Lina Khan is believed to be the youngest chair in the history of the FTC
US President Joe Biden has picked Lina Khan, a Big Tech critic and prominent antitrust researcher, as chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at a time when the tech industry is facing intense regulatory scrutiny. FTC scrutinizes competition and consumer protection in the tech industry and digital privacy.
Experts described it as a signal of a tough stance towards tech giants Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Pakistan-origin legal scholar Lina Khan’s appointment was confirmed in a 69-28 vote, with Republicans joining Democrats in a rare show of bipartisan support for Khan’s ideas on reining in tech’s most powerful companies.
Lina Khan is best known in the tech community for her essay “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” published in the Yale Law Journal.
“It is a tremendous honor to have been selected by President Biden to lead the Federal Trade Commission,” Lina Khan said in a statement. “I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect the public from corporate abuse.”
At 32, she is believed to be the youngest chair in the history of the FTC. “Lina brings deep knowledge and expertise to this role and will be a fearless champion for consumers,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has called for tech industry breakups, said in a statement.
“Giant tech companies deserve the growing scrutiny they are facing, and consolidation is choking off competition across American industries. With Khan at the helm, we have a huge opportunity to make big, structural change by reviving antitrust enforcement and fighting monopolies that threaten our economy, our society and our democracy.”
Profile
Lina Khan is an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches and writes about antitrust law, infrastructure industries law, and the antimonopoly tradition. Her antitrust scholarship has received several awards and has been published by the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and University of Chicago Law Review.
Khan previously served as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, where she helped lead the Subcommittee’s investigation into digital markets. Khan was also a legal advisor in the office of Commissioner Rohit Chopra at the FTC and legal director at the Open Markets Institute. She is a graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School.
Ms. Khan was born in London to Pakistani parents who emigrated to the United States when she was 11.