1. United States
2. Kan.
3. Letter

The largest media merger in U.S. history closed last week for Paramount-Warner Bros. It is not only a dangerous consolidation of media influence, but a potentially catastrophic conflict of interest and seizure of public and private data through Oracle, its data infrastructure. The shareholders vote is coming up in March 20th. Congress must act now to require a thorough conflict review and safeguard American data. Demand 1: Treat Oracle as a Party to the Transaction Larry Ellison's dual role — as Chairman of Oracle and as the financial guarantor of the merger through his son's company — means Oracle cannot be treated as a neutral third-party vendor. The merger review should require full disclosure of all Oracle contracts, revenue relationships, and infrastructure dependencies associated with the combined entity. Demand 2: Require Conflict Review FAR Subpart 9.5 and the 2022 Preventing Organizational Conflicts of Interest in Federal Acquisition Act provide the legal framework for evaluating whether a contractor's multiple roles create conflicts that could compromise the integrity of federal procurement or government programs. The DOJ and the FTC should jointly evaluate Oracle's aggregate position as cloud provider for CMS, the VA, DoD, the Intelligence Community, TikTok, and the merged Paramount–WBD entity. This review should be a stated condition of merger approval. Demand 3: Require Data Firewalls The merged entity should be required to implement legally enforceable, technically auditable data separation between Oracle's government cloud environments and its commercial media infrastructure. The FAR Council's January 2025 proposed rule defining "firewalls" for organizational conflicts of interest should be finalized and applied to this transaction. Sometimes I feel like U.S. antitrust laws are treated as mere suggestions with the way a handful of families and corporate networks have been able to consolidate power into fewer and fewer hands. I entreat you to put your foot down on this one.