Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has emerged as one of the “most feared people in Silicon Valley” and an enemy of Wall Street.
The agency dedicated to enforcing consumer protection laws and enforcing antitrust laws hasn’t been so talked about — or controversial — for decades. But under Khan’s leadership, the FTC has shown a willingness to take on major companies, even in battles that it’s not sure it can win — or that it eventually loses.
But who, exactly, is Lina Khan?
An ‘antitrust paradox’
Khan was born in London in 1989, later moving with her parents to the U.S. when she was 11 years old. As an adult, Khan earned a bachelor’s degree at Williams College and a law degree from Yale Law School; during that time, she served as a policy analyst — and later the legal director — for the Open Markets Institute, which focuses on holding monopolies accountable and was then operated by the left-leaning think tank New America.
In 2017, she gained notoriety when Yale Law Journal published her article “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” which led to her inclusion as a council member on a congressional investigation into online platforms and competition. It also made her the face of the “New Brandeis” school of antitrust, or “hipster antitrust.”
A year later, the FTC hired her as a legal fellow. She then went on to work as legal counsel for a House subcommittee and as an associate professor at Columbia Law School.
In March 2021, President Joe Biden said he would nominate Khan for the FTC commissioner gig. That June, the Senate voted to confirm her as a commissioner; the then-32-year-old became the youngest FTC chair in the agency’s history.
Aggressive actions
Under Khan, the FTC has gotten back some of the spark it lost in the decades following its near-shutdown in 1980. The chairman at the time, Michael Pertschuk — an appointee of former President Jimmy Carter — won his agency plenty of enemies in corporate America and on Capitol Hill because of his aggressive push for anti-smoking reform and against commercials that marketed sugary foods to children.
Khan has been aggressive in her own own way, often showing a willingness to take on mergers and acquisitions that previous FTC chiefs didn’t have.
FTC lawsuits have killed mergers at Nvidia, Sanofi, Illumina, Lockheed Martin, and HCA Healthcare. The agency is also appealing its failed bid to block Microsoft’s $69 billion deal with Activision Blizzard and is locked in litigation with Kroger (KR) and Albertsons (ACI) to stop their $25 billion merger.
The FTC also prevented Rite Aid from using facial recognition software and sued the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for allegedly artificially inflating the price of insulin. Those middlemen and their parent companies — CVS (CVS), UnitedHealth (UNH), and Cigna (CI) — each filed motions asking for Khan to recuse herself from the proceedings, citing her history of “prejudgements” about PBMs.
Several other companies, such as Amazon and Meta, have called for Khan to be disqualified from previous antitrust cases, citing her past statements in opposition to them. The FTC in March was allowed to reopen its probe into Meta (META) and Facebook, while a federal judge has reportedly said the agency can proceed with its case against Amazon (AMZN).
In a 129-page report last month, the FTC said that some of the largest social media and streaming platforms — including Amazon’s Twitch, Facebook, Alphabet’s (GOOGL) YouTube, X. Corp, and ByteDance’s TikTok — have engaged in “vast surveillance” of users. The FTC has also banned noncompete agreements and voted to enforce the right to repair.
All that said, Khan has won plenty of criticism on Wall Street, in Congress, and even in her own agency. But she’s also won — or solidified — the backing of some powerful politicians.
The Democratic party — largely — backs her, from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to New York Rep. Jerry Nadler. And Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has been a major supporter.
Republicans who like her — the so-called Khanservatives — include controversial Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who told the Wall Street Journal his Republican party “can’t be whores for big business and be the voice of the working class at the same time.” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has praised her efforts taking on big tech companies, and even vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has said Khan is doing a “pretty good job.”
An electoral kerfuffle
Although Khan’s term as commissioner ended in September, she can serve in her post until a replacement is nominated to and confirmed by the Senate.
Her departure is almost guaranteed if former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elected in November, despite his running mate’s praise of the commissioner. But a victory for Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris could see Khan stay on in her role, despite lobbying from major donors.
LinkedIn (MSFT) co-founder Reid Hoffman in July said Khan is “a person who is not helping America,” adding that “antitrust is fine” but that “waging war is not.” IAC (IAC) Chairman Barry Diller has said he would lobby a Harris administration to drop Khan and called her a “dope,” for which he later apologized.
Both men are facing multiple investigations from the FTC related to their companies. The inquiries into Hoffman extend to LinkedIn, Microsoft, and OpenAI, Bloomberg News reported as part of a lengthy profile of Khan. An IAC subsidiary agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle claims it deceived workers; the company, Care.com, did not admit wrongdoing.
Hoffman and Diller are joined in their dislike of Khan by billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who has become a major Harris supporter and advocate, and Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla.
“She’s not a rational human being,” Khosla said at a conference in June. “She doesn’t understand business; she shouldn’t be in that role.”
In an interview with Reuters leading up to the FTC’s announcement that it had finalized a proposed rule designed to take on tough-to-cancel subscriptions, Khan declined to discuss the remarks of her billionaire critics. She also declined to comment on whether she has discussed a role in a potential Harris administration. In May, before Biden bowed out of the presidential race, she told ABC News that “it would be an honor” to be nominated for another term as commissioner.
But Khan told Bloomberg that the newfound attention on the FTC should help create “institutional durability,” regardless of who leads the agency.
“The bipartisan agreement that the way we’ve been doing antitrust needed to be revisited and adapted and updated to match the realities of how businesses are operating in the 21st century, that’s not going away,” she said.
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