Elizabeth Warren Photo: VCG

US Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has made breaking up tech giants a plank for her bid to win the US presidency. But chances are Team Trump will steal her thunder.

One of the few things Democrats and Republicans agree upon is that Silicon Valley firms have gotten too big. Warren wants to send Amazon to the chopping block, arguing Jeff Bezos's online-shopping colossus shouldn't be allowed to both run a marketplace and sell its own stuff on it.

She ran a fake political message on Facebook. It claimed founder Mark Zuckerberg was backing President Donald Trump for re-election to prove a point that the social-media network has an obligation to fact-check campaign-related advertising. Across the aisle, Republican Senator Josh Hawley has sponsored several pieces of legislation including a "Do Not Track" bill that is backed by Democrats.

The Trump Administration is likely to strike first. It has already been laying some groundwork, including by the tweeter-in-chief himself. In November Trump blasted out a message accusing Alphabet's Google of suppressing votes by limiting the targeting capabilities of political contenders.

The president's top trustbuster launched a probe in July into whether the sheer size of market-leading online platforms has stifled innovation and reduced competition. Although unnamed, it's clear Attorney General William Barr is targeting Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook.

He also over the summer appointed his own antitrust adviser. It's an unusual move: The agency already has a division dedicated to the issue, headed by Makan Delrahim. He, though, had been more skeptical about Big Tech and anti-competitive concerns, before starting to change his tune around a year ago.

Barr has also been a good Trump soldier. He has been critical of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 US election and the Trump campaign's potential involvement - and launched his own investigation into the origins of that case, which the president has demanded.

That suggests politics as well as conviction will play a role in prompting the usually less partisan Justice Department to attempt to break up Facebook, Google or Amazon - moves that would probably be tied up in the courts for years. First, it would steal the spotlight from Democrats and may even distract from Trump's own legal troubles in the impeachment proceedings. Those are reasons enough to make the first move.

The authors are Jennifer Saba and Gina Chon, Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The article was first published on Reuters Breakingviews. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn