Regulation has historically been about as welcome in Silicon Valley as the twitchings of a seismograph. But some giant West Coast tech companies now appear open to trying to earthquake-proof their businesses, given the political rumblings underground.
Here’s what Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, had to say last week about privacy regulation, a particularly timely issue given the recent data leaks at Facebook and Google. Declaring privacy to be one of the most important issues of the 21st century, Mr Cook told Vice News: “I’m not a pro-regulation kind of person, I believe in the free market deeply [but] when the free market doesn’t produce a result that’s great for society, you have to ask yourself: What do we need to do? And I think some level of government regulation is important.”
To extend Mr Cook’s formulation, there are many areas where the tech-enabled free market is not producing such great results for society. But it is difficult to see how governments can possibly be fast enough or expert enough or global enough to deal with the shape-shifting challenges thrown up by our latest technologies, even when politicians are ideologically inclined to intervene. Perhaps a new approach is needed.