On Thursday, September 23, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM ET, as part of NSI’s Tech Innovation and American National Security project, NSI hosted the second panel of a four-part series examining the national security implications of antitrust challenges at home and abroad. This second event examined at how U.S.-allied governments are addressing antitrust questions related to the tech industry as well as the implications of such efforts for American and allied national security.
European governments, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Ireland, are increasingly raising antitrust challenges against U.S. tech companies causing friction between our nations and potentially undermining our collective national security posture, particularly relative to key nation-state competitors like China. The event examined how European nation-states, in exercising their own regulatory authorities to regulate, dissolve, and monitor companies, are moving forward with laws targeting American companies, as well as how these new regulations potentially impact these companies as well as their impact on American and allied national security. The panel also explored the critical role that U.S. and U.S. allied joint bodies, as well as tech industry, can play in promoting a democratic value-based global digital ecosystem to counter digital authoritarianism and the importance for allied national security of maintaining relative unity amongst the allies on innovation policy.
The National Security Implications of Antitrust Home and Abroad Series Overview: Throughout much of the 20th century, the United States has led the world in technological innovation – with this innovation driving sustained economic growth and underpinning U.S. global military capabilities. However, today, U.S. tech companies face antitrust challenges at home and abroad. This four-event series will provide an overview of domestic and international antitrust laws and how these regulations and legal challenges impact U.S. and foreign tech companies, and explore how notwithstanding these antitrust challenges, the U.S. should position itself to preserve its preeminent role in leading technological innovation and to protect vital U.S. security interests. You can find more information about the Antitrust series here.
Our series continues with:
- National Security Implications of Antitrust: America’s Enemies – October 2021
- National Security Implications of Antitrust: America’s The Homefront – December 2021
This event features:
Roslyn Layton, PhD is an international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy focused on the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctorate in internet regulation by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work supported the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order in Mozilla v. FCC. She has testified to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on the General Data Protection Regulation, the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, and the competition in the mobile industry and to the House Judiciary Committees on data and privacy.
She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China and to explore the policy to protect Americans’ privacy, security and prosperity. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, a leading interdisciplinary academic gathering now in its 50th year. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers and the security advantages of 5G versus Wi-Fi. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
Professor Jan Rybnicek is Counsel in Freshfields antitrust, competition and trade group, based in Washington, DC. He represents clients on a range of antitrust issues relating to the US merger control and review process, multijurisdictional merger control, joint ventures, civil antitrust litigation, and investigations before the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Prior to rejoining Freshfields in 2015, Jan served as an attorney-adviser to former Commissioner Joshua D. Wright of the FTC.
Jan has published several articles on antitrust law and policy. Jan was awarded the 2019 Antitrust Writing Award, a joint initiative between Concurrences Review and the George Washington University Law School, in the Best Business Article, General category for “Hipster Antitrust Meets Public Choice Economics: The Consumer Welfare Standard, Rule of Law, and Rent Seeking.” Jan also was award the 2017 Antitrust Writing Award in the Best Academic Article, Mergers category for his article “A Hedgehog in Fox’s Clothing? The Misapplication of GUPPI Analysis.”
Jan is an Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at the Global Antitrust Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he teaches courses in antitrust law and economics. Jan is an active member of the ABA’s Antitrust Section and currently serves as an Editor for the Antitrust Law Journal, a leading publication for antitrust law, policy, and economics that is widely read by the antitrust bar.
Dr. 
Hal Singer is an expert in antitrust, consumer protection, and regulation. He has researched, published, and testified on competition-related issues in a wide variety of industries, including media, pharmaceuticals, sports, and finance. He has extensive experience providing expert economic and policy advice to regulatory agencies in the United States and Canada, as well as before congressional committees.
Dr. Singer is also a Senior Fellow at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business, where he teaches advanced pricing to MBA candidates. In 2018, the American Antitrust Institute honored Dr. Singer with an antitrust enforcement award for his work in the Lidoderm antitrust litigation.
Moderated by Jamil N. Jaffer, Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute.