Big Tech Should Officially Start Panicking
Biden’s appointment of two antitrust firebrands leaves little room for ambiguity
If you haven’t noticed by now, two major Biden administration appointments affecting antitrust policy are attracting extraordinary chatter across industries, experts, and media. The reason is vexing confusion as to whether President Biden is signaling that he intends to upend four decades of antitrust law — a thrust that, if it takes place, could shake up multiple concentrated industries, disrupt Big Tech, and reorder some of the economy. The answer is a definitive yes.
I’m referring to Biden’s appointment of two antitrust firebrands, both Columbia Law School professors: Tim Wu, author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, is joining the National Economic Council; and Lina Khan, author of a seminal 2017 article in the Yale Law Journal titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” is expected to be nominated to the Federal Trade Commission.
To understand why their elevation is so consequential, travel back a decade to the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank. At the time, Wu had just finished a fellowship there. Khan was a junior member of the Open Markets Program, a New America unit run by Barry Lynn, an intense personality for whom the word “rabble-rouser”…
