The Most Powerful Person in Tech Is … David Cicilline?
The congressman spent the past two years getting his arms around the antitrust problem, and he’s ready to start making changes.
“They know the system is rigged.”
Photographer: Alex Edelman/Getty ImagesWhen David Cicilline was approached at the beginning of the last Congress about becoming the ranking member of the antitrust subcommittee1 of the House Judiciary Committee, his first inclination was to say no. Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, knew almost nothing about antitrust law. “Even as a practicing lawyer, this was not my field of expertise,” he says.
But he eventually agreed to take the post, and spent the next two years getting up to speed on the complex issues surrounding megamergers, oligopolies, concentration of power and, not least, the societal problems posed by Facebook and Google, which he calls “the platforms.”