Should the federal government break up Big Tech companies?

People forget the last big breakup took over a decade of litigation and the company it targeted, IBM, was already losing its grip by the time the case ended. The Justice Department's IBM case ran 13 years and was dropped in 1982 as without merit, after burning enormous public and private resources. Big Tech markets move far faster than courts. By the time a breakup order survives appeal, the market may have reorganized itself: search is already being disrupted by AI assistants, and TikTok came from nowhere to challenge Meta. A breakup designed for 2020's market could land in 2030 like a museum piece. Faster tools exist. Ban the specific conduct, like default-placement payments and self-preferencing, and enforce it quickly. Structural surgery on a patient that is already changing shape is a gamble with the whole digital economy. The DOJ case against IBM is a cautionary tale in how slowly these cases move: Stanford.