In a recent New York Times review of Tim Wu’s new book, The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity the paper’s critic summed up the moment we’re living in with chilling precision: Big Tech has stopped building and started extracting. Wu, a longtime scholar of media monopolies and a former White House antitrust adviser, argues that Silicon Valley’s optimism curdled into complacency — and complacency metastasized into consolidation.

As the Times put it, Wu’s book “is a dispiriting guide to the way Silicon Valley has warped our markets and our democracy.” He reminds us that we were once promised a decentralized, pluralistic internet where scrappy Davids would topple lumbering Goliaths. Instead, those Davids have been acquired, assimilated, or algorithmically buried. Platforms that once claimed to “make the world a better place” have become rent collectors — charging us for the privilege of living in their digital kingdoms.

Wu calls this the “Age of Extraction,” where dominant platforms grow not by creating value but by squeezing it out of everyone else. Amazon’s “sponsored results,” Google’s algorithmic auctions, Meta’s addictive feedback loops — all are examples of what Wu describes as “valueless wealth extraction.” He’s right. But the question remains: Who will stop it?

Don’t Expect the White House to Save You

Wu, who once helped shape the Biden administration’s antitrust policies, still places his faith in government reform — sensible policies, stronger enforcement, and structural remedies to curb monopoly power. That’s where he and I part ways.

Let’s be blunt: The government isn’t going to save us. Let’s be even more blunt, the problem isn’t Congress, or maybe it is, as it has seemingly abdicated its role in curbing monopolistic behavior. No, Congress has largely taken itself off the field, content to issue sound bites while the real power sits with the executive branch. And today’s executive branch operates under an everything is “for sale” model of governance. In fact, they operate under a “give us a piece of the action” model. Regulatory capture isn’t a theory; it’s a business model. Whether it’s tech, defense, energy, or finance, the pattern is the same: Hire the lobbyists, fund the campaigns, in fact, cut us in and watch the enforcement fade away and downright meddling settle in.

Expecting the same officials who regularly feed on Big Tech’s cash, data and cloud infrastructure to meaningfully challenge its dominance is pure fantasy. The fox isn’t guarding the henhouse anymore — the fox owns the deed.

So if we’re waiting for the DOJ, FTC, or White House to rescue the market from monopolistic excess, as they say where I grew up, “don’t hold your breath.”

The Market That Built Big Tech Can Break It Too

The irony is that tech’s own nature — its velocity, creativity and constant churn — still makes it the best antidote to its excesses. History tells us that every dominant player eventually faces its reckoning. IBM was unassailable until it wasn’t. Microsoft ruled the desktop until the cloud moved the battlefield. Google, once the scrappy disruptor, now faces its own antitrust trial.

What took them down wasn’t government intervention — it was innovation. Better ideas, new models, and hungrier entrepreneurs.

Wu talks about “structure beating good intentions.” He’s right about that, too. But structures change when markets change — when new entrants build systems that make the old ones obsolete. That’s how you heal an industry gone astray: Not through regulation but through reinvention.

Government’s Real Role: Get Out of the Way

That’s not to say government is irrelevant. It has a role — but a limited one. The job of the executive branch isn’t to invest billions in megacaps or tilt the scales through industrial policy and owning a piece of the rock; it’s to ensure that “new growth” companies have a fair shot at daylight, “give the Davids a chance.”

That means:

• Enforcing transparency without smothering startups in compliance.
• Preventing anti-competitive acquisitions before they happen.
• Making sure data, APIs, and cloud infrastructure stay interoperable.
• Keeping markets open and capital accessible.

In short, the government should be the referee, not a paid player on the field. The goal isn’t to tear down the giants but to make sure the next generation has a chance to stand beside them.

Innovation is the Antidote

In Wu’s telling, tech leaders have grown lazy — addicted to the convenience of control. Innovation is hard; extraction is easy. Why invent when you can acquire? Why compete when you can collude?

But laziness is a vulnerability. The same “bet on convenience” that keeps users scrolling also makes incumbents complacent. And complacency, in tech, is a death sentence.

The next wave is already forming — AI, robotics, quantum computing, decentralized systems. These aren’t just new technologies; they’re new power structures. The companies that figure out how to deliver transparency, interoperability, and trust — not just scale — will define the next era. 

But we can’t let the government pre-determine the winners. There has to be room for new growth in this forest. Innovation starts at the forest floor.

That’s why I believe the solution to Big Tech’s excesses won’t come from Washington or Brussels. It will come from Austin, Bangalore, Tel Aviv, and a thousand other places where engineers and entrepreneurs are quietly building the tools to decentralize control and democratize innovation again.

Tech, in other words, must heal itself.

A New Compact for a Mature Industry

If the early internet was the Age of Innocence and Wu’s present moment is the Age of Extraction, then what comes next must be the Age of Accountability — not through state intervention but through smarter markets and conscious design.

Imagine platforms that compete on trust, not attention.

AI models that complement human creativity rather than harvest it.

Open protocols that make monopolies impossible by design.

A tech culture that values stewardship over domination.

This isn’t utopian thinking. It’s practical self-preservation. When a handful of companies hold disproportionate power over information, commerce, and even thought, they risk not only public backlash but internal decay. As Wu warns, monopolies don’t just warp markets — they warp minds.

And we, the public, play a role in this too. It is up to us to not settle for the techbros shoving their vision of the future down our throats. Give new companies, new ways and new ideas a chance. You just may find out that you like it better and gives you a chance to break free of “what they want you to believe”.

Shimmy’s Take

Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is a timely warning — a mirror held up to an industry that’s lost its reflection. But unlike Wu, I don’t think salvation lies in a government that long ago auctioned off its moral authority. The executive branch today isn’t a watchdog; it’s a vendor, it’s a player. Congress has abdicated its function, and the executive branch seems based on Jabba the Hut’s palace.

That leaves us — the builders, innovators and disruptors — to fix what we broke. The cure for extraction isn’t regulation; it’s creation.

Tech, heal thyself. Because if we don’t, the age that follows the Age of Extraction won’t be the Age of Accountability — it’ll be the Age of Decay. And that’s not a future worth coding for.