Kamala Harris Might Keep Lina Khan at the FTC, After All

Lina Khan, the caput of the Federal Trade Commission, has proven to beryllium a contentious figure—arguably because, dissimilar immoderate of the FTC chairs who came earlier her, she seems intent connected really doing her job. Under her chairmanship, the FTC has aggressively pursued actions against immoderate of America’s largest tech companies, ruffling the feathers of Silicon Valley C-suites. As a result, determination are much than a fewer radical who privation to spot her gone erstwhile the adjacent administration—be it Trump oregon Harris—enters the White House.

A caller study suggests there’s a bully accidental that Harris volition support Khan, should she triumph the presidency. The governmental outlet NOTUS writes that 1 of Harris’ apical economical advisers, Brian Deese, has “advocated” for Harris to support the young national authoritative successful her role. The outlet cites 2 sources acquainted with the campaign.

Gizmodo reached retired to the Harris run for comment.

The database of tech executives that person taken shots astatine Khan is long. Earlier this year, LinkedIn billionaire and Democratic Party donor Reid Hoffman made waves erstwhile helium publically suggested that, should she triumph the presidency, Harris should occurrence Khan. Hoffman said that Khan was “not helping America” and that helium hoped that “Vice President Harris would regenerate her.” Notably, Hoffman is simply a large capitalist successful Microsoft, which has been nether occurrence from Khan’s bureau implicit its assorted concern deals. Hoffman aboriginal appeared connected Jake Tapper’s show connected CNN and tried to support himself against accusations of power peddling.

Other tech companies person besides been captious of the regulator. Last summer, lawyers for the institution past known arsenic Twitter accused Khan’s bureau of being biased against the platform and its caller owner, Elon Musk. According to Jon Stewart, helium was instructed by officials astatine Apple not to interrogation Khan during his short-lived Apple TV show, The Problem with Jon Stewart. Amazon once accused Khan of having unfairly “made up her mind” astir “Amazon’s antitrust culpability.” It isn’t hard to ideate that different firm goliaths who person been the taxable of FTC scrutiny (like Meta, for instance) are also, presumably not fans of hers.

As FTC head, Khan has initiated a fig of assertive actions against the tech industry’s biggest players. Last September, Khan sued Amazon, alleging it had exerted amerciable monopoly powerfulness implicit markets that allowed it to inflate prices and trim merchandise quality. Last year, the FTC nether Khan projected a blanket prohibition connected Meta’s monetization of younker data. In 2022, Khan’s FTC sued to disrupt the merger betwixt Microsoft and Blizzard-Activision, though her efforts were yet thwarted by a national judge. The FTC has besides sought to unwind Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp (though that effort predates Khan’s tenure with the agency, it has continued nether her leadership). Khan has besides probed the narration betwixt OpenAI and Microsoft and expressed concerns for the increasing attraction of power wrong the AI industry, and has sought to spotlight the immense growth of user surveillance via adtech successful the United States.