DOJ and the FTC on Thursday requested public comment on “serial acquisitions and roll-up strategies” that the agencies believe harm competition. The FTC said enforcers are seeking information in all sectors of the economy. Cybersecurity and aftermarket repair were among the agencies’ highlighted sectors. DOJ and the FTC want to ensure antitrust enforcement tools are keeping pace with the modern economy, they said. “Firms can use serial acquisitions to roll up markets, consolidate power, and undermine fair competition, all while jacking up prices and degrading quality,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said. DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Jonathan Kanter said, “Public input about where these acquisitions have occurred and how they have impacted competition will help us identify and pursue harmful conduct.” Comments are due July 22.

DOJ’s lawsuit challenging Google’s search dominance will prove to be an “historic” case, Antitrust Division Chief Jonathan Kanter said Tuesday. Speaking at the American Economic Liberties Project’s Anti-Monopoly Summit, Kanter touted the department’s “unprecedented record of action” against corporate consolidation, including antitrust cases, merger challenges, criminal prosecutions and amicus filings. The department sued Google in January 2023, claiming the platform used anticompetitive tactics to protect its search and advertising dominance. There’s less smartphone innovation because of Google’s practices, Kanter said Tuesday. Enforcers must keep digital markets competitive because the current “power imbalance” is “particularly stark” in the tech sector, he said: The law doesn’t permit the “hobbling of innovation” in the interest of preserving monopoly power. The Biden administration is “not afraid” of fighting for consumers, FTC Chair Lina Khan said. Enforcers have been able to score “concrete policy victories” against major corporations despite their seemingly “infinite resources,” she said. Businesses are learning to “take the law seriously” because the Biden administration has been willing to challenge anticompetitive behavior, said Kanter. He noted that more than 20 entities have abandoned acquisition plans in the past 30 months while facing DOJ antitrust scrutiny. Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, a former White House competition policy adviser, urged policymakers to adjust antitrust remedies. The current antitrust movement won’t have any lasting impact unless remedies are modernized to hold corporations more accountable, he said.

Meta may be violating the Digital Services Act by failing to protect minors on Instagram and Facebook, according to the European Commission. During a briefing Thursday EC officials cited four concerns about the adequacy of Meta's risk assessment for underage users and mitigation measures addressing problems: its algorithms may exploit the weakness of younger users and cause addictive behavior; (2) ineffective measures to prevent algorithms from feeding users material of a certain type that leads them down a "rabbit hole" of inappropriate content; (3) lack of effective age-verification tools; and (4) security and privacy protections not aligning with the DSA. Meta wants "young people to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online" and has "spent a decade developing more than 50 tools and policies designed to protect them," a spokesperson wrote in an email. "This is a challenge the whole industry is facing." These Meta cases are the third and fourth dealing with protection of minors launched under the DSA, EC officials noted; the first two, filed in April, involve TikTok (see 2404220024). Additionally, two pending cases against Instagram and Facebook, also filed in April, are based on concerns about deceptive advertising and political content (see 2404300001). Officials said they're also closely monitoring X, checking that it's sufficiently mitigating against disinformation campaigns. In addition, the EC is in close contact with X about the launch of its AI tool Grok, noting that the company announced Thursday it's delaying the launch until after EU elections in June. The postponement indicates the company is paying attention to the DSA, and that the legislation is having a huge impact on the market, EC officials said. Meanwhile, the European Consumers Organisation (BEUC) filed a complaint with the EC accusing Chinese online marketplace Temu of flouting the DSA by failing to protect consumers. Among other things, BEUC said, Temu doesn't provide sufficient traceability of traders selling on the platform, and it uses manipulation such as dark patterns in recommending products.

Communication companies should prepare now for the threat from quantum computing, which can break the cryptography that protects data from attacks, Taylor Hartley, network security solutions architect at Ericsson North America, said during an IEEE webinar Wednesday. “Anything that utilizes a public key can easily be broken by a quantum computer,” Hartley said. “We definitely have reason to believe” bad actors are gathering encrypted data so that they will be able to unencrypt it one day, she said. Hartley recommended migrating weakened algorithms to post-quantum cryptograpy. The National Institute of Standards and Technology ran a contest and selected the first three algorithms found to be quantum resistant, she said. It's expected the three will be standardized this summer and “then we can start implementing them,” Hartley said. The concept of quantum computing started in the 1980s, and we’ve known since the 1990s that it could “break the cryptography that we use today,” she said. The first commercially available quantum computer was introduced in 2011, she said. Recently, companies like IBM, Google and Honeywell have made advances in quantum computing, she said. Hartley recommended starting a "quantum readiness road map, conducting inventories, applying risk assessments and analysis and engaging with your vendors.”

Billionaire Frank McCourt is organizing a consortium to buy TikTok’s U.S. business. McCourt, who founded Project Liberty and is a real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, said Wednesday he’s organizing a bid with investment bank Guggenheim Securities. TikTok’s parent ByteDance said previously it has no plans to sell (see 2404260039). President Joe Biden recently signed a law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok in order for the social media app to continue operating in the U.S. McCourt said the consortium wants to pair “academics, technologists, behavioral scientists, psychologists and economic experts” with “community partners, parents and citizens” to preserve and enhance TikTok by “giving individuals and creators on the platform the value and control they deserve regarding who has access to their data and how it is used.”

China is investing “tremendous resources” in its cyber program with the sole purpose of disrupting critical infrastructure to gain competitive advantage, National Cyber Director Harry Coker said Tuesday. Speaking at CYBERUK in Birmingham, England, Coker recommended international partners use their “collective strength, focus and determination” to combat China’s global cyber effort. He noted the Biden administration is also prioritizing efforts to thwart Russian cyberattacks in Ukraine. Russia’s cyber campaign in 2024 “marks a new standard of aggression, persistence, and operational agility,” he said. "For Ukraine, improving the security of networks and communications will be fundamental to their battlefield success."

The Biden administration recognizes the federal government’s cybersecurity strategy must factor in all emerging technology, including AI, quantum computing, wireless systems, satellites and cable, Nathaniel Fick, State Department ambassador-cyberspace and digital policy, said Monday. In the past, cybersecurity was narrowly defined, Fick said during an Atlantic Council panel discussion with NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly. The administration is focused on an “affirmative” and “inclusive” vision for cybersecurity that “many people can opt into,” said Fick. The administration’s national cybersecurity strategy (see 2303020051) and the State Department’s U.S. International Cyberspace & Digital Policy Strategy support this vision, he said. Davidson said NTIA is focused on tech issues like building out broadband infrastructure, establishing “good internet governance” and strengthening privacy and AI policies, efforts that will inform U.S. cyber policy. President Joe Biden last week reiterated that AI is the “most consequential technology of our time,” said Davidson: It will affect every aspect of the economy and needs responsible development. Easterly said there’s “promise” for using AI-driven language models for detecting cyber threats to critical infrastructure. CISA is expecting to publish related findings soon, she said. AI should be designed with safety in mind at the start, not on the backend, said Easterly.

Congress should remove federal preemption language from the American Privacy Rights Act (see 2405080055) and allow state attorneys general to continue enforcing state laws, 15 Democratic AGs wrote Congress Wednesday. AGs signing the letter were from California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington, D.C. “We encourage Congress to adopt legislation that sets a federal floor, not a ceiling, for critical privacy rights and respects the important work already undertaken by states,” they wrote. California AG Rob Bonta (D) said his state is “at the forefront of privacy protections and must retain the ability to respond to privacy concerns as tech rapidly innovates. We urge Congress not to undercut the important protections that states have established.”

The Office of U.S. Trade Representative’s decision to abandon digital trade demands at the World Trade Organization will lead to more restrictive international data flows, tech and open-internet advocates said Monday. USTR Katherine Tai in October withdrew U.S. support for Trump-era proposals at the WTO, which addressed data localization restrictions and other impediments to data flow in places like China. Tai said the USTR withdrew to allow Congress to better regulate domestically. Her decision has left a vacuum where the U.S. used to influence data governance frameworks around the world, said Natalie Dunleavy Campbell, a senior director at Internet Society. This “highly regulated approach to the internet” resembles policies in places like China and Russia, and it will influence other countries to shift in the same direction, she said during a Congressional Internet Caucus Academy panel. Hopefully, the USTR will shift toward a more balanced set of rules that helps foster the benefits of the internet but provides domestic regulatory policy space to “deal with real harms,” said Lori Wallach, director of Rethink Trade. The administration hasn’t “articulated the reason for the pullback very well,” and the U.S.’s position on international data flows doesn’t appear to be heading in a “positive direction,” said Jonathan McHale, vice president-digital trade at Computer & Communications Industry Association. USTR didn’t comment.

The FTC’s actions against Amazon’s deal to buy iRobot show the agency will work outside U.S. antitrust law and achieve its goals through European enforcers, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said Tuesday in a letter to the agency. Comer announced his office is investigating the FTC’s collaboration with European antitrust enforcers on the Amazon transaction (see 2402010063). The FTC filed a second request for information on the deal in September 2022, opening a probe of the agreement, and an EU investigation soon followed, Comer said. EU enforcers announced an in-depth investigation in July and told Amazon it was blocking the deal in January, he said: “The FTC’s actions indicate to American businesses that the FTC will work outside of U.S. antitrust law by using the EC to realize its desired outcomes.” It appears the agency “actively coordinated” with foreign enforcers to block a deal that “could have saved American jobs and promoted American innovation and standing in a vital market,” he said. The FTC declined comment Wednesday.