Lina Khan: Pakistani-American Lawyer Fighting Big Tech Monopolies
By Riaz Haq
Pakistani-American Lina Khan is seen as the front-runner for appointment to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as a commissioner in the Biden administration. She is a Columbia University Law professor who specializes in anti-trust law.
Lina's 2017 seminal paper entitled "Amazon's Anti-Trust Paradox" broke new ground in the application of anti-trust law against powerful technology monopolies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter. Traditionally, the US anti-trust actions have been focused on keeping consumer prices low. This narrow focus has helped big technology companies like Amazon, with its low prices, or Google and Facebook with their “free” services, to avoid anti-trust scrutiny.
Lina was born in London in 1989 to Pakistani parents who migrated to the United States when she was 11. She graduated from William College with a BA degree and then studied law at Yale University. She is now an associate professor at Columbia Law School in New York City.
US tech companies are facing increasing scrutiny in Washington over their growing size and power. In October 2019, an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee issued a 449-page report. It accused the big technology companies of charging high fees, forcing smaller customers into unfavorable contracts and of using "killer acquisitions" to constrain competitors. "To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons," it said. The appointment of Lina Khan as FTC commissioner would send a clear signal to the US tech giants that the Biden administration means business.
Lina Khan acknowledges the popularity of the convenience and the free services offered by the large technology giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google but she worries about the longer-term implications of their anti-competitive behavior. “As consumers, as users, we love these tech companies,” she said. “But as citizens, as workers, and as entrepreneurs, we recognize that their power is troubling. We need a new framework, a new vocabulary for how to assess and address their dominance", she told the New York Times .
(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com )
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