Running a private equity firm in 2025 be like...

As we warned in an @openmarkets.bsky.social report earlier this year, our dependence on a handful of US tech giants for essential cloud infrastructure isn’t just a competition problem, it’s a serious threat to national security & societal stability. How many more outages before we get the message?

As it happens, this is almost exactly the same as Nintendo’s annual revenue. Which seems like the right comparison- a successful producer of electronic toys. on.ft.com/4nMkP0B

Excellent essay! It rebuts Marxist pessimism about the anti-monopoly movement, highlights the importance of contesting Capital's control of economic production, and ties it all into the recent failures of the movement (particularly wrt. the recent anti-monopolisation case against Google).

Put differently...

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

Astonishing advance by the Greens, astonishing implosion of Labour. When will Starmer's government get the message that it is destroying its base with deeply unpopular, rightwing policies? By chasing Reform, it legitimises the far right while delegitimising itself.

I'm in ProMarket today arguing that the EU Commission has the legal and methodological tools to tackle excessive prices, but for primarily institutional reasons, hasn't been doing. www.promarket.org/2025/10/08/t... @promarket.bsky.social

2/"We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies." defenddemocracy.eu/macron-democ...

My thread* on authoritarianism in the legal academy, and its origins. *These thoughts are my own and do not reflect the views of my current employer, who has already begun to accept precompliance.

I wish Peters Kyle and Mandelson had someone as smart and experienced as Tim Wu on their side when they were negotiating the "Tech Prosperity Deal" on.ft.com/47WmGLi

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

This was fantastic. We say “touch grass” like a curse on someone, when really the digital realm has become a place to separate us from the sensual (and I’d argue the emotional) connection we have with the world around us and those closest to us

Reform’s call to deport ALL people who legally make a life here - paying taxes, forming families, volunteering and even being elected - needs calling out. Contrary to Farage, ILR doesn’t = criminal. They ARE net contributors to our economy. An expensive, hateful & stupid plan.

This is not OK www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/how...

Today took place the #Carnival4David in London Full with radical optimism.

You'd think that the Brits would be better at spotting a colonial power when they see it.

March route for Wednesday’s Stop Trump demo. Rally in Parliament Square from 5pm to 7pm. Come after work to show your opposition to Trumpismo being imported into the UK by Reform

Prof. Fukuyama is on fire (also about antitrust & democracy in the last quarter).

There's been a shift towards support to the far right here and it's horrible to see. But this remains a vastly less racist/homophobic/anti-semitic country than it has been in the past. Which makes it all the odder that our politicians today seem more scared to make the argument.

This is a huge story. Don't let him get away with it. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Another aspect of the futility of the Commission's decision to postpone the Google AdTech fine: Member States can, and will, fine Big Tech under domestic law anyway.

Telling it like it is, and cutting through.

Ed Balls: the Greens taking votes from Labour helps the Tories @zackpolanski.bsky.social : "I want to see every Labour politician whose voted for a two child benefit cap, for disability cuts, for the ongoing genocide in Gaza to sell arms to them, I want to see them replaced" #GMB

It's only logical that a government which is trampling on the rule of law at home would also try to undermine it abroad. If US corporations refuse to comply with overseas laws then they should lose their market access, it's as simple as that.

The EU must use the anti coercion instrument now, or be humiliated. Europe must be free to enforce its own law on its own soil.

My full statement on the Gaza Famine :

This is such an insane statistic that it's hard to understand. 40% of what is shipped is fossil fuels -- not 40% of things are shipped *by* fossil fuels. 40% of *what is being carried* is the fossil fuels themselves.

My job as a professor is not to create a serviceable worker. My job is to help foster thoughtful citizens or community members. If that sounds fanciful it’s bc corporate interests have spent decades framing how we talk about education so they don’t take the heat for immiserating labor conditions.

The entire reason that Google *might* be forced to sell Chrome is to prevent it from using the browser to unfairly promote its search engine. Perplexity would have exactly the same incentives to self-preference, defeating the purpose of the remedy. An independent Chrome is the only viable solution.

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

It's always a pleasure to talk to @parismarx.com and this was no exception. This time, why and what it means to expand #digital #sovereignty for people and the planet, what different governments are doing and why it is not enough podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

Grounds for divorce imo

A personal update.

establishment law professors just out here providing daily reminders of why the world desperately needs LPE Uber as Rosa Parks and Ghandi?!? you really couldn't make this shit up

I just uploaded a new research paper on how integration of generative AI into online platforms could breach Article 102, inspired by the recent case of the Italian Competition Authority against Meta for integrating its AI Assistant into WhatsApp. Comments welcome! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen. By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

“We need more officials… to make it crystal clear that fighting for a level playing field is a core value... even when it means standing up to big business..." Must-read from Lina Khan on why fighting for small businesses must be a core tenant of any durable economic agenda.

The government of Israel is exterminating every man, woman and child in Gaza. And our governments, and most leaders of liberal institutions in "the West" - parties both left and right, the press, universities - are doing all they can to support this. This is the central political fact of our time.

Marina Iskander and I blogged about the recent UK-EU Competition Cooperation Agreement. Summary: it's welcome, and good progress wrt. resetting UK/EU competition law relations, but still doesn't bring us back to the level of cooperation prior to Brexit. legalblogs.wolterskluwer.com/competition-...

Police in Canterbury today informed a protestor that the phrase "Israel is committing genocide in Gaza" could be considered a declaration of support for Palestine Action and therefore a terrorism offence.

President Macron speaking at Guildhall, "The European Union was stronger with the UK, and the UK was stronger with the European Union" "We want to write our future and not be the story written by another continent.. The only way to chose our future is to do it together"

Francesca Albanese has led a heroic effort to hold western nations accountable against the so called international rules that they claim to hold dear. That she is sanctioned for calling on nations to uphold international law and prevent a genocide is despicable but sadly not surprising…

Read this, it's incredibly brave reporting. The Gaza strip has been turned into some kind of sick combination of a concentration camp and the hunger games.

Inside the digital publishing industry, which I try to monitor closely, this is the big news. By Julia Alexander at Puck.

Guys Guys The centralised planned economy didn't fail because it didn't have enough data

I support Palestine Action. I hate all forms of violence. I wish no harm on anyone. I just want a kinder, fairer, greener world. Apparently this makes me a terrorist. But I am the opposite of a terrorist.

In her unparalleled new report, Francesca Albanese comprehensively indicts economic complicities with "the Israeli illegal settler-colonial enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory, which now functions as a genocidal machine." You must read the whole report. www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...