Sometime very soon, four of the most powerful men on the planet will face off against a small congressional subcommittee.  The stakes couldn’t be higher. 

Yes tech execs are called into D.C. regularly these days, but this time is different. These are the CEOs of the four mega-tech companies, starting with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, who’s never appeared before Congress. He’ll be joined by two other iconic personages: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (world’s fourth richest, worth $88 billion), and Apple’s Tim Cook. The fourth member of the quartet, Alphabet’s (Google’s) Sundar Pichai has a lower profile but carries no less weight.

Even more than all of that though, this hearing could mark a new beginning in the tug and pull between big business and society in America—for better or for worse.

“This is not your typical hearing,” says Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and a member of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “What you’re going to see is every member of the committee send a tweet out about how they’re about to ask tough questions of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai. It is not going to be a lovefest. I remember last time Tim Cook testified in front of Congress, all members were acting like girls at a Justin Bieber concert. Ooooh, look at my iPhone. This won’t be that.”

More at Yahoo Finance.