The British Bureaucrats Who Want To Govern American Tech

Last November, I issued a warning. The United Kingdom’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC), then working its way through Parliament, was not a benign act of consumer protection. It was a deliberate regulatory incursion into the global tech economy, dressed up in bureaucratic language to obscure its true aims. At the time, many critics scoffed. They said I was exaggerating, engaging in nationalist chest-thumping, or mistaking precaution for aggression.

But as of June 15, 2025, the facts speak for themselves. Everything I warned about is now happening. The DMCC has come into force. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has begun investigations. The UK has given itself the tools, and now it is beginning to wield them. The opening salvos of regulatory warfare have already been fired.

It is not too late to act. But if President Trump does not move swiftly to counter this effort, the full brunt of British regulation will fall not merely on US tech firms, but on the very engine of American innovation. The time for euphemism is over. The DMCC is not a friendly nudge toward market fairness. It is an act of economic aggression.

Let us be precise. The DMCC’s digital markets provisions went into effect on January 1, 2025. These provisions allow the CMA to designate companies as having “Strategic Market Status” (SMS), a vaguely defined category that places firms under ex-ante regulatory supervision. That is, the CMA can now impose rules not in response to demonstrated wrongdoing, but preemptively, based on the suspicion that dominance might lead to harm. Such powers invert the bedrock principle of Anglo-American law: that enforcement follows evidence, not mere potential.

And the target is clear. Firms large enough to trigger SMS review are global titans, and in tech, such titans are American: Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, SpaceX. This is not conjecture. In December 2024, the CMA released guidance clarifying its intent to focus on digital platform providers, especially those integrating vertically across devices, app stores, and operating systems. If that sounds like Apple and Google, it is because it is Apple and Google.

The CMA has already opened investigative proceedings. These are not idle reviews. They are the first steps in a formal process that can culminate in binding conduct requirements, forced divestitures, or blocked acquisitions. The UK is preparing to micromanage how American companies design products, structure businesses, and roll out new services, not just within the UK but across global supply chains. The idea that British regulators can or should dictate the design of the next iPhone or regulate algorithmic search design is as ludicrous as it is dangerous.

Consider the mechanics of this new regime. The CMA can prohibit so-called “self-preferencing,” a term which in practice means a company can no longer integrate its own services in a way that benefits the user experience if doing so allegedly harms a rival. If Apple includes its own Maps app as the default on the iPhone, the CMA might prohibit it. If Google prioritizes YouTube results in a Google search, that too might be banned. In short, firms will be punished for vertical integration, an efficient, innovation-enhancing strategy that has powered the success of Silicon Valley for decades.

And let us be clear: this is not about fairness or competition. The UK is not protecting a thriving domestic digital ecosystem against foreign giants. It has no such ecosystem. It is, rather, a middling digital economy with few homegrown successes beyond ARM and DeepMind, both of which were acquired by foreign entities. Unable to produce challengers, British regulators have opted to hobble the leaders.

To describe this as “pro-competition” is to indulge in Orwellian language. It is anti-competitive in the strictest sense: not to protect competitors, but to manufacture them by cutting American firms down to size. That is not how free markets operate. That is how insecure governments retaliate when they cannot win on merit.

Skeptics may argue that the CMA’s powers are subject to legal constraints, appeals, and consultative periods. This is formally true. But the mere opening of an investigation, the looming threat of regulatory action, and the legal uncertainty that follows are themselves deterrents. Innovation slows. Risk-taking diminishes. Mergers are abandoned, not because they have been blocked, but because the process of defending them is too costly, too drawn-out, and too capricious. This is death by a thousand reviews.

Already, the Act has triggered what it was designed to: fear. American firms are reassessing market strategies, delaying product launches, and reconsidering acquisitions in Britain. The CMA has not yet dictated how the next iPhone will be configured, but it has taken the first step down that road. And if history is any guide, the first step is the most decisive.

This is a deliberate policy choice by the British government. The DMCC was not forced upon them by Brussels, nor was it necessitated by consumer revolt. It is the product of post-Brexit insecurity, a desire to assert relevance by regulating that which they cannot create. It is, in short, an attempt to substitute bureaucratic dominance for technological prowess.

Nor is this an isolated British phenomenon. Europe more broadly has embraced this strategy. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) operates on the same logic: regulate the leaders, not because they have abused power, but because they have too much of it. Australia and Canada are following suit. A global coalition is coalescing, not against monopoly, but against American tech. They speak the language of competition while acting from envy.

President Trump must respond. The US cannot afford to stand idle while foreign governments assume regulatory control over its crown jewels. This is not a matter of policy preference. It is a matter of sovereignty. If Britain insists on regulating American companies extraterritorially, it must be made to feel the cost.

A proportionate response would be to erect reciprocal barriers. British firms seeking access to US markets should be held to the same standard they impose on ours. If the UK government believes it can regulate iPhone software from Westminster, then let it explain why British goods should be sold in American stores without oversight. If they act unilaterally, then so must we.

Trump has already shown willingness to defend American enterprise from foreign meddling. His administration blocked Chinese acquisitions of US firms, imposed tariffs on unfair trade partners, and exited multilateral agreements that eroded American control. The DMCC presents a new front in that same war for economic sovereignty. It must be met with equal resolve.

Time is short. The CMA has not yet handed down final orders, but the infrastructure is in place, the investigations are underway, and the trajectory is clear. Every day of inaction emboldens British regulators and normalizes the idea that America must ask permission to innovate. That cannot stand.

American technology has flourished not because it was coddled, but because it was free. Free to take risks, to disrupt, to fail, and to rise again. That freedom is what the DMCC threatens. Not with overt confiscation, but with the slow suffocation of regulatory creep.

The line must be drawn. And it must be drawn now.

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