Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her progressive allies are pushing Hillary Clinton to curb the market power of tech giants like Apple, Amazon and Google — putting the Democratic nominee in a bind over how hard to police an industry that's showered her with money and support in 2016.

If she wins in November, Clinton would have to fill a raft of positions at the Justice Department and the FTC, the government’s twin cops on the competition beat. The tech industry — which has largely avoided major showdowns with Washington's antitrust regulators during the Obama administration — could easily face new scrutiny if Clinton bows to the Warren wing and appoints people with a tougher eye for enforcement.


The Massachusetts senator this year has publicly rebuked Silicon Valley's biggest brands for amassing excessive market power to stifle smaller competitors. Her rallying cries have already nudged Clinton leftward: The former secretary of state, in a speech in Ohio this month, pledged to "appoint tough, independent authorities to strengthen antitrust enforcement and really scrutinize mergers and acquisitions, so the big don’t keep getting bigger and bigger." And the national political climate certainly doesn't favor bigness: Both Clinton's and Donald Trump's campaigns raised doubts when AT&T just this weekend announced its $85.4 billion telecom mega-merger with Time Warner.

Once in office, Clinton is sure to face even more pressure from progressive Democrats to translate her statements into nominees who are willing to go toe-to-toe with the big players in the Valley. And the tech industry, which has generously supported Clinton, is starting to take notice.

"I think it’d be a lot of heartburn, a major amount of heartburn," said Rob Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech-backed think tank in Washington. "You could potentially see a lot more investigations and even enforcements against companies just because they are big."

If Warren prevails, he added: "I could see them having a field day, and just going after tech companies."

The communications and electronics sector has been a prolific donor to Clinton in 2016, generating $39 million for her campaign compared with a measly $787,000 for Donald Trump, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman at Google's parent company, Alphabet, is a digital adviser to Clinton, while Apple CEO Tim Cook has hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic nominee.

Clinton further solidified her Silicon Valley support with a tech policy platform, unveiled in June, that’s extremely friendly to the industry’s interests: It supports net neutrality, calls for universal high-speed internet for all Americans by 2020 and touts the need for high-skilled immigration reform — a top priority for tech giants that want to bring in more foreign engineers.

But Warren — an active Clinton surrogate who's expected to be a powerful voice in the next Congress — isn't as cozy with the tech industry. In a speech in June, she mentioned Apple, Amazon and Google by name as she railed against online platforms that had become "a tool to snuff out competition." Warren also pointed to the European Union’s recent antitrust charges against Google, saying that “Europeans may soon enjoy better protections than U.S. customers.” The FTC, under the Obama administration, closed its own probe of Google in 2013 without seeking major changes to the company's business.

If elected, Clinton will need to fill a key vacancy heading up the antitrust division of DOJ, a post currently held on an interim basis by Renata Hesse. That agency already is slated to review the proposed AT&T-Time Warner deal. And Clinton could have as many as two open Democratic slots on the five-member FTC. The agency’s current chair, Edith Ramirez, may leave at the end of the Obama administration, though she's declined to discuss her plans.

"I think people are going to be watching very carefully to see who she appoints and how aggressive she wants to move on some of these pressing issues, notwithstanding her sources of financing in the primaries and the general election,” said Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton and has written about his concerns over tech industry consolidation.

“After all, she’s probably going to want to run again in the year 2020, and I don’t think she’s going to get a free pass from the base of the Democratic Party unless she acts on some of these issues," Reich said in an interview.

On the Hill, meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — who has called on the FTC to reopen its probe of Google — stressed to POLITICO that "aggressive antitrust enforcement must be a central component to any administration."

"The last several years have seen a record number of mergers and acquisitions — deals representing trillions of dollars — in a trend that shows no signs of slowing down," Blumenthal said, adding that the "first priority of any incoming Administration must be to sizably increase the budgets for antitrust enforcement at these agencies, so that they can both prosecute mergers and investigate conduct cases that violate the law."

Already, a shortlist has emerged of potential Clinton antitrust officials, according to policy veterans closely watching the campaign, and it's not clear yet how they will be received by progressives.

Among the names is Richard Parker, an antitrust attorney at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers. He's a recent Clinton donor and a longtime competition lawyer with a DOJ background — and the vice chair of his firm, Tom Donilon, is aiding Clinton's transition team. Others being floated are Peter Swire, a onetime White House tech policy aide to Bill Clinton who's now a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Phil Weiser, a former senior counsel at DOJ’s antitrust division now at the University of Colorado Law School.

Clinton could also seek to tap current government officials for elevated roles. In recent months, both Hesse at DOJ and Democratic FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny have spoken publicly about the need for more robust U.S. antitrust enforcement. “Competition enforcers should not turn a blind eye toward anti-competitive behavior in high-tech markets simply because we cannot predict the future with certainty,” McSweeny, a potential candidate for FTC chair, told the Washington Center for Equitable Growth in October.

Progressives like Warren have yet to sound off on the slate of names, and the senator's office declined to discuss the names for this story.

Some tech giants expect Clinton and her staff can be "pro-business and pro-consumer at the same time,” said Ed Black, the president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group comprised of companies like Intel and Google. But he warned against the sort of approach backed by Warren and her allies, saying it could have far-reaching consequences.

“That would be a signal for everybody in the world to make our companies a target,” Black said.