A damning new ACCC report lays bare how Amazon, Google and Microsoft are tightening their grip on Australia’s digital future and why urgent action is needed, writes Paul Budde. It extends deeply into the very infrastructure of the digital economy: cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and the essential services that underpin modern life. These proposals were not driven by ideology, but by a pragmatic assessment of the structural risks posed by the growing concentration of digital power in the hands of a few American tech giants. The latest Digital Platform Services Inquiry report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) now provides further confirmation of these concerns. The ACCC notes that large cloud providers are entering partnerships with AI developers in ways that could foreclose rival access to compute resources — the very oxygen needed for AI innovation.