Biden appoints Lina Khan to head F.T.C
Lina Khan, a known critic of massive tech monopolies, will head the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Lina Khan’s appointment, announced on Tuesday evening, it was interpreted by the US media as a “signal to tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple.”
Ms Khan was sworn in as FTC chair just hours after the Senate confirmed her together with 5 members of the commission on a 69-28 vote. At 32, she is the youngest chair in the history of the FTC, which oversees competition and consumer protection in the industry and ensures digital privacy.
“It may be a tremendous honour to possess been selected by President Biden to steer the Federal Trade Commission,” Ms Khan said during a statement. “I anticipate to working with my colleagues to guard the general public from corporate abuse.”According to The ny Times, Khan was born in London to Pakistani parents who emigrated to us when she was 11.
She has been a professor at Columbia University School of Law and burst onto the antitrust scene together with her ground-breaking ad in 2017, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” as a Yale student. The ny Times described it as “reframing decades of monopoly law.”
As counsel to a House Judiciary antitrust panel in 2019 and 2020, she played a key role during a sweeping bipartisan investigation of the market power of the tech giants.
“Lina brings deep knowledge and expertise to the present role and can be a fearless champion for consumers,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been involved in tech industry breakups, said in a statement.
“Giant tech companies deserve the growing scrutiny they’re facing, and consolidation is choking off competition across American industries. With Khan at the helm, we have an enormous opportunity to form big, structural change by reviving antitrust enforcement and fighting monopolies that threaten our economy, our society and our democracy.”
Khan also was a legal adviser to Rohit Chopra, an FTC commissioner, and was previously legal director of the Open Markets Institute, an organisation that advocates against corporate concentration.