. The Insidification (or Enshittification) Thesis

[27:02] Alan Rosenstein:

• Invokes Cory Doctorow’s term “enshittification” (or insidification, per transcript), the process whereby platforms get progressively worse for users as extraction increases.
• Wonders if this is sometimes “vibes-based,” since some platforms (e.g. YouTube) still seem to deliver significant value.

[29:11] Tim Wu:

• Diagnoses insidification/enshittification as a sign of backsliding, contrary to the progressive ideal of ongoing technical and social improvement.
• Cites historical patterns: early vibrancy and open innovation consolidates, stagnates, and decays as monopolies entrench.
• Not just a tech issue: airline and other industries also suffer monopoly stagnation.
• He’s “fighting for the soul of America,” for the “succession” of better enterprises when old ones decay.

“For someone like me … the macroeconomic side of it, which is basically monopoly stagnation … is what this book is really about.”
— Tim Wu [33:01]

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7. Structural Solutions vs. Taxation and Regulation

[38:25] Alan Rosenstein:

• Poses the key policy question: Why does Wu advocate structural (anti-monopoly) reforms over regulatory or redistributive (tax-and-spend) solutions?

[39:04] Tim Wu:

• Why Structure?
  • Belief in markets disciplined by competition: performance improves when multiple players vie and can be replaced.
  • “Succession”—the possibility new entrants can challenge incumbents, rather than have them “Cronos-like” consume the next generation.
• Against Static Monopoly:
  • Without competition, platforms have “no pressure” to improve.
  • Even with regulation, entrenched providers (ex: Facebook, AT&T) stagnate in value to the public.

“I believe in kind of a separation of powers which … sets up [government] against private industry and then tries to divide public power away from monopoly and … let it take care of itself.”
— Tim Wu [44:01]

[41:17] Kate Clonick:

• Counters that antitrust is no longer sufficient: wealth and power held by tech oligarchs are now so great they are “untouchable”; more direct remedies (e.g., higher taxes, structural reforms targeting capital) may be needed.

[43:48] Tim Wu:

• Acknowledges these debates are the “right ones to have.”
• Recognizes the relatively recent emergence of private power on this scale and the challenge of containing it.
• Defends antitrust as potentially powerful, citing past government actions (AT&T, Microsoft, Standard Oil) as examples of effective change, though taxes may be morally justified but hard to pass in the U.S.

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8. State Capacity and Political Feasibility

[48:45] Alan Rosenstein:

• Asks about the government’s present-day capacity to implement reforms, in both best-case and worst-case (abuse-prone, incompetent) scenarios.

[49:14] Tim Wu:

• The U.S. government is still uniquely powerful, but legislative gridlock often prevents effective action.
• The Biden administration prioritized antitrust partly because executive action was more feasible than waiting for Congress.
• Expresses preference for structural over redistributive solutions, both philosophically and practically.

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9. The Vision Going Forward: Platform Utility, Balance of Power

[51:26] Kate Clonick:

• Asks Wu for his "escape from Rivendell"—his ultimate vision for a just future after "The Age of Extraction."

[52:30] Tim Wu:

• He advocates for a balanced, decentralized economy; both pure monopoly capitalism and centralized communism have failed.
• Platforms should be like public utilities: open, modestly profitable enablers of commerce and creativity for others, not extractors trying to be the “main character.”
• The “host” mentality: facilitate others’ success rather than extract everything for themselves.
• This vision extends beyond tech—applies to any infrastructure that underpins society.

“I want Amazon to be a low-cost facilitator and host for commerce… not be crushed and extracted and have everything taken from them.”
— Tim Wu [55:10]

• A modest regulatory vision: platforms as utilities, subject to rules of common carriage and public obligation, possibly with some competition.

[56:33] Kate Clonick:

• Notes that public utility concepts can be in tension with antitrust/competition ideals.

[57:28] Tim Wu:

• Acknowledges the traditions differ but insists they can coexist; platforms can be both regulated and subject to competition.
• The core policy goal is to “stop extraction” by platforms, prevent abuse, and reorient them toward serving society.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The significant thing is what it meant for the structure of the economy because this idea that Amazon was sort of going to liberate a whole class of sort of small businesses and medium sized businesses really started to change and the direction in which the money is flowing went into the platforms.”
  — Tim Wu [04:33]

• “This book is fundamentally about power… the ability to make someone do something they wouldn’t otherwise do.”
  — Tim Wu [17:54]

• “The rules of the central forum… define how open or how closed the society we live in.”
  — Tim Wu [26:02]

• “For someone like me … the macroeconomic side of it, which is basically monopoly stagnation … is what this book is really about.”
  — Tim Wu [33:01]

• “I think the platforms need to be like the utilities of other ages… they need to be more like the electric system… humble… a place for invention on top.”
  — Tim Wu [55:09]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [06:01] — Introduction of extraction thesis; contrast with historic monopolies.
• [09:02] — Amazon case study: from liberator to extractor.
• [14:18] — Defining extraction: visceral vs. technical.
• [17:54] — Extraction as power, convenience as lock-in.
• [23:40] — The meaning of “platform”—economics vs. speech contexts.
• [27:02] — The "insidification/enshittification" cycle, monopoly stagnation.
• [38:25] — Structural reform vs. tax/regulation.
• [48:45] — State capacity for reform.
• [51:26] — The endgame: platforms as utilities, decentralized economic power.

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Overall Tone and Style

The conversation is probing, clear, and intellectually lively, with Wu balancing economic theory, law, policy, and historical analogy. There’s a tone of wary optimism; while the present is dominated by extraction and monopoly, Wu maintains hope that thoughtful structural reform can deliver a more open, innovative, and fair tech ecosystem.

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Transcript

[Kate Clonick]

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[Tim Wu]

I think the significant thing is what it meant for the structure of the economy because this idea that Amazon was sort of going to liberate a whole class of sort of small businesses and medium sized businesses really started to change and the direction in which the money is flowing went into the platforms.

[Kate Clonick]

It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Kate Clonick, senior editor at LawFair.

[Alan Rosenstein]

And I'm Alan Rosenstein, research director at Lawfare.

[Kate Clonick]

And we're here with Tim Wu, Julia Silver professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School.

[Tim Wu]

I want to live in a society where, more broadly people think not in terms of how do I get in a position to extract, but you know, can I invest and see some return on that investment? What kind of sense of economic liberty do I have? Am I going to invest in my career and my education and get something out of it? Or is it all about just trying to find and being in the right place at the right time?

[Kate Clonick]

Today we're talking about his new Book the Age of How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity. Tim is perhaps one of the most widely read and cited scholars in technology and law. He coined the term net neutrality. He's written the Master Switch, Attention Merchants, the Curse of Vagueness, and my personal favorite, who Controls the Internet? With Jack Goldsmith. They're all essential reading. And he is recently back at Columbia after being in the Biden administration where he led much of their work on competition and antitrust policies.

[Alan Rosenstein]

Let's start with what I take to be your the key thesis of the book. So just explain why you think the modern problem is with these tech platforms. And maybe also I'm curious why you think they're worse than previous generations of monopolies. Right? So like what makes a Google or an Amazon different from, let's say, a Standard Oil?

[Tim Wu]

Well, let me start at the beginning. So I think the problem, I guess I'll put it this way in a line referencing the title is that there's too much extraction by an essential infrastructure. And more than that, I think the story I seek to tell in this book is a story about how there was this promise that the tech platforms would be this extraordinary catalyst of economic activity, this platform for broadspread wealth. Basically, they'd make everybody rich and also spread democracy, also give a place for creators to do their thing and have their way. And I think things did kind of start out that way, but that they've changed and that the platforms have become in some ways the most sophisticated tools of wealth extraction and other resources from us, from humanity, ever designed. And so I think that I guess I define as the problem, it's a good way to put it, which triggers down to a lot of other problems. I think maybe what makes us different than some of the other monopolies historically is just how expansive it is. I mean, what do you not do.

On a platform right now? Consider, think about your life and when you buy stuff, meeting people, keeping track.

Of your friends, it's all platformized. And so you have these kind of.

Essentials to commerce that are mainly monopolies.

And even if they're not, are clearly extracting a large amount not only of.

Wealth from every transaction that happens, but also of the most important data, time, attention and so forth.

So I think that makes it a particular kind of problem. The contrast I'd have is with historical forms of infrastructure. You know, like the roads or, I don't know, electricity. You know, they're also pretty important. But they didn't take from.

From everything.

There's More than that, but those are that, that's my lead in at least.

[Alan Rosenstein]

Talk about one of your main case studies which, which is Amazon. All of us are familiar with Amazon, which I think is part of what makes such a good case study. Walk us through how Amazon went from basically a bookstore to this massive platform that controls a non trivial amount of commerce in the country and quite possibly the world. And in particular, at what point do you feel like it went from a platform that provided a very useful platform service to something that was specifically extractive? And I'd love to hear kind of your theory of also what makes something go from a platform fee, which I think we'd all concede you need because platforms have to make money, to something that is extractive in that kind of normatively bad sense.

[Tim Wu]

Yes. No, that's, that's a great story. I mean, I think the story of Amazon is in so many ways the story of the Internet's promise and in.

Some ways its betrayal.

Back in the 90s, early thousands, there was a vision of the Internet, very, very powerful vision that suggested everyone would be able to open their own shops online. Anyone with some kind of talent would be able to pursue it and make a living that way. It was going to transform the economy. It was the age of small is beautiful. I read there was a book set Small as a New Big that came out and the vision was one of an army of Davids. In the phrase of Glenn Reynolds, who's a law professor and a blogger. The instapundent an army of Davids was going to defeat the old Goliaths of the industrial age in this new kind of age. And I think it was very inspiring vision. And in some ways, I mean, at first it was ebay that kind of people had in mind and blogging. But then later, especially in e commerce, it came to be Amazon in its marketplace. You know, the Amazon marketplace began just as a place for used books, but gradually grew into every form of commerce. And it was different than Amazon's original business plan because it was Amazon inviting all the sellers of the world to come and sell their goods. And there was a period where honestly it delivered on that promise around the year, say 2012, I guess I want to say maybe early 2010s there was a period where Amazon Marketplace was cheap. It was easy for people to set up, the fees were low, maybe, you know, depended, but could be as low as between 15 and 20% of your sales. And it inspired, you know, thousands, maybe tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to, to Start up little, little shops online and spark this kind of dream of, you know, the, the army of David's people quitting their jobs, experiencing new freedoms, living wherever they needed to. So that was in some ways the high point.

I think what changed, and we talked about the extractive phase I guess is.

Once Amazon had sort of conclusively beat ebay.

Once they had in economic jargon, kind of established a monopoly on both sides of the market. They had all the sellers there, most of the buyers pretty locked in with Prime. There's sort of a seller version of prime too that people were locked into. They had the best fulfillment services. That's when they started to turn the knob on the fees and just turn it and turn it at this, fees at that, fees. I think the master stroke in this development was their development of the, the placement fee. They called it advertising the sponsored result. So I don't know if you have been on Amazon lately and look for something, but first things you see are all sponsored results.

[Alan Rosenstein]

Yes, I find that extremely annoying.

[Tim Wu]

Well, that little thing which actually makes search worse obviously because it depends on who's paying for the result. Started earning more and more and more Money. Went past 10, 20 billion last year, 2024, it was in the high 50 billion. It's like $57 billion that they earn from just those ad placements which by the way, I'll mention is double the revenue of every single newspaper in the world combined just based on those little things. And I think it's been a real change for what it means to try to run a business online. And you know, people still, it's still very useful, some people still make it. A lot of people have quit or gone bankrupt, but you know, overall they still do it. But I think the significant thing is what it meant for the structure of the economy because this idea that Amazon was sort of going to liberate a whole class of sort of small businesses and medium sized businesses really started to change and the direction in which the money is flowing went into the platform. So that's kind of a long story, but just a sign of how the Internet shifted from this place of flourishment into one of extraction, as I said earlier.

[Alan Rosenstein]

So I just want to stay on this for a second because I think the idea of extraction is a very powerful concept that you use. But I will admit it is one that I am still having trouble wrapping my mind around. And obviously there's not going to be a simple test for when something is the cost of doing business versus extraction. But I do think it'd be helpful just to focus in on this. Theoretically, what factors do you look to? Maybe a fair question way of asking this question, to know when something goes from, look, this is just the price of setting up a platform or a middleman or a whatever, right. Which everyone loves to hate, but we all recognize that they're important versus this is now becoming extractive. Because that to me is kind of the key conceptual hinge upon which a lot of the account in your book relies on. And I'd love to get your sense of how you think about that.

[Tim Wu]

Theoretically, I'm going to give you a sort of more visceral and I'll give you a more technical answer. Okay, so the visceral answer is, as a buyer, you experience extraction when the seller is undisciplined in their market power towards you. In other words, they can charge whatever you'll pay. An example might be is when you suddenly really need to get somewhere and.

That day and you have to buy.

An airline ticket at the counter and you know they've got you. Or, you know, there's maybe there's a drug you need to treat, cancer, you.

Know, a rare cancer you have.

Like, you know, you really. There's no discipline.

It's kind of what you're going to pay.

The more technical answer, and where I started, where I got the phrase from, is for microeconomics. So in microeconomics, people talk about monopoly.

Extracting rent, so a rent extracted by a monopolist. And the technical answer is that it is the amount of money you're able to extract based on having monopoly power, having lack of some kind of competitor, something else disciplining you.

But I think both of those ideas are right.

One is a turning point.

The turning point, and I think we all feel this is when you have.

The sense of a good example is.

You really want to go to a.

Concert and Ticketmaster or a secondary seller basically got whatever pricing power they need over you. That, again, I refer to as visceral sense. I feel like our entire economy has become more and more like that. And I feel that business has changed its approach. One of the things I do in law school is teach at business school. And I feel like so much of business school teaching is now trying to find points of extraction, the place where you've kind of met another metaphor. It's like in poker, when you've got the best hand, the nuts, and you can really take at that moment. That has sort of become, I think, business strategy in our time. It's like, where can I Find that point of extraction and really take it.

[Kate Clonick]

Yeah. So I think that this term is powerful and it also taps into kind of the idea of data is the new oil. A lot of other kinds of ideas that you hear about in both privacy and Internet law around kind of this extraction element. It kind of seems to me like what you're describing to a certain extent is coercion or kind of a mismatch in power. I'll give you an example of what strikes me as a great example more than like the ad revenue thing for, for Amazon. And you can tell me if I'm understanding this correctly. But for example, I will get these notifications from Google where I have had a. My main point of doing business for my. Is my. Is my Gmail account for the last 20 years. And I will get a notification that I'm running out of storage space and that all of my storage will be shutting down if I don't pay $3 right now. And it's for. It turns out it's a monthly fee. Now I could go through and try to figure out why all of a sudden I'm running out of storage. I could delete old emails. I could like do a file. You know, I, and I do occasionally do this, but it's also just easier and more convenient. And this ties into some of like your other types of ideas and things like that. It's easier, more convenient to just pay the $3. Right. It's a, it's a cup of coffee. Right. It doesn't even, it doesn't even matter. Is that kind of, to a certain extent, what you're talking about with extraction? Does it match with the idea of convenience?

[Tim Wu]

I mean, I think convenience has become the strategy par excellence of making sure people don't quit and just raising enough costs or making it enough annoying so that it aids the lack of discipline. But what you said earlier on is exactly right. This book is fundamentally about power. There are a lot of definitions of power. I feel like an important one is the idea that is the ability to make something, someone do something they wouldn't otherwise do. And, you know, I think in our heads you have some kind of price.

You want to pay for, you know.

Most things, and then there's a maximum price you'll have to pay. You know, there are the privacy terms you would like to agree to. There's the ones you'll agree to because you have to. There's like, you know, what you'll do and then what you'll do when you have a whole bunch of Data there's like, you know, using Gmail in your ideal and then what you'll do, there's how much time you'd like to spend on the Internet and there's how much time you end up really spending. And in many ways when you think about your life, it's worth asking how actually do you feel in control of your own life as opposed to your actual preferences versus you feel like you do this stuff because you don't really realistically feel like you have a choice. I mean you could spend all your time shopping for stuff off Amazon and try and discipline it. But you know, I'm one consumer, why am I going to do that? I actually have abandoned Gmail quite a while ago because I like, like having.

My emails stored in Switzerland, encrypted, whatever.

But most people, I think that's just like too much and that feeling of powerlessness and you know, it goes beyond tech platforms. Housing is another area where people. I feel like the age of extraction is upon us and we may get to that later where you just, you know, I think it is the business model of our time and I contrast it what I was, what I think is older, maybe better business model which is you try to improve your product and deliver value. And you know, that was the first half of the Internet story. You know, Google Search, Amazon, E Commerce, you know, these are brilliant, incredible products. I don't know Facebook, so so but the other ones are there. They're incredible, amazing products. But the first half of their life was building a better product. The second half of their life has been extraction and that's where we are today.

[Kate Clonick]

Yeah. And we're going to get to the kind of the so called, like the initiatification of things in a little bit. Al and I are both excited to talk to you about that. But I kind of wanted to go back to this idea of power because I do think it was your last book. The Curse of Bigness spoke a lot about this and was kind of became kind of the manifesto, so to speak, along with, you know, your colleague and former FTC chair Alina Khan's kind of writing around both her note about Amazon antitrust paradox and her kind of subsequent writings with Zephyr Teachout and things like that became kind of part of the, of the lexicon of the, of the neo Brandeis movement, the formative texts. And a lot of those were about power and they were about harnessing an idea of power that Brandeis talked about that was both kind of elegantly an economic power and how it translates into a democratic power. And so I think, you know, that I have like written about like some of this and kind of in particular what I wanted to kind of talk about was the first chapter of the book, which I, which is so interesting to me because I have also written a chapter trying that starts off with you defining the word platform, which I also wrote, like, spent an embarrassing amount of time writing like what was ultimately three pages defining platform in both the economic sense and in the, in the free speech sense. Because they are so interestingly that we, it's so interesting that we use this the same word. Right? They do reference essentially the same thing. But all of the, the logic and kind of a lot of the things are, are not copacetic ideas necessarily. The economic arguments that flow from defining platform and the ideas and terminology are very different and how they cash out in many ways in antitrust law are very different than the logic and the rules that you would follow if you followed kind of a lot of the, like from, from John Stuart Mill to Meiklejohn kind of the, the ideas down the road for free speech platforms. Right. And so I'm actually like, I'm with you on the Amazon stuff. Like, I'm totally bought in on the commerce stuff and, and like the idea that like a lot of these platforms have this. But where I kind of like fall apart and where I've often struggled with broadcast monopoly definitions and things like that as well is like how we marry these ideas that are so kind of seemingly close together but actually very disparate and have very different solution sets for ideas of publishing broadcast speech and ideas of competitiveness. And I'm just kind of, I'm wondering if we can actually kind of maybe have like a moment to kind of talk about like, okay, so let's assume that we totally buy into like the idea of extraction in the Amazon context, but like how do we buy into that idea in other types of areas that are speech platforms. Right. That are not selling us things in the traditional economic sense, but are using our data in other senses and are controlling our speech and having other types of anti democratic effects that are very different than the anti democratic effects or the lack of empowerment that a traditional commerce platform has.

[Tim Wu]

Yeah, it's a great question. And at the intellectual heart of this book is the subject of platforms. Absolutely. And that has been a life like a fascination of mine since I started in academia and in the net neutrality days. Honestly, part of this book is in some ways this book is in quiet ways a net neutrality book, but just about everything. I started writing this book. Started writing this book with a sentence, and I thought I would write this book out of the sentence, which is, everything has to happen somewhere. The sentence is still somewhere in the.

Book, somewhere in chapter two.

But I was thinking everything, whether it's.

Speech, whether it's commerce, whether it's conversation, whether it's meeting people, everything has to happen somewhere. And very often we focus on the people who are speaking or on the things are being sold. But the places where it all happens in many ways shape and define a civilization. And so you're not wrong. We're both right about. And what you're right about in the First Amendment, free speech and commerce context is the stakes are very high. Last week with my family, we were on vacation in Rome. And when you're in Rome, you go to the Forum. And, you know, there it was in some ways, along with the Greeks, the original platform. They had this big giant area in the middle of town where they had commerce. They had the judiciary hanging out there. They had their government, they had their religious rituals. They had. You know, this is where Cicero did his speeches. This is where people bought and sold things. It's where, you know, they elected people. And it's very normally hard to say exactly how should that be? But it's very clear that how that platform is is going to inform what kind of civilization you have. You know, Roman civilization isn't what it is without the Forum, you know, the town squares, the town halls of various societies, American Main street, you know, all these traditions, and Main street without stores and so forth. And I have a lot of theories, some of them not in the book, as to. In a way, because it's too much. But I. I feel I have a.

Couple of allusions to this.

I feel, for example, you need to have some kind of open platform, to have society with more than two classes. In other words, I think if you only have extremely powerful owners and employees or serfs or slaves, you don't need platforms because there's only a small number of people who buy and sell. But if you want to have independent sellers, farmers, artisans, kind of people who.

Started the American Revolution, they need to.

Have a place to sell. And if you want to have a democracy, you need to have a place people can speak. Now, it can be more virtual. It can be, you know, news or. I mean, and it can be newspapers. But someone has to be able to get the newspapers to people and so on. So, you know, there's a lot in there. But what I think is exactly the Right thing, and I think anyone who understands power understands this, is that the rules of the central forum fora, the rules of the central platforms once again define how open or how closed the society we live in.

[Alan Rosenstein]

So I want to turn to the solutions that you propose, but I do want to stay on the diagnostic point just for a second. And Kate mentioned the term insidification. It's coined by the great writer Cory Doctorow. He. I think he actually has a book that just came out called Setting out his theory about this.

[Kate Clonick]

Oh, Tim and Corey go way back.

[Tim Wu]

Yeah, that's true.

[Kate Clonick]

Didn't you go to elementary school together?

[Tim Wu]

We did, we went to elementary school.

[Alan Rosenstein]

So you used that term and obviously I think you co signed the diagnosis. And on the one hand I definitely agree that there is some very non trivial amount of insidification. Right. I think earlier you mentioned the fact that to buy any piece of crap on Amazon you now have to scroll through just endless amounts of sponsored these sponsored posts, very annoying. People have talked about how maybe Google search is getting worse. On the other hand, I worry sometimes that the diagnosis of insuridification, which I think is important to your broader point about extraction, I think those two things go hand in hand, is sometimes a little vibes based, at least for my preference, at the same time that I recognize that a lot of the services I use, they feel like they've been getting worse. And in some ways they have. At the same time, others seem to have gotten really good. Like YouTube today is at least for me, a kind of inexhaustible source of really cool nonfiction content. And of course we haven't even talked about. And we should at some point because it also raises. It also has a prominent place in your book AI. I mean there's a lot to complain about, but at the same time on many subjects I can talk to what is effectively already an artificial general intelligence, like in my pocket, essentially for free, which to me is the opposite of insidification. Like maybe a world historical improvement to humanity.

[Tim Wu]

Right.

[Alan Rosenstein]

It may also kill us all, which is a separate conversation down the line. But just to me at least it's not obvious that insidification is the dominant reality. And I'm curious how you think about it in particular, maybe more analytically, how you make sure that any claim about intrinsification or the opposite in goodification is grounded in facts rather than in vibes.

[Tim Wu]

Right. I mean this might sound a little defensive, it's actually Corey's term. But I do have a very. I have a lot to say about this topic. So, first of all, leaving the diagnosis.

Question to one side for a minute, I think the reason that insidification is.

Such a visceral thing to people like.

Corey and myself is I think that we were people who were young, who, when we were young, were very optimistic and excited about technology and the idea that always gets better. And, you know, that new, new versions of things will be better than the old version, I think, and that in some general sense, that is in some ways the definition of being a progressive, that you believe in future getting better than worse. And so at some level, insidification, if that's the word, or things going back is a warning sign that something's wrong. I guess if you're a progressive, you know that now this may be a.

Very idealistic thing to think everything can.

Get better at all times and, you know, every. Every day will be a better day. And I admit there's almost. Almost like an article of faith to it. But if someone isn't, you know, sounding the alarm when things start just backslide, you know, that's a problem. And I don't only mean that for, you know, I don't only mean that for technologies or websites. I also, you know, mean that for our democracy, for our products, for the things we depend on. And if I can speak also to the. Why the concept of things going backwards is very important to me. This book is actually the third in a trilogy. And the first book, the Master Switch.

Was all about the long cycles of technological development. And one of the things that I noticed from long study of technologies like radio and the telephone and film and so forth is that technologies do. I didn't have the brilliance of Corey to come up with a great phrase, but they do go through these predictable life cycles where technologies burst onto the scene. There's all kinds of people using them. Then they often consolidates into just a few players. They often have kind of a golden age then for a while, and then they start to stagnate, decay, and become very defensive. And it's. That phase can last a very long time. Like, you know, we're trying to look at this micro diagnosis of whether a website is bad or good. But, you know, for example, the AT&T monopoly was good for a while, but, you know, lasted for 70 years. And the last, like 30 years, there was no progress made. Company like Boeing is like, stuck in some kind of nadir. And so I think for someone like me, I know it's a very micro phrase, but the macroeconomic side of it, which is basically monopoly Stagnation. A company became coming so comfortable in its position. I mean that's what this book is really about at the sort of more theoretical level. This book is about looking for those signs of things, but it's really about the challenge of. Of having important sectors occupied by monopolies who do not need to improve themselves anymore. And just think of better ways to get money and data out of you. And you know, look, in some ways, you know, it's about tech because it's the most visible. It gets worse when you go to other industries. I mean airline industry is another example. Or you go to other countries where you know they've just had monopolies in place forever, they don't change anything and everything's sort of gradually gets worse and worse. And so I'm kind of fighting for the soul of. I'll be dramatic. I'm fighting for the soul of America here, which is a soul of progress and things getting better and people complaining when things get bad and trying to ensure some kind of succession. Like what you really need is when things go bad, it needs to be possible to challenge them. You know, when at and I mean at and t. @ one point its history was such an impenetrable fortress that took the government to break them up before you actually had things like the Internet show up. So it is in the service of this idea, the progress that people like Koi and are on the lookout for. Signs of monopoly, decay and stagnation did not answer your diagnostic question. But I would answer it if I were acting it economically. I wouldn't be like, oh, there's bad vibes. I would say that this company has held a monopoly position here 15 years with little signs of improvement and seems be able to destroy all the competitors. Something doesn't seem right.

That would be more my way of looking at it. But that's not exactly as colorful as insertification.

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[Alan Rosenstein]

Okay, so let's now turn to the solutions you propose. And you're a big fan and this reflects in your government work and in your academic work, in your previous writing in structural Solutions. So let's just start by having you just describe what makes the solution a structural solution rather than a, let's say ex post, let's regulate the behavior or let's tax and redistribute, you know, what kind of structural solutions are you talking about? And why do you think the structural path is the way to go rather than the look, let the market do what it's going to do and then we will just tell the companies how to behave once they have achieved whatever level they have achieved.

[Tim Wu]

Right?

I mean, weirdly enough, it comes from faith in assertive market or a competitive process. I mean, the structural solution or approach to problems is fundamentally an anti monopoly approach. It suggests that you'll get better performance out of a market or an industry that has multiple players who fight and discipline each other. And if someone sucks, they lose market share and get beaten. And so they're under some kind of pressure, like an athlete training with other athletes to actually stay good, get better. You mentioned YouTube. I think YouTube is under a lot of competitive pressure, which is why it needs to get better, find its own niches and so forth. A company like Facebook doesn't really have to do anything to hold on to that friends and family kind of sector it's got. And no one can leave it because then you say goodbye to your relatives. So that is what I mean by structure. I mean first of all, some ongoing competition and discipline within the industry or sector where, you know, it doesn't have to be a hundred companies, even ten, but it's got, you know, more than two, ideally more than three, who are trying to call each other shots and take advantage of each other's weaknesses. So it's actually kind of a competition that's number one. And number two, the possibility of succession.

Industrial succession, a little bit like the.

The TV show, but the possibility that.

Something better can come along and actually replace what was There before.

That doesn't have to happen every year.

But it needs to happen every. There needs to be the possibility of that happening for a healthy macro economy.

[Alan Rosenstein]

And just to expand on that, this is the, if I'm following you correctly, the Cronos effect that you talk about the idea that ideally an incumbent will want like Cronos trying to eat his children when will want to kind of consume the next generation. And we need to make sure they can't do that.

[Tim Wu]

Yes, that's right.

That their natural instinct I think left untouched is to despite what they'll say. I mean tech companies always will say oh my God, we're so excited about this, that and the other. But you know, nobody wants to be replaced.

[Kate Clonick]

I actually kind of want to switch slightly which is that we're in this moment where kind of the White House where there is like the White House is taking golden shares in intel. We're steering TikTok to political allies, right? We're using regulatory power in this, in these nakedly political bart and like question corrupt ways. Do we really want to give like do we really want government to have more power over platforms? I mean this has been kind of a little bit one of the questions that I have, I've struggled with in the past generally and it's one of the criticisms I have of like kind of Europe's approach. Even though like I do admire their ability to kind of actually get regulation done in so many ways. But I guess it strikes me that really we have like this, this problem actually in the technical sense with individuals, with these oligarchs, these, the Musk's, the Bezos, the Ellison, the Horowitzes and their power isn't reachable. I don't think with antitrust reform, I don't think that there is like antitrust solutions to the structure of capital that funds Elon Musk. Like I think that there is an old fashioned actual answer to that and it is more taxes and it is, you know, it is more taxes for the wealthiest and that this is actually at the end of the day the progressive reform here is like actually based in socialism or more socialist tendencies. And I know that that's a dangerous word in general but like I can't help but think that like there's nothing you could do anymore to a lot of these companies from an antitrust perspective that would, that would harm their massive amounts of wealth. They're all billionaires in the multi sense and the power that they're exerting is not even tethered to their Companies anymore. They could walk away from their companies and they would still have this amount of power, I mean, which is just like, you know, rivals the GDP of many like European states. And so I'm just very kind of curious, like why not just taxes? Why are some of these questions about antitrust? Because a lot of this just strikes me as solvable through something more direct. But maybe it's just that we don't have an appetite in the United States for taxes.

[Tim Wu]

No. Well, it's a great, well, when it is, this is the right debate to be having. I, I think and it's a, it's a, a great debate. I would sort of label as what do you do about private power? You know, the Constitution was very careful and concerned about public power and tried to separate it horizontally, vertically. I don't need to do A CON Law 101 on this, on this, on this crowd or this gang. But private power, which is a newer phenomenon. You know, when you think about public power, you read Aristotle or, or Cicero to continue. They're, they're all about tyranny and dictatorship. We've been thinking about that for, you know, more than 2,000 years. Problem with private power is, is only, you know, about 150 years old. Maybe, you know, the idea of corporations that have maybe, maybe 300 years, if you count some of the British. But whatever, it is a newer problem. And I think we're trying to figure out the right solutions. To return a little bit to the last question because I think it's related. I, with a sort of anti monopoly background and belief in structural solutions, have been of the view that decentralization, distribution of economic power is the best way to keep it in check. And the entity that can do that, the only entity powerful enough is government to try to break private power. So I believe in kind of a separation of powers which first of all has government against private industry, set up against private industry and then tries to divide public power away from monopoly and then hopefully let it take care of itself. So what you said, maybe there's a lot of what you say is like, are you really serious about any of this?

If you're not serious about money, I.

Guess you could put it that way. Or maybe taxes are the right answer. So I think there's something to that. There's a reason Brandeis was obsessed with banking and finance and people who are interested in banking and financial regulation tend to have this deep instinct about the underlying power that is conveyed that way. Now it is not clear to me exactly how control of Credit and finance directly affects the situation, but there's an intuition to it. But the other question you asked, which.

Is hard one, is like, you know.

Is antitrust ever really powerful enough to.

Handle these kind of problems?

I have some confidence that it can be.

I guess I am relying on the history of the Theodore Roosevelt and FDR.

And the high points of antitrust where.

They, you know, broke Standard Oil up or, you know, the periods where they say in more recent times humiliated Microsoft.

Or broke up at and T. So those struck me as measures that did.

Affect those businesses pretty profoundly and their course.

And my faith or belief is it's easier to pass those laws than it.

Is to pass high levels of tax. Now, we obviously haven't been able to raise taxes.

In fact, we've repeatedly lowered taxes.

So it's a question of what you think is less likely. I mean, part of it just seems. You might just say it's hopeless. Government doesn't have power.

But government does have power, but it.

Has to be used.

[Alan Rosenstein]

Let me then follow up by asking about state capacity to do whatever reforms. Some will be structural, some will be ex post, whatever the case is. Now, you have a long history in government. Most recently you were senior advisor to the President, President Biden on the National Economics Council. You've been involved at the ftc. I mean, I think you probably have, certainly within the legal academy, as good as anyone, of a sense of what the government can achieve when it is operating sort of at full capacity, as it were. And so the state of capacity question, I think has two parts. So first is, let's assume the government is operating as well as it can. Can it in fact be effective given the sort of size and complexity? And again, just a return to AI, the rapid pace of change of, let's say, the technology industry. And then the second question, and it's kind of following up on what Kate said earlier. The government is not always operating obviously at full capacity. What do we do in a situation where, whether it's this administration or future administration, we have a government that is both not technically competent and also is very prone to abuse whatever regulatory powers we give to it. So it's kind of a state capacity question on both ends, both in the optimistic scenario, but then also in the pessimistic slash these days, somewhat realistic scenario?

[Tim Wu]

You know, I think it's become difficult as a law professor or as anyone who's a policy person to talk about, like, what should we do? Because then you have to specify, are we talking about this Congress or like the Congress we've had for the last 20 years, which doesn't actually pass new regulations ever. Or are we talking about sort of.

You know, a 1914 Congress and what rules are we playing by? You kind of introduced that in your question.

If we were in a world where we're talking about the congress of the.

30S or the 1910s, like a legislature.

That studies problems, thinks about them and.

Enacts solutions, I think in that world, I would say the government can do a lot and just take a few. I mean, the government, there's no real upper limit. If we're assuming a government that is operating, we're seeing some of this in this administration. I mean, going back to Weber, I think it was Weber who talked about the state having a monopoly on the use of force. I mean, the state is still this uniquely powerful entity. The United States is the largest market in the world in some ways. Current president has shown the government is not feckless, but is incred, you know, terrifyingly powerful. And if you had a Congress that did whatever you wanted, you know, I think I would go through that route in this world. And I think part of the problem, part of the reason that when I was in government, you had that we went the path of antitrust, as opposed to thinking about, you know, how can Congress handle all the platforms, was this fact that when you're in D.C. leave it to Congress is a euphemism for shit can that. I mean, people will say leave things. We're going to leave this to Congress just means we're not going to do anything. We thought that the power of tech platforms had gotten too strong. That's why we appointed Lena. We appointed Jonathan Kanter. Unlike this president, we didn't tell them who to sue. They brought this antitrust campaign against. Against tech platforms, and something happened. Meanwhile, the Congress did play around with a couple bills. Amy Klobuchar wrote something that was pretty good, but as usual, didn't get anywhere. So that is one of the reasons we've taken the structural path. I actually prefer structure and as a matter of political philosophy, believe in structural solutions over tax and redistribute. And I can talk about that later.

But partially it was the desire to have actual executive action as opposed to spend four years talking about Congress.

[Kate Clonick]

Yeah. So that kind of brings us to our. Kind of. Our closing question, which is like, according to this book and according to. So I also love that I hadn't completely pieced together that you had imagined. This is the third in a trilogy, but I love that. And so it would be the master switch, the attention merchants. And then this, I'm assuming.

[Tim Wu]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kate Clonick]

And these do fit together really beautifully as like, as an argument and like a vision of how you kind of see the world. So at the end of your trilogy, what is the. What is your. What is your escape from Rivendell? What is your. What is your move to where. Where are we all sailing off to in a boat? Like, are we going back to kind of rebuild the Shire? What's going to. You know, what is. What is actually going. Sorry, I'm like, you know, that's not bad references here. Revealing inner nerd. But I feel like I'm probably in good company. I was taking a risk. But, but, but seriously, what is. What is your vision here of like, of kind of what this looks like? What does Amazon look like if it's a fair or Amazon.

[Tim Wu]

Now I. I have through the course of this trilogy, you know, come to be increasingly decided in my own political philosophy and views. And I'll answer abstractly first and then go to the individuals. I have come to believe a few things. You know, first of all, I do agree with Schumpeter that technology and economic growth are synonyms. On the other hand, we've all seen the kind of disruption and chaos that can be caused by it. But, you know, it's not as if it's an option. It is the sort of vital force in our lives. I've come to fear size and centralized power and think that the purpose of.

Much of government is balancing a power. And most of the design of government.

Is trying to create the sort of structure that maintains whether it's private or public power.

I've become kind of devoted to that line of thought.

And I've come to think that the long battle between communism and capitalism obscured the fact that both of them were highly systems of centralized power. You know, Stalin ran Soviet Union almost.

Like a giant version of General Motors.

He was the CEO and if you.

Instead of firing you, he could send you to Siberia.

I think both those solutions of laissez.

Faire brute monopoly capitalism and centralized communism are disastrous over the long term. You know, they have their moments. They seem really exciting on the way up. My life goal project is to turn us back towards balance of economic power and decentralized solutions. So what does that mean a little more civically and particularly for platforms? Somewhere near the end of the book I say that the platforms in our time are suffering from main character syndrome is they have forgotten that they're supposed to be the host, the catalysts the, the, you know, parts of our society that make everybody else great. They've kind of inserted themselves in that role. They've insisted that they're the ones who should invent everything. You know, when you read all their arguments, they're like, we need to make money so we can invent this, that and the other. As opposed to, you know, being the place where people deploy their new inventions or think of new things, or like a city square gone mad in some ways. And I think the, the goal of our times, I think, you know, what do I want Amazon to be? I want Amazon to be a lowcost facilitator and host for, for, for commerce.

There'll be a place where someone wants.

To start a store. They can, you know, pay a decent amount of their, of their revenue to make it happen, but not be crushed and extracted and have everything taken from them. And I want to live in a society where more broadly people think not in terms of how do I get in a position to extract, but can I invest and see some return on that investment? What kind of sense of economic liberty do I have? Am I going to invest in my career, in my education and get something out of it? Or is it all about just trying to find and being in the right place at the right time? So there's a lot in this answer, but maybe a short legalistic version is I think the platforms need to be like the utilities of other ages. You know, they need to be more like the electric system. Look how amazing electric system was and in some ways how humble. You know, it sat there, it provided all the electricity. On top of that, people invented toasters, televisions, computers, you know, the Internet. Everything was invented on top of that platform. And that's what I'd like the Internet platforms to be. And that's the kind of age I'm looking forward. So in a strange way this book is a little optimistic, or at least it has an optimistic hope that if we can get the platforms under control, we can have a flourishing society with a lot of builders.

[Kate Clonick]

Okay, so I wasn't going to ask a follow up question, but because you brought up electricity and utilities kind of I have to kind of go there. Which is something that has also been in the background of a lot of kind of what I've been thinking, which is that if you want platforms to be utilities, that is the opposite of an antitrust solution and a competitive solution. Again, that is like, that is a, that is a solution that they become highly regulated entities that don't have competitors, that there's a few big ones and we regulate them. And so like that is actually, you know, and Sibil Rahman has written extensively about this and I love his work in this and I actually agree with a lot of it. If we, we do imagine some of these platforms to be so powerful as to be not Standard Oil, but, you know, but electricity, like that is that. That is their power, then those are, those are. I actually think that those are a different set of solutions than competitive principles.

[Tim Wu]

They are two different traditions. I reject the idea that they're incompatible. I am very familiar. I, yes, understand the idea they're different. I think they should have to live by certain rules of the game, given who they are. I think they should have to obey platform neutrality. I would prefer it if they don't sell on their own platforms, if they're confined to that role of sort of structural separation. But I also think this may be contradictory. There could be competition between them. I don't imagine it's going to be like 10 actors, but I imagine I believer basically in both. You know, I spent a lot of my career thinking about one or the other. I reject the idea that they're opposites. I'll just put it that way. I think they should have rules of the game, public callings, common carriage, something along those lines. I do think, and I will recognize it is true that regulated entities, AT&T being a great example, can sometimes abuse that. But we do desperately in our time, need to stop the extraction of the platforms. And that's where I come down.

[Alan Rosenstein]

I think it's a good place to leave it off. Tim, thanks for writing this really interesting book and thanks for coming on the show to talk about it.

[Tim Wu]

Been a great pleasure. Thanks so much.

[Lawfare Podcast Producer/Host]

The Lawfare podcast is produced in cooperation.

[Kate Clonick]

With the Brookings Institution.

[Lawfare Podcast Producer/Host]

You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a LawFair material supporter at our website, lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for other podcasts including Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath and Escalation, our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. Check out our written [e-mail] the podcast is edited by Jen Patya and our audio engineer. This episode is Kara Schillen of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As our as always, thank you for listening.

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