‘We’re not going to beat them on their terms. We’ve got to build our own weapons,’ the Democrat says
WINDHAM, Maine—Senate candidate Graham Platner (D., Maine) said Google and Palantir “wouldn’t exist” if he had his way.
“If I had my way, we would break all these companies up. Palantir wouldn’t exist. Google wouldn’t exist,” Platner said Saturday during a town hall in the southern Maine town of Windham. “We could have regulated this nonsense in a way that … would make sure that we’re doing it in a fashion that’s going to benefit workers and not just people in power.”
Platner accused the companies of using personal data to fuel corporate profits and societal division. “All of your data does not belong to you. All of our data is used against us daily. Figuring out how to fleece us of money, how to keep us angry at each other. The only way that that changes, in my personal opinion, is policies that don’t allow that to happen.”
“We’re not going to beat them on their terms. We’ve got to build our own weapons. We’ve got to build our own ability to fight back,” he continued. “We’ve got to do it, frankly, using the old fashioned ways, which is connecting, winning elections, building secondary power, getting structural power again, and then using that into the tax code, using the monopoly law, however we want to do it. That’s how we’re going to have to go about it.”
Those remarks are Platner’s most aggressive to date on big tech. He has, however, said more broadly that he wants to break up monopolies and use the tax code “to get back money that was stolen from the working people.”
“I want to go after companies that have stolen from the American people for decades at this point and accrued all of the wealth at the upper echelons,” Platner said during a Nov. 15 event.
Platner’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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