Texas is the world’s eighth-largest economy—a global powerhouse built on innovation, entrepreneurship, agriculture, manufacturing, and energy. As we incorporate A.I. into more and more commerce and communication, the digital foundation supporting these industries becomes as critical as the roads, railways, and refineries that powered our rise. Right now, that digital infrastructure—and its economic freedom—faces serious threats.
Tech giants like Microsoft have embedded themselves deeply in every sector of the American economy, even in Texas. Microsoft’s products dominate the technology landscape, from our classrooms and small businesses to state agencies and infrastructure projects. This dominance brings consequences: stifled competition, rising cybersecurity risks, and reduced freedom for consumers and businesses to choose alternatives.
President Trump, recognizing the risk this poses, has greenlit the investigation into Microsoft’s anti-competitive behavior through the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC’s probe focuses on Microsoft’s rapid expansion in artificial intelligence, including its multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI—an arrangement designed to avoid regulatory oversight. These tactics raise serious questions about whether a single company steers the AI market instead of healthy competition driving innovation.
However, concerns extend beyond AI development. Microsoft’s control over cloud computing and software licensing effectively locks users into their ecosystem, making switching providers expensive and complicated. Their cloud platform, Azure, tightly integrates with Microsoft’s proprietary AI tools, creating barriers for emerging competitors. This isn’t their first rodeo. Microsoft has engaged in illegal behavior time and time again, once ordered to pay $1.1 billion in a single lawsuit to make up for their price-gouging. They may be forced to make things right after this current investigation. Still, the harm they’re doing to customers is doing active harm by restricting market choice and undermining innovation.
This represents more than bad business practices—it creates a national security threat.
Microsoft’s close ties with China and willingness to comply with Chinese government mandates alarm lawmakers and intelligence experts. The company maintains research centers in China and has shared sensitive source code with Chinese authorities. Under Chinese law, companies must cooperate with the country’s intelligence services, meaning any data or tools developed in or accessible from China face potential compromise.
When dangerous foreign adversaries gain access to our systems, intellectual property, or sensitive infrastructure—whether through cyberattacks or legal coercion—they put all Americans at risk. Our military, schools, and critical infrastructure increasingly rely on platforms that lack sufficient security.
This creates direct economic and strategic concerns for Texas. Our state leads in energy, logistics, agriculture, and technology. These sectors require secure, efficient, and innovative digital tools. Allowing a tech giant to monopolize access to those tools stifles Texas entrepreneurs, inflates costs for small businesses, and places our digital infrastructure under the control of a single corporation with global ties and domestic influence.
These platforms are now key parts of the systems that make everyday life work. Texas farmers and tradespeople face increasing pressure to adopt expensive digital systems. Schools spend taxpayer dollars on overpriced, underperforming technology that locks them into long-term contracts with few alternatives and little recourse.
Restoring real competition to America’s technology markets should be a priority.
President Trump’s push to revive American manufacturing, end unfair trade practices, and reduce tax burdens remains essential. Equally important is ensuring that monopolies don’t control our digital economy and undermine those very goals.
Texas shouldn’t let innovation face shackles or infrastructure face compromise. We must defend free markets, national security, and consumer choice—online and offline. In the twenty-first century, digital freedom equals economic freedom. Texas should lead the fight to preserve both.
JT Edwards is a Government Concierge, a U.S. Army disabled combat veteran of Desert Storm, and a former member of the Texas Republican State Executive Committee, Senate District 11.