Lina Khan has emerged as one of the most prominent and polarizing figures in American antitrust enforcement in recent decades. As Chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from June 2021 to January 2025, the British-American legal scholar became the youngest person ever to lead the agency at age 32. Her tenure was defined by aggressive challenges to the market dominance of technology giants including Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft, reviving long-dormant debates about monopoly power in the digital age.
Born on March 3, 1989, in London to Pakistani immigrant parents, Khan moved to the United States at age 11. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in political theory from Williams College in 2010 and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2017. Her academic work laid the foundation for her later influence. While still a Yale student, she published the landmark 2017 paper “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” in the Yale Law Journal. The paper argued that Amazon’s strategy of offering low prices and superior convenience could still harm competition by squeezing out rivals, leveraging vast data advantages, and engaging in self-preferencing. The article gained widespread attention and helped reshape antitrust thinking away from the traditional focus solely on short-term consumer prices.
Before her FTC appointment, Khan worked at the Open Markets Institute, advised FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, and served as legal counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee. In that role, she contributed to a major 2020 bipartisan report examining competition issues in digital markets. She joined the faculty of Columbia Law School as an associate professor in 2020. President Joe Biden nominated her to the FTC in 2021, and her confirmation signaled a deliberate shift toward more muscular antitrust enforcement.
A New Approach to Antitrust
Khan championed a structural view of antitrust law, often associated with the “New Brandeis” school. Rather than evaluating monopolies purely on whether they raised prices for consumers—the dominant Chicago School framework—she emphasized broader harms, including reduced innovation, barriers to entry for smaller competitors, impacts on workers, and the entrenchment of economic and political power.
Under her leadership, the FTC pursued high-profile actions against Big Tech:
- Amazon: In 2023, the agency sued the company, alleging it maintained monopoly power in online retail by inflating costs for third-party sellers and favoring its own products and services.
- Meta: The FTC continued and expanded challenges to Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, describing them as part of a “buy-or-bury” strategy to eliminate potential rivals.
- Broader scrutiny: The agency supported Department of Justice efforts against Google’s search monopoly and investigated practices at Apple, Microsoft (particularly in cloud and AI), and Nvidia. Khan’s FTC also blocked or closely scrutinized major mergers across tech, retail, and pharmaceutical sectors, including the proposed Kroger-Albertsons deal.
Beyond litigation, Khan advanced rules targeting non-compete agreements, junk fees, and burdensome subscription practices—measures aimed at protecting consumers and small businesses from practices enabled by concentrated market power.
Impact and Controversy
Khan’s approach drew sharp reactions. Supporters hailed her as a necessary corrective force against unchecked corporate power, arguing that traditional antitrust had failed to address the unique challenges of platform economies. Critics, including some business groups and economists, accused her of regulatory overreach that could discourage innovation, harm American technological competitiveness, and create uncertainty for companies.
Her tenure produced notable victories, such as court rulings affirming Google’s monopoly status in search, and several blocked mergers. However, it also faced legal setbacks and internal challenges. Khan left the FTC in early 2025 at the end of the Biden administration and returned to academia at Columbia Law School. She continues to write and speak on antitrust issues, advocating for stronger enforcement through courts, states, and juries.
Lasting Influence
Lina Khan’s work has left a significant mark on global discussions about competition policy. By questioning decades of laissez-faire approaches to mergers and dominant platforms, she helped popularize concerns about economic concentration that echo early 20th-century trust-busting efforts. Whether future administrations build on or roll back her initiatives, her ideas have already influenced regulators worldwide and reframed how policymakers think about power in the digital economy.
As debates over Big Tech’s influence continue—from artificial intelligence to online commerce—Lina Khan remains a central figure in the ongoing struggle to balance innovation with fair competition.
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