Lina Khan

Lina Khan rose from academic outsider to the most consequential US antitrust enforcer in a generation, reshaping how governments think about the market power that flows from controlling data. Born in London to Pakistani immigrant parents and raised in New York, she first drew national attention in 2017 as a law student, publishing 'Amazon's Antitrust Paradox' in the Yale Law Journal — a paper that argued decades of antitrust doctrine had failed to grapple with platforms that use scale, data and vertical integration to entrench dominance rather than simply raise prices.

That thesis became the intellectual foundation for a new school of competition policy, often labelled 'hipster antitrust', which Khan herself was given the chance to implement. After working as a legal fellow at the Federal Trade Commission and as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, she was appointed FTC Chair in 2021 at the age of 32, the youngest person ever to hold the role.

As chair, Khan pursued an aggressive agenda against the data and platform economy: suing Amazon and Meta, challenging mergers including Kroger-Albertsons and Tapestry-Capri, and pushing through a landmark rule banning most non-compete clauses. She sharpened FTC scrutiny of data-broker practices, algorithmic pricing and AI partnerships between dominant firms, arguing that control over data was itself a new axis of monopoly power requiring fresh legal tools. Her tenure drew fierce criticism from parts of the business and venture-capital establishment, alongside a mixed record in court, but fundamentally shifted the terms of debate over how regulators should treat data-rich platforms.

Khan left the FTC in January 2025 at the end of the Biden administration and returned to academia and public life, taking a role at Columbia University, where in 2026 she was named to lead a newly established Center for Law and the Economy focused on competition, technology and economic power. She was also tapped to co-chair the transition team for New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, extending her influence from federal regulation into city-level economic policy.

Whether prosecuting a case or teaching a seminar, Khan's central argument has remained consistent: that in a data-driven economy, unchecked corporate power over information is a public policy problem, not merely a commercial one — a position that continues to shape regulatory thinking well beyond her time in office.