President Joe Biden has appointed Pakistan-origin Lina Khan as the chairwoman of the federal trade commission. The appointment of Lina provides a hint for the possible crackdown on big tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple. Khan took the oath as FTC chair just hours after the Senate verified her as one of five members of the commission on a 69-28 vote.
The appointment of an energetic critic of Big Tech as a top federal regulator comes at a time when the industry is under strong pressure from Congress, regulators, and state attorneys general. Lina Khan was born in London to Pakistani parents. She was only 11-years old when her parents moved to the US.
Furthermore, she served as a professor at Columbia University Law School and exploded onto the antitrust background with her huge scholarly work in 2017 as a Yale law student, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”. She played a very important role in putting the foundation for a new way of seeing antitrust law ahead of the impact of big firm market dominance on consumer prices.
In addition to this, she has also played a vital role in a comprehensive bipartisan probe of the market power of the tech giants as counsel to a House Judiciary antitrust panel in 2019 and 2020. After her appointment, she has made history as she became the youngest chair in the record of the FTC, which regulates competition and consumer protection within the industry generally as well as digital privacy.
After her appointment, she took to Twitter and expressed her gratitude for her appointment. She wrote: “I’m so grateful to the Senate for my confirmation. Congress created the FTC to protect fair competition and protect consumers, workers, and honest businesses from unfair & deceptive practices. I look forward to keeping this mission with enthusiasm and assisting the American public.”