Biden names London-born Lina Khan to a key regulatory post

US president Joe Biden has named London-born legal prodigy Lina Khan, 32, a prominent advocate of breaking up Big Tech firms to a key regulatory post.

The White House said it was submitting the nomination of Lina Khan, an associate professor of law at Columbia University's law school, to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an agency with authority over some mergers and antitrust policy.

The move follows the naming of Tim Wu, another Big Tech critic, to an economic advisory post in the White House.

If confirmed, Khan will become the youngest-ever FTC commissioner.

Khan previously served as counsel to the US House of Representatives' subcommittee on antitrust, which last year released a lengthy report suggesting grounds for breaking up giants such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple.

She also authored a 2017 paper called "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," which outlined the growing dominance of the e-commerce and tech giant, which some say helped shift sentiment on antitrust.

Khan worked in the office of Federal Trade Commission member Rohit Chopra and was legal director at the Open Markets Institute, a think tank which has been highly critical of the Silicon Valley giants.

Biden's announcement raised eyebrows given Khan's aggressive stance against big tech giants and the power they hold, further signalling Biden crackdown on technology giants.

'Formidable student'

Born to Pakistani parents who worked as a management consultant and an information services executive, Khan developed a reputation for being a softly spoken but formidable student, reported The Telegraph.

Her intelligence was evident at an early age. Khan’s parents moved to New York to take new jobs in 2000, when she was 11. The move propelled her towards a career as a legal scholar once she had decided to drop an initial plan of becoming a journalist at The Wall Street Journal.

After graduating in 2010 from Williams College, where Khan studied political theory and wrote her thesis on the German-born political theorist Hannah Arendt as well as editing the student newspaper, she began studying at Yale Law School.

But it was a 2016 paper that Khan wrote as a law student that really got her noticed. The 24,000-word article she published in the Yale Law Journal sharply criticised the failure of US antitrust policy to curtail Amazon’s rise unexpectedly went viral.

Khan is married to Shah Ali, a cardiologist who also comes from a Pakistani family.

Khan worked for several years at the New America think tank but left the organisation in 2017 following a debate over its response to EU regulation of technology giants, The Telegraph report said.

She and 10 other employees left New America after her Open Markets team published a statement welcoming a $2.7bn EU fine against Google. Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who along with Google had spent millions of dollars funding New America, objected to the statement.

The split caused Khan to have to work without pay for a month as Open Markets established itself as an independent think tank.

Strong opposition likely

The move to confirm Khan is likely to trigger a contentious nomination fight, with some Republicans already expressing opposition to her.

Utah senator Mike Lee said earlier this month that "being less than four years out of law school," Khan "lacks the experience necessary for such an important role as FTC Commissioner."

Additionally, Lee said, "her views on antitrust enforcement are also wildly out of step with a prudent approach to the law" and that her appointment "would signal that President Biden intends to put ideology and politics ahead of competent antitrust enforcement."

But Charlotte Slaiman of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge welcomed the news, saying earlier this month that Khan's appointment "will signal that antitrust enforcement and important competition policy changes will be a high priority."

If her nomination is confirmed, Khan will gain an influential position that will place her at the forefront of US opposition to technology giants.

The FTC is currently waging a legal battle against Facebook in an attempt to undo its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. Adding Khan to the FTC’s commission could see the agency take an even closer link at the activities of technology giants.

The heads of Facebook, Google and Twitter will testify before Congress Thursday (25) on disinformation, following a tense US election, Capitol attack and rise of a new administration seemingly intent on doing battle with Big Tech.

The remote video hearing will be the fourth for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey since last July and the third for Google's Sundar Pichai: evidence of how the companies' vast economic and political power has landed them squarely in the crosshairs of Democrats and Republicans alike.