When Tim Wu and I ran for office as innocents 11 years ago, we were determined to make antitrust part of our platform. We even held an event for ripping up monopolist cable bills. But it was hard to break through--while people understood that corporate power was crushing them, the
As this year ends, and AI slop is everywhere, I’ve been feeling very grateful that I have the freedom to think and write. I wanted to share four pieces I wrote this year that I’m especially proud of. Each one demands that we start looking at power, who
(Here is a piece I wrote for the Financial Times about the geopolitics of artificial intelligence. If you are still looking for a Christmas or Holiday gift, consider my new book "The Age of Extraction" recently on New Yorker Magazine's list of best books of 2025)
(This is Tim Wu with a note on the Warner Bros merger. My new book The Age Extraction is a great present for any policy wonk or tech critic in your family, and was just named one of New Yorker Magazine's best books of 2025.) This week, two
Hi, this is Tim Wu, taking over for Zephyr with a note on the Facebook case that was dismissed last week. If we are not acquainted, I am a professor at Columbia University and the author of a number of books related to tech and antimonopoly, including The Curse of
Hi friends, I’ll be at Chatham Bookstore in Columbia County this Saturday talking about Joe Costello’s terrific new book on the power, technology, and democracy in the 21st century. If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you--sign up here. I also wanted to share
Wu’s book argues that we built platforms, but the wrong kind. We need platforms of course, but making them essential and extractive at the same time is a real problem.
Dear friends, I've been teaching a class called The Law of Democracy for over a decade now, using a casebook that is taught around the country. As the whole structure of government teeters, and people have been disgusted with corruption for decades, it can feel a little strange,
People often ask where to give money, and I always find it hard to answer. For me, the real test is whether someone has actually stood up to corporate power when it was risky to do so, not when it was safe or symbolic. That test narrows the field pretty
Friends, On Monday, Judge Amit Mehta, who has already found Google to be an illegal monopolist, issued a long, seemingly elegant opinion that explains why Google’s moat building and controlling conduct is a problem. And then he largely concluded there’s not much to be done about it, though
Good morning! I wrote this New York Times oped on how Zohran Mamdani (with the city council) can address price gouging, price discrimination, and bring life back to local groceries. We've got to start building democracy from the ground up, and cities have a lot of unused power.
Hi there. As I wrote about last month in The Nation, it’s really important to think about the cloud and AI in physical terms. The etherealization of tech hides real, material presence of data centers, as well as the power structures behind them. The cloud or "virtual currency&