WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd March, 2021) President Joe Biden has nominated Lina Khan for the post of Federal Trade Commission chief, the White House announced on Monday, positioning a fierce critic of Big Tech in a job that looks likely to put greater scrutiny on the technology industry often accused of antitrust violations.
"Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Lina Khan for Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission," the White House said in a statement.
Khan is an associate professor of law at Columbia Law school and former counsel in an investigation into digital markets by the US House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, the release said.
She is well known for a 2017 paper "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," which lays out what she views as anti-competitive tactics of the e-commerce giant and failures by the US government to address them.
Khan's nomination to the FTC top job is seen as crucial to the administration as it gears to widen scrutiny over big tech Names such as Google, Amazon and Facebook that could possibly lead to more antitrust investigations.
Khan, 32, would become the youngest person to serve as FTC chief.
The US Justice Department had already filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in October for alleged abuse of internet search.
The action against Google is the most forceful by the US government to ostensibly protect competition in the online search space since the groundbreaking case that began in the late 1990s against microsoft. The case was filed by the Justice Department during the time of the Trump administration, and Biden's leadership appears in support of that action.
