Lina Khan on Fighting Big Tech

Summary

Podcast Summary: Offline with Jon Favreau – Episode featuring Lina Khan on Fighting Big Tech

Episode Information:

• Title: Offline with Jon Favreau
• Host: Crooked Media
• Guest: Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
• Release Date: January 12, 2025
• Topic: Fighting Big Tech and the Role of the FTC in Combating Monopolies

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Introduction

In this episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, host Jon Favreau engages in an in-depth conversation with Lina Khan, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Known as one of the most prominent figures in antitrust enforcement, Khan discusses her tenure at the FTC, her strategies in tackling Big Tech monopolies, and the broader implications of concentrated economic power on democracy and consumer welfare.

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Lina Khan’s Approach to Antitrust Enforcement

Khan begins by outlining the primary mission of the FTC: to ensure that markets remain fair, honest, and competitive. She emphasizes the importance of utilizing all legislative tools granted by Congress to combat monopolistic practices.

Notable Quote:

"The Federal Trade Commission enforces the nation's antitrust and consumer protection laws. And what that's really about at a basic level is making sure that our markets are fair and honest and competitive."
— Lina Khan [36:09]

Khan contrasts her approach with that of previous FTC chairs, particularly those from the Reagan administration, highlighting how past policies leaned towards deregulation and minimal intervention. She underscores the consequences of this hands-off approach, such as increased market consolidation and reduced competition.

Notable Quote:

"We've been living with the consequences of that. Across our economy, markets have become more consolidated, people are worse off in a whole range of metrics."
— Lina Khan [38:35]

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Tackling Big Tech Monopolies

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Big Tech giants like Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Khan explains how these companies function as modern-day middlemen and gatekeepers in the digital marketplace, leveraging network effects and data advantages to entrench their dominance.

Notable Quote:

"These tech era firms are gatekeepers. They connect consumers and shoppers, and the way digital markets work—like network effects and data advantages—really put a primacy on chasing scale."
— Lina Khan [42:13]

She delves into specific illegal practices employed by these corporations to maintain and expand their monopolies. For instance, Amazon’s punitive measures against sellers offering lower prices elsewhere and its significant fee structures are highlighted as tactics that inflate prices and stifle competition.

Notable Quote:

"Amazon is inflating the prices that these sellers have to pay Amazon, but also making it impossible for these sellers to lower their prices anywhere else."
— Lina Khan [44:55]

Khan also discusses ongoing and upcoming litigation against major tech companies, showcasing the FTC’s commitment to holding these giants accountable.

Notable Quote:

"We have a big trial starting up against Meta in the spring. We have a trial starting against Amazon in fall 2026. We only got there after defeating their emotions and prevailing."
— Lina Khan [43:53]

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Impact of Market Consolidation on Consumers and Democracy

The conversation transitions to the broader implications of market consolidation, touching upon how excessive concentration of economic power can erode democratic institutions and consumer trust. Khan references historical contexts, such as the Sherman Act, to draw parallels between economic monopolies and political autocracies.

Notable Quote:

"If we're not going to be ruled by monarchs, we also don't want to be ruled by autocrats of trade because how people experience the economy in their day-to-day life has a huge impact on whether they feel free."
— Lina Khan [57:22]

She elaborates on how monopolistic practices not only lead to higher prices and reduced wages but also create fragile markets susceptible to disruptions, as evidenced by recent natural disasters affecting supply chains.

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Challenges and Criticisms

Khan addresses criticisms regarding the FTC’s aggressive stance on mergers and acquisitions, which some argue stifles innovation and job creation. She defends the FTC’s actions by clarifying that the agency targets specific mergers that significantly lessen competition, rather than all large-scale consolidations.

Notable Quote:

"The law prohibits mergers that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. That's a very specific legal standard."
— Lina Khan [52:49]

She cites successful cases, such as the blocking of the Nvidia ARM deal, to demonstrate how careful enforcement can preserve competitive markets without hindering legitimate business growth.

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Future Directions and Legacy

As her term as FTC chair concludes, Khan reflects on the lasting impacts of her tenure. She expresses hope that the groundwork laid during her leadership will continue to promote fair competition and protect consumers from exploitative practices.

Notable Quote:

"We've brought big cases against dominant technology companies. We have major litigations ongoing against big middlemen in the healthcare sector."
— Lina Khan [40:40]

Looking ahead, Khan mentions areas like healthcare and AI as emerging fronts where the FTC will need to remain vigilant to prevent new forms of monopolistic behavior and technological abuses.

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Conclusion

Jon Favreau wraps up the episode by commending Lina Khan for her dedication and impactful work at the FTC. He underscores the importance of her efforts in shaping a more competitive and fair marketplace, ultimately contributing to the health of democracy itself.

Notable Quote:

"Lina Khan, thank you so much for everything you've done these last several years and really, really hope you stay in the fight."
— Jon Favreau [66:22]

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Key Takeaways:

• Aggressive Antitrust Enforcement: Under Lina Khan’s leadership, the FTC took a proactive stance against Big Tech monopolies, utilizing all available legal tools to ensure market competition.
• Modern Monopolies as Gatekeepers: Tech giants today act as middlemen with unprecedented control over digital marketplaces, using data and network effects to maintain their dominance.
• Economic Power and Democracy: Excessive concentration of economic power poses threats to democratic institutions and consumer freedoms, necessitating robust regulatory oversight.
• Future Challenges: Areas like healthcare and artificial intelligence present new challenges for antitrust enforcement, requiring ongoing vigilance and adaptive strategies.

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the FTC’s role in combating Big Tech monopolies, highlighting Lina Khan’s transformative impact on antitrust policy and enforcement.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Lina Khan]

There's this great quote from the history of the Sherman act which is, you know, if we're not going to be ruled by monarchs, we also don't want to be ruled by autocrats of trade because how people experience the economy in their day to day life has huge impact on whether they feel free. And so if you have a democracy, but you're allowed people to be bullied and coerced in their economic life, that's not really going to leave to freedom. And so that's why I think on both sides of the aisle there's a recognition that we need to take these laws seriously.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Tommy]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

And you just heard from today's guest chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan. If you're a regular offline listener, you probably heard us talk about Lina Khan. She's the youngest FTC chair in history, appointed by President Biden at just 32 years old. As chair, she has led a reinvigoration of antitrust action and enforcement. She's taken on Big Tech monopolies with pending lawsuits against Meta and Amazon. She's gone after Big Pharma, successfully forcing manufacturers to lower the price of inhalers to $35. She's even tackled price gouging at grocery stores, blocking the Albertsons Kroger merger. Just last month I invited her on because we've talked a lot on this show about what it takes to hold Big Tech accountable. And Lina Khan is probably the single person who's had the most success doing that. So we get into her, right?

[Tommy]

I mean, we talk so much about the harms of Big Tech and it's this big structural problem and how could we possibly deal with it. So it is amazing to see someone who not only has the will to take it on, but is able to do it on a level that I really didn't think was possible. Like four years ago, I would have said it is not possible for a regulatory agency to do this much good in reigning at Big Tech, not to mention the many other things that she's done in her short time in office. So I'm really excited to hear from her.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, just by dusting off a few old laws that maybe past FTC chairs weren't using to the to the fullest of their ability. So it's great we got into her work. We also talked about how the Internet has changed the way monopolies operate, what she expects from her Trump appointed successor, and why her work at the FTC has made her an unlikely folk hero. It was a great conversation. You'll hear in a bit. But first, Max, you're currently joining us remotely from where are you right now? I know you and Julia left town earlier this week because of the fires. How are you guys doing?

[Tommy]

I. We are all good. We are in Joshua Tree, which I know sounds pretty lux and cush for sheltering, but it was literally the closest place where we could find housing by the time we bugged out late on Wednesday night. Like a lot of people, we ended up at an Airbnb that was maybe unlisted because it is actively under construction, but it was therefore available, which is great. And we're here now with our two cats plus two friends who are sheltering with us, their cat, their dog, and their toddler. Any combination of whom you may hear on this broadcast.

[Jon Favreau]

Wow. Wow. Welcome to life with a toddler in the background.

[Tommy]

I'm getting a sample now, but we're not on fire. That's the important thing. So everything is great.

[Jon Favreau]

I talked to Dan about this on Pod Save America a little bit, but I found that the current information environment, especially platforms like Twitter, has made it so much harder than it should be to get good, reliable information about the fires over the past week. And it's not just misinformation, though, that there's plenty of that. It's also the takes to information ratio. Everything, everything on social media is. Is politics and conflict and blame and people are just, you know, looking for help and ways to help. I said this on Pod Save America, but Watch Duty is this great nonprofit app that everyone in Los Angeles now has probably downloaded that has just up to the minute information about evacuation orders, fires, how it's going, nothing else. No chatter, no takes. And I was, I've been. I've been looking at it. I'm like, oh, more apps like this would be great. I'm like, what are they? Oh, that would be news.

[Tommy]

Yeah, right.

[Jon Favreau]

News is valuable. Just plain old news and information and not your fucking opinion, which is what we're offering right now. Of course.

[Tommy]

That's right. It is wild to see an app literally from Silicon Valley that is useful. That does good. It's a reminder that technology actually can be a wonderful force. That is so helpful. And, yeah, it doesn't have forward facing viral videos on it. So therefore is not the font of, I mean it's been, I know you guys talked about it, we don't have to rehash it, but it's just infuriating to see the way that people are behaving in this moment. And there really was a time not that long ago, three, five, eight years ago, when during a crisis you would see mostly reliable and useful information on social media and you know, there'd be some engagement bait, hot takes sprinkled in, but it would be the minority. And that is completely flipped now. Which I think is something that we're learning from this. That's, you know, there are people trying to put out good information, there are agencies on there, there are news reporters, but they are getting totally drowned out by the hot takers. And that really gets me is in a lot of cases it's the same people, like it's the same individual people who a few years ago would have been sharing news articles and on the ground updates are now posting these. Like the same smug self righteous takes about how the fires confirm all of their political opinions before they even know what's happening, pushing whatever quote, unquote evidence lets them frame this disaster. As my views are vindicated, everyone who disagrees with me is proven to be evil and stupid. Which goes to show it's not like it's easy to blame this and like, oh, it's the trolls, it's the bad people online. Like, no, this is. All of us collectively have been encouraged by these social platforms to become our worst selves in moments like this. And a lot of us have chosen to indulge that because it feels good to get smug and self righteous online. And we tell ourselves that we're helping because if I'm retweeting something or sharing a, you know, viral infographic that confirms my politics, it must be righteous and good.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And when you said it's the same people who would have been sharing helpful information, it's also the same people that I don't know how many months ago when we were dealing with the aftermath or even in the enduring Hurricane Helene were putting out the same misinformation and conspiracy and stuff like that, which is the owner of the platform, Elon Musk, a bunch of his pals who are like some of whom are headed into the next administration and the next in the incoming president right now.

[Tommy]

That doesn't help.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, well, yeah, when you get those people doing it, then it's going to, it's going to Filter down to everyone else. So, you know, all we can say about that is, you know, if you're in LA or the area, you know, download, watchduty. But also just, you know, before you share something, there is, I should say there is some heroic reporting going on. Local journalism is in Los Angeles is thriving right now. Not financially, unfortunately, but the people who've put their themselves at risk to report this local news, L.A. times, places like that have been doing a fantastic job. So it's unfortunate that it's all being, a lot of it's being drowned out by the assholes on social media.

[Tommy]

Which is, which is to your point, it can be all of us. I think it's such an important thing to remember. Like I can't tell you how many people who I know who want to be doing the right thing, who I saw sharing something, some viral rage bait that confirmed their politics on their Instagram or whatever. Because if it's what everybody around you is doing, it feels like it's the right thing to do. So it's, you know, don't. As easy as it is, don't mentally separate yourself out and say, well, it's just the people on the other side who do it. When I do it, it's actually good and righteous. Like really think about it before you share it.

[Jon Favreau]

Well also it just takes everyone's. Takes up everyone else's time. Right when we could be focused on it. Like I went through like line items in the Los Angeles city budget to try to figure out who. What happened with this like accusation fire budget was cut. And you know, when you go, the New York Times had a good piece on it today and there's plenty of fact checks and you know, we talked about on Pod Save America. But it's like you really have to be, you have to do your own research, which is part of the problem.

[Tommy]

Right, right. Well, the fire department thing is a perfect examp of it because this is a claim that got started as a viral post from ironically of all people, the right wing owner of the Los Angeles Times, who shared it as to pushed it as an attack on Democrats and then went viral a second time when it was shared by literally that same guy's daughter. Which is just a crazy ironic twist, all of this. Who put a left wing spin on it by saying that, oh, these fire department cuts were to fund the L.A.P.D. i. And so it's the same claim that is being seized on by both the right and the left is vindication of their politics. Which should be a reminder to you that when you think you're advancing your politics by sharing this, like, rage baity stuff online, all you're doing is advancing the same, like, cynicism and culture of social distrust and political distrust that is so much the rot at the heart of our culture.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and once again, it obscures what is always a complicated and sort of bigger debate to be had, which is like, there's a totally legitimate debate about whether, like, for a decade or more the LA Fire Department has been underfunded. And now that we're dealing with more fires and more extreme fires, do we need to rethink how the Department of staff, what resources it has, like, all of that is, like, fair. And people can argue that, but we're not arguing that right now. We're. We're just into the weeds on one budget request. And the. And the mistake someone made by not figuring out that the finalized budget was actually more than the original budget.

[Tommy]

Right. Just a math there. Yeah. Although a perfect ironic capstone to all of this is that it turns out that the number of firefighters, whether or not that has been reduced by budget cuts, is actually not determinative at all at the scale of this fire. That it turns out it was just the extreme winds that made it impossible to fight the fire, which we learned when the winds lifted, all of a sudden all these helicopters and airplanes can fight the fires. And the one big fire that sprung up around them, the one near my house, got put out immediately, which was great.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Speaking of misinformation and dying platforms, we have a lot of news to catch up on. We're going to run through it all quickly before we get to Lina Khan. First up, in a strange direct to camera video featuring a bad haircut, a gold chain and a million dollar watch, 90s rapper Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would be ending fact checking and content moderation on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In the video, Zuckerberg says, quote, the recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech, which to me reads is, we're giving Meta a MAGA makeover before the Trump inauguration. You and I were just talking right before the recording. There's an Axios piece that they're also ending all DEI programs hiring everything else. Max, what do you make of this? You think Trump and the incoming pressure from Republicans about, quote, free speech is guiding this decision? I mean, Trump thinks so. Trump was asked about it and they're like, do you think that Mark Zuckerberg did this because you threatened him? And he's like, yeah, probably.

[Tommy]

I know. It's. I almost appreciate Trump putting out there what we all know is happening, which is that Trump threatened the company and the company bowed to it because they know it's going to be good for them. I mean, the idea that this is free speech. Yeah. Trump, the free speech champion, who threatens to jail reporters, who threatened to punish CNN and the Washington Post reporting on him, who threatened to send the Des Moines.

[Jon Favreau]

He suing the Des Moines Register because they put out a poll that showed him losing when he then won.

[Tommy]

He's.

[Jon Favreau]

He's suing cbs. He wants to take away cbs, his broadcast license, because he didn't like the way they cut a Kamala Harris interview. It has nothing to do with him. The free speech, Mark, Tell us about the free speech. Tell us, tell us about what, what exactly happened in this election that makes you think we are in a cultural tipping point towards prioritizing free speech? I would love Mark Zuckerberg if someone can get him to answer that question. Tell me about Donald Trump's platform. What about the platform? What about his actions make you think that and the outcome of the election makes you think we are now prioritizing free speech? Please, please provide us your answer, Mark Zuckerberg.

[Tommy]

Well, it's, I mean, it's obviously part of it is just like it's indulging the Trump narrative because he wants to send a big signal to Trump that, hey, we're on your side. And it wasn't just Zuckerberg. Right. Joel Kaplan, who is the Republican operative who just got elevated to MET as vice President for public policy, was the one who first rolled out these changes, which he did, of course, on Fox and Friends, where he said that they had been inspired by Trump's commitment to free speech. And then Zuckerberg, I think, like, really tipped his hand a little bit when he said that they were part of. It was also that they are ending fact checking because fact checkers are biased. I mean, it's really, it's giving away the game, Mark, when you're telling us that factual accuracy is biased against the kinds of content that Facebook would like to be serving us. So I think it's really, it's not just like we're going to indulge the Trump narrative because we want to make Trump happy so that he won't put our CEO in jail, I think there is a really sincere alignment here and a really sincere belief that, you know, all these fucking fact checkers and all these civil rights groups and all these watchdogs that keep telling us that we're pumpering dangerous misinformation and hate speech into the global media ecosystem. We're tired of hearing from them, we don't like it. So we're just going to tell ourselves that they're biased in the sense that they have opinions that we don't like and are going to shut them down and are going to serve people whatever slop they want in a way that frankly, the platform hasn't since 2016 was the last time that it was this unregulated, maybe not even then. And the platform was much less powerful than a much less influential. So we talk a lot about like, meta is bad. Meta makes bad decisions. They're craven, they're cynical. All of which is true. So don't hear this and think like, oh, this is just kind of more of the same bullshit from Zuckerberg and Meta. These changes are substantial and the openness which with they are now signaling, hey, we are a pro Trump platform, we are a MAGA aligned set of platforms, I think is a really, really big deal that is going to have huge shockwaves in our culture.

[Jon Favreau]

One other thing about the video, at one point he's like, if you want to, if you want to leave meta, leave Facebook, that's fine. That's just virtue signaling. I'm like, oh, oh, okay, Mark, you're going to talk about people, virtue signaling when you've just recorded a hostage video that literally has everything but you wearing a maga ha. In the video, dude, you look like a fucking moron. And like, whatever. He's. Mark Zuckerberg is about making money for Mark Zuckerberg. He is someone who, whatever, he's made a ton of money. He wants to keep making money, he wants to stay rich. He has accumulated a whole bunch of power. He sees no obligation to use that power responsibly. Even if he accumulated it accidentally, right? He's always like the sort of, I didn't expect to be this powerful. I just like coding and building things, right? It's like, okay, even if that's true, you've gained a whole bunch of power. You run this huge, a huge platform. You have decided that you have no obligation to do anything to use that power responsibly. You've made a whole fuckload of money, one of the richest people in the world. Great hundreds of billions, have a foundation. You donate some of it to good causes. That's nice. But like, let's not pretend that you, that the purpose of your company is to do anything, anything other than make money. There's. There's no. All the. That Facebook has said over the years, connecting people, this. That there's nothing. It just is purely about making money at this point.

[Tommy]

Yeah, I think that there was a time when they believed that making money was the same as helping the world, and when they really believe that there is a natural alignment, because the more people we reach with our inherently liberating platform, the more we're going to connect people, the more that we will elevate a realm of pure ideas and democracy, and that will be helpful to everyone. And what they learned over the last five years is that that's not true.

[Jon Favreau]

People want AI slop. That's what they want.

[Tommy]

They want more AI chatbots, which they are now promising to shovel more and more of into our feeds. Is it because they're going to replace all those people with AI chatbots that are going to have just weird slop they're going to give us? It's going to be horrible, but I guess they think it's going to be good for engagement. But they saw all this evidence, including from their own internal researchers, saying, actually, your platform, in the way that you have structured it, is harmful. And they just decided that they don't care. And we should talk about the. The biggest change of the many that they rolled out here, which is that they are going to bring politics back to your feet. Remember, starting In, I think, 2021, they said we're going to de. Emphasize politics across all the platforms. And it worked in the sense that you did encounter a lot less politics on Facebook and on Instagram. And I think that that is a big reason that this most recent election had much less influence from social media misinformation than I think in 2016 or 2020. Remember. I'm sorry, in 2016. Yeah, 2016. 2020, where we had a conversation where I argued that, like, actually, the structure of social media in this election is maybe the least harmful. It's been in a major presidential election in quite some time. I actually think that was true. And now they've said, you know, now that the Democrats are out of office and Trump is back, we want politics all over our platforms. Because they didn't say this, but I think the implication is they know that the way that their platforms promote politics promotes division, hate, misinformation, conspiracies in ways structurally serve the MAGA right, not because they want it to serve the MAGA right. That's just the effect that it has. And they've gone from saying that we want to limit that because we don't want the heat to saying, you know what, Trump's in office and it's going to make him happy if we promote all of this stuff into people's feet again.

[Jon Favreau]

Mark Zuckerberg has become a more pathetic version of Elon Musk, and that is saying something. He has seen everything Elon Musk has done with regard to politics, content, moderation, everything else, relationship with Trump, and he was like, I'll try to do that, but in a much lamer way. That's. That's Mark Zuckerberg.

[Tommy]

At least Elon is trying to get something out of it. He's getting some, some concessions for Tesla and he's pushing the like, H1B visa stuff, which I don't think makes him a good guy, but, like, he's leveraging that for something where, yeah, Mark is basically just saying, I'm your little lap dog and I'm going to do whatever you want.

[Jon Favreau]

Good for him. Hope he's happy. This show is sponsored by Better Help. What do you want your 2025 story to be? John Boy? More of a thriller, a romance novel?

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[Jon Favreau]

In other news, two long shot attempts to save TikTok from a US ban are underway. The first is an investment group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary who has delivered a proposal to ByteDance to purchase TikTok's US assets. The second is oral arguments before the Supreme Court that are I think still going on as of this recording. They will determine whether to overturn a lower court's decision to uphold the TikTok ban. Of course we are recording this Friday, January 10th. It is 10:30am Pacific. I was just checking the or the I was checking X about for updates on the oral arguments and I'll tell you, doesn't seem like it's going too well for TikTok.

[Tommy]

No it doesn't.

[Jon Favreau]

It's the liberal conservative justice, conservative justices and even Sotomayor and Kagan I've seen had some had some questions that probably aren't so helpful to TikTok. So it does not seem to be going that well for them. This the at the moment, ByteDance has not publicly expressed interest in the offer from the McCourt O'Leary group and it's unclear when we'll get a decision from the Supreme Court, though we do expect something before the TikTok ban takes effect on January 19th, which is as of this recording, nine days from now. Max, what do you think? Do you think that the the deal has a chance? It seems like the Supreme Court is not going to save them, at least whatever. We could be wrong. But it from the oral arguments it doesn't seem like that. But what do you think about the deal?

[Tommy]

I was very surprised to see this offer come together. I was very skeptical that anyone could get the kind of capital for this. I mean we're talking about assets worth probably in the hundreds of billions. So even with a lot of loans, even if you have a big TV show about being an investor, it's hard to know how you could come up with the money. So maybe they did it and maybe they think it is actually gettable for less than that. A couple big caveats. ByteDance has insisted that they will not sell and that they legally cannot sell under Chinese law. Now maybe that's just a position. They might be saying that because they want to signal to the Supreme Court, you know, Frank McCord is not going to bail you out for making a hard decision here. So we really want you to intervene. Because their first choice, obviously, is that the Supreme Court overturns the law. So maybe they just want to downplay the deal. I will say if a deal does go through, it would be a big L for me personally, because I said that it would be impossible for that to happen, which is what's important here. Yeah, that's right. Is what we're focused on. Like you said, the Supreme Court really sounds like they are not going to side with TikTok. But Trump has been getting noisier and noisier that he does want to save TikTok and he has a lot of power. He can come in and obviously the law goes into effect the day before his inauguration, but the law doesn't, it doesn't like, delete TikTok from your phones. It just means you can't get updates for it or you can't download the app. So even if the law goes into effect, he comes in and sometime in his first week, he tells the Justice Department not to enforce it, or he takes, you know, says we need to do a 90 day review and then gets Congress to repeal a bat or roll back or something. It's, it's possible that TikTok could effectively be saved with maybe a little disruption along the way.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Everyone always predicted that the savior of TikTok would be Pam Bondi. That's what everyone thought.

[Tommy]

It's a weird, it's a weird winding road we took to this.

[Jon Favreau]

I also think if the, if the deal comes together and then bytedance says no deal because the Chinese government says no deal, well, that should tell us a lot about the influence of the CCP on TikTok. If they refuse to sell even for a fair purchase because they just do not want to give up that algorithm for some reason, then I do think that says a lot and we should. That's something we should all process.

[Tommy]

That's a good point. I had been very skeptical of the national security grounds of this law, but if Beijing puts a big stamp of disapproval on it, that is pretty telling.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. All right, onto Twitter. Over the holiday break, Elon Musk announced an incoming, quote, algorithm tweak to Twitter that would begin prioritizing, quote, entertaining and informational content on the platform. In the announcement, Musk said his goal at Twitter was to, quote, maximize unregretted user seconds. So Far I don't have any of those. What about you?

[Tommy]

I've regretted second yet it's really, really putting our finger on. If I had to come up with a word that defined my experience with social media, it would be regret. So he's really. He understands the problem, I guess, at least, which is that none of us feel good about the time we're spending on these apps.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know. I mean, I, I. Look, obviously the, the most cynical interpretation is he just wants to have another excuse to promote his content and content that he agrees with. But, but could there be something else here? I don't know.

[Tommy]

I mean, it's very funny to me that the trigger for this change was literally Elon getting in a Twitter fight with Laura Loomer, the far right maga wackadoo white nationalist, and maybe Trump girlfriend, which simply makes my skin crawl. Where they got in an argument over.

[Jon Favreau]

This that is just a rumor that some people have read online. We cannot confirm that at all. Please don't sue us.

[Tommy]

Of course not. Nor do I want to confirm it. Frankly, I would prefer that this one remain unconfirmed. They got in a big fight, you know, and then he started stripping blue check marks. And people who disagreed from the, like, maga side of the argument, Laura Loomer said something like, now I understand Luigi Mangione, which was funny at least I thought, oh, my God, I miss that. But yeah, I think it's like, you know, if it is a real thing and not just a thing he said in the moment. My read of it is that now that the Democrats are, are leaving office and Trump is back, there's much less incentive for Twitter to do what it normally does, which is to make everybody feel angry and despondent and terrible about the world. And now he's got more political incentive to say, well, my guy is in office and now we're all going to feel positive and happy.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, I think it was like less than 24 hours after he said that he agreed with a post calling most Trump voters retarded. So I don't think. I don't, I don't, I don't.

[Tommy]

I gotta.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know that that's the kind of informational or entertaining content I would like to see on my platforms. Is. Is the owner of the platform approving. Approving that word to call people?

[Tommy]

You're not, you're not feeling unregretted?

[Jon Favreau]

No, not at that moment.

[Tommy]

It's. It's really surprising me that he's still in the in the inner circle, I have to tell you. I mean, speaking of. Speaking of Max taking L's on this podcast, I was so sure that he was going to be out by now. You know, that was, I think, my last prediction. I before he went out on the break. And it turns out that over the break, he became the President Elect.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, I think that Donald Trump understands celebrity and reach and influence and. Look, Donald Trump's never running for president again. He might be president again, but he's not running for president again. And I think he knows that. But despite that, I think he knows that Elon has a huge reach and he wants him. He wants to keep. So even if he is personally ticked off by Elon, he needs to keep him inside the tent, at least for now.

[Tommy]

I think that's right. Rex Tillerson didn't have 3 million followers on Twitter or whatever.

[Jon Favreau]

That's why he got fired on the toilet. All right. Finally, last week, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class action suit claiming that Siri violated users privacy by routinely recording private conversations and selling data to advertisers. Also known as the thing almost everyone with an iPhone assumed was happening. Fuck you, Siri. How could you? We trusted you. You've been a big. Your phone isn't listening to you advocate. Yep. Are you ready to admit you were wrong or is this lawsuit more complicated than it seems?

[Tommy]

It's another L for your boy. I'm really. I'm racking up quite a few. As if fleeing my home from a natural disaster were not enough. It's just really insult to injury. So. So, okay. Yes. Forever and ever. What I have always said to people, when they say, people say, oh, I think my phone is listening to me is eavesdropping because I had a conversation with my friend about basketball, whatever. And then I opened up my Instagram and it was full of ads for LA Lakers tickets. And I would always tell people, no, no, that's not what's happening. What's happening is that your friend went home and googled Lakers tickets, or your cousin googled Lakers tickets. And these ad networks, they know who your friends are because they buy your personal data from Facebook and they also know that you were in the same location because they track your location data and they put that together to serve you the ads. Which is, I think, not any better than your phone eavesdropping on you. But it was just like I would always say, no, no, it's not eavesdropping on you. And it turns out that your phone was eavesdropping on you. And at least some number of cases, according to this lawsuit, which Apple has not conceded is true, but they are settling, which tells us something. What was happening was that in some. Some number of cases after 2014, Siri was triggered to listen when it should not have been yours.

[Jon Favreau]

Which happens to all of us, right?

[Tommy]

Yeah. I mean, apparently.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, you. I've seen, I've said something like, I don't. I don't Siri ever. But like you've said, I've said something, and all of a sudden the Siri thing pops up and you're like, no, go away, Siri.

[Tommy]

So it was, according to this lawsuit, which is based on testimony from a whistleblower who spoke to The Guardian In 2019, Siri was being triggered without that even popping up on your phone. So you would just be going about your business, having a conversation with someone, and your phone would be recording it as if you were talking to Siri, and then would sell that data to advertisers. There's some indication that it was maybe triggered if you have an Apple Watch when you were lifting up your phone and the President had an Apple Watch for a while. So that's fine and definitely not disconcerting at all. The settlement is only 95 million, which is really low for something like this. So. So it's hard to know how to read the tea leaves in this. Did Apple get such a low settlement because they played hardball and they're a trillion dollar company with a lot of lawyers? Did they get such a low settlement because the evidence for the case was actually shaky? I don't know, but it is definitely a pretty meaningful data point in favor of maybe your phone is listening to you sometimes.

[Jon Favreau]

Cool. Cool. Well, let's see what ads we get after this. All right, some quick housekeeping before we jump to my interview with Lina Khan. With the Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively drama dominating headlines, it's clear it didn't end with them. Oh, my gosh. On the latest episode of Hysteria, Aaron and Alyssa dive into the PR and legal fallout around the film's release. They also break down the latest political drama, from Vice President Harris certifying the election to Meghan McCain's latest jab at Meghan Markle. Catch Hysteria for the latest in pop culture and politics every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, my conversation with the chair of the ftc, Lena Koppel. Foreign is brought to you by Lumen. Did you know 80% of resolutions fail by February? You can beat the odds with Lumen and improve your health Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath and on the app it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workouts, sleep and even stress management. All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or carbs. Then Lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals so you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time. And Lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health transition translates to a bunch of benefits including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, etc. A lot of people around here using Lumen here at the office. You just do a quick metabolism check in the morning which will generate a nutrition plan for the day to keep you on target to reach your health goals. You can blow into your lumen before the workout that that way you can tell if your metabolism needs fuel to get through your whole training session. Then you can do it at the end of the workout. See if you need to refuel tool to keep your metabolism at an optimal level. Take the next step to improving your health. Go to Lumen Me offline to get 20 off your lumen. That's L U M E n me offline for 20 off your purchase. Thank you Lumen for sponsoring this episode. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance Business Owners Meet Progressive Insurance. They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business quote in as little as 7 [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third party insurers. Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations. Lina Khan welcome to Offline.

[Lina Khan]

Thanks for having me.

[Jon Favreau]

So you are just finishing up a term as chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Maybe the most famous chair in history. You've become something of a hero to progressives, something of a villain to corporate America, and most Americans have probably never heard of you or the Federal Trade Commission. So for those people who may be listening, especially those of us who aren't lawyers or economists, can you talk about what laws you've been trying to enforce as Federal Trade Commissioner, as the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and sort of how your approach to enforcement has differed from past FTC chairs.

[Lina Khan]

So the Federal Trade Commission enforces the nation's antitrust and consumer protection laws. And what that's really about at a basic level is making sure that our markets are fair and honest and competitive. So if we see corporate law breaking, you know, because of monopolization or because of frauds and scams, that's usually in our wheelhouse. My approach to this job has been a, to make sure we're actually using all of the tools that Congress gave us. You know, the FTC is a small agency, but we've been given a big job and we've been given a lot of tools. Especially during the Reagan administration, there was a view that it was better to be more hands off. And I think we've been living with the consequences of that. Across our economy, markets have become more consolidated, people are worse off in a whole range of metrics. And so it was really important to me that A, we're using all the tools we have, and B, that we're doing our work based on a realistic understanding of how our economy works. Sometimes doing this work, people can become very dependent on economic models and assumptions and theories that are actually at odds with the realities of how markets actually work. I actually got my start in all of this as a business reporter and journalist where I would just call up farmers and say, hey, this big seed merger happened a few years ago. The company said it would be great and seed prices would be lower. Is that what happened? And just hear that gap between how experts were thinking about and understanding these issues and what was happening on the ground. And so I would say those have been kind of two pillars of my approach. Use all the tools we have, make sure we're talking to real people to understand how does the economy really work.

[Jon Favreau]

Why do you think that pass FTC chairs from Reagan on haven't quite used the tools that in the way that you've tried to use them?

[Lina Khan]

It's a good question. And I have to say, you know, the Reagan administration was very effective in charting out a new path and having that path be durable on a bipartisan basis. Partly that was because they had time. They had eight years of Reagan and four years of Bush. And so what started off seeming kind of fringe and radical 12 years on was just the new common wisdom and how everybody did things. And that approach just persisted for some time. But the other big change, I think, is that the Reagan administration, folks set us out on a natural experiment where they said, okay, let's just become very hands off. Let's just assume that illegal monopolization will fix itself, that generally big is better, and maybe prices will be lower. And we're 40 years into that natural experiment, and there's just reams of evidence that their theories did not pan out. And we've seen instead that extreme concentration can mean not just higher prices and lower wages, but our markets are really fragile. So you have a single glitch, you know, cyber security wise, and you see thousands of flights grounded or a single natural disaster and shortages of essential products. And just overall, our economy is weaker and more fragile when you don't have competition. So I think it's partly just that reckoning with reality that has really set us up at this moment to change course.

[Jon Favreau]

So, obviously, Trump administration is coming back into office, and agencies like yours and people throughout the federal government, throughout the Biden administration are going to see some of their, their accomplishments, you know, attempted to be rolled back. What are some of the actions you've taken that you feel confident will endure beyond your tenure?

[Lina Khan]

So the big caveat is I can't predict what the new administration is, is going to do. I will say, though, it's been very striking, you know, being in D.C. these last few years, seeing a lot of disagreement between the parties, to see actually some agreement that unchecked corporate power and unchecked monopolization is dangerous for Americans, and we need to have aggressive enforcers to take that on. So I do see that some of this work is set up for continuity rather than backsliding. We've brought big cases against dominant technology companies. We have major litigations ongoing against big middlemen in the healthcare sector. We've taken on illegal patenting tricks that have been inflating the costs of everything from asthma inhalers to EpiPens. That is all work that is underway right now. I hope a future administration wouldn't be undoing that, because I think it's right on the law, on the facts, and it's doing real good for American people.

[Jon Favreau]

We spent a lot of time on this pod talking about all the ways that the Internet and the tech industry are reshaping our society and how little progress has been made in reining in their excesses and mitigating some of the harms they've caused. You've been focused the beginning on what you believe to be big tech monopolies. Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple. How do these digital age monopolies look different than previous monopolies. And what are some of the unique challenges they pose to regulators like yourself?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, it's such a good question. And I think one core way in which there is an analogy is these tech monopolies are actually middlemen. And the original monopolies that led to the passage of the antitrust laws were the railroads. And so what we see with these tech era firms is they've become gatekeepers. So they're connecting consumers and shoppers. And what's allowed them in part to become so dominant is the way that digital markets work. You have things like network effects and the reinforcing advantages of data that really put a primacy on chasing scale. And once you've gotten that critical mass of scale, there are these flywheel effects that kick in and really result in accelerated growth and momentum. That said, what we've also seen with several of these companies, as a whole set of lawsuits now allege, is they engaged in illegal tactics to double down on their monopoly, to protect their monopoly, to squash out rivals when they were threatened. And that's been a contributing factor too. When I came in and you know, in the last few years, there's been this question about can the government really do this work? Right. We have these laws, they were passed in 1890 and 1914, and the economy looks really different and it can be frustrating. These litigations can take some time. But what we've already proved is that yes, the law does apply. There's no big tech exemption from the laws on the books. And if you put in the work to show the judges is how it is that these laws apply in this new context, you could win.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Lina Khan]

The Justice Department got a landmark victory finding that Google had illegally monopolized parts of the search market. We have a big trial starting up against Meta in the spring. We have a trial starting against Amazon in fall 2026. We only got there after defeating their emotions and prevailing. And so it's been really thrilling to show that, that this can work.

[Jon Favreau]

You sort of became notable when you wrote a paper about Amazon, a piece about Amazon in the Yale Law Review about, I think it was called the Amazon Antitrust Paradox. And now, of course, as FTC chair, you brought a lawsuit against Amazon. You know, I think for a lot of people who don't follow politics closely, they might see Amazon and think, okay, well, I get to go on Amazon and buy some stuff for pretty cheap, and it comes quickly to my house. And so it's great. And so why is that a problem? And what are they doing illegally?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, It's a great question. And what we found when we investigated, when we, the ftc, investigated Amazon, was we found that things could actually have been even better if Amazon hadn't engaged in certain illegal practices. And so, just to give you a few examples, one thing Amazon does is if sellers on their platform offer lower prices anywhere else on the Internet, Amazon punishes them. And so what that means is Amazon is basically contributing to inflated prices across the Internet. Amazon has also been steadily increasing the fees that sellers have to pay. And so Amazon now takes up to 50% of the cut from a business. So Amazon is inflating the prices that these sellers have to pay Amazon, but also making it impossible for these sellers to lower their prices anywhere else. And functionally, that means that people are paying more than they would. The reason Amazon's been doing this is because they don't want any other online platform to gain scale. We also found that Amazon actually made a very concerted decision once they realized they had kind of captured a whole set of sellers and a whole set of shoppers to start monetizing their platform through ads, which a lot of platforms do. But our lawsuit found that they've been littering their search results page even with irrelevant ads, because they know they can. And so the product is actually becoming worse for people and they can get away with it. And, you know, sometimes I get asked, well, how do you know if a company's a monopoly? Like, what's the right way to calculate it? There are a lot of different technical answers to that. But at its core, if a company can get away with making things worse for you as a customer, either hiking up prices, making the service worse, course, and you're kind of stuck, there are no ramifications for it in the market. That kind of too big to care mentality is oftentimes a direct indicator of monopoly power. There are other allegations. In the complaint. We found they use this secret algorithm called Project Nessie, which was explicitly designed to inflate prices. So it can sometimes be hard as a consumer to be like, well, what's the counterfactual and the alternative? And what our lawsuit says is things could be even better if Amazon hadn't broken the law.

[Jon Favreau]

You mentioned in your earlier answer, old economic models. One of my hobby horses over the past few years has been economists and policy experts, some of them liberal or at least center left, who argue that focusing on corporate price gouging is misguided since it wasn't a significant driver of inflation. Kamala Harris's proposal to ban price gouging during the campaign and empower the FTC to impose harsher penalties on companies that fix prices were criticized by a lot of economists during the campaign. My old Obama administration colleague Jason Furman said it's not a sensible policy and has no upside and potentially some downside. What do you think about that?

[Lina Khan]

So it's been really interesting to follow a lot of these debates and what was really driving up the high prices. From where we sit at the ftc, I think we've observed a few things. A, we've seen that when you have less competition in a market, it's easier for firms to kind of coordinate. And one thing that we heard on earnings calls, for example, is when executives were talking to their shareholders is that they were acknowledging that, look, during the pandemic, input costs rose and they had to keep their prices up. But as those prices fell, as those costs fell, the prices didn't come down down concurrently. And in some cases, executives on these earnings calls were boasting about the fact that they could keep prices high even as those costs fell and keep their inflated margins. You know, do you want to call that gouging? Do you not want to call that gouging? I think that's a separate debate. But this question of was corporate power contributing to inflated prices? I think there is some evidence there. I think more generally we've seen just generally, you know, inflation could give companies cover to not just raise prices when costs go up, but then keep them more inflated unless they're being checked by competition. The other connection we've seen is when you put your eggs in one basket, you have a pretty fragile situation, right? And so the more we've seen consolidation, including in areas like infant formula, all it takes is that single contamination or that single disruption for the whole supply chain to seize up and then prices go up. So even structurally, if nobody's trying to do anything wrong, just more consolidation and centralization can make things fragile. You know, the FTC recently successfully blocked the Kroger Albertsons merger. We did listening sessions around the country, and people were really concerned and they were thinking that if this merger were to go through, these corporations get even more power to inflate prices.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you think that a, if, if Congress were to pass a federal ban on price gouging, that that is a workable policy? Do you think that the FTC sort of has the power to stop price gouging with the tools that it has right now? Do you think a federal ban would be an additional tool that would be helpful?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, a lot would depend on the specifics. You know, we don't have that Congress has not explicitly given us at that authority. You know, oftentimes at the state level, these price gouging bans are very much tied to specific natural disaster or kind of intervening events that create unique dislocations in the market. So I think we would need to understand is this kind of just applies in very special circumstances or is something that's more sweeping? We do have the antitrust laws, we have consumer protection laws. And so, you know, we've certainly gone after lawbreaking when it was inflating prices, when we had the authority to do so.

[Jon Favreau]

The other big criticism you've received is that your actions to block various mergers and acquisitions have helped create a climate that's hostile to startups and innovation and job creation. And some of this has come from CEOs and founders and investors. No surprise there. They have certain financial self interests. But then some from economists. Larry Summers criticized your antitrust policy a few years ago, warning, quote, policies that attack bigness can easily be inflationary if they prevent the exploitation of economies of scale or limit superstar firms. And of course, you hear this a lot from the, the folks in Silicon Valley. Do you think that criticism has any validity?

[Lina Khan]

So the law prohibits mergers that may substantially lessen competition or, or tend to create a monopoly. That's a very specific legal standard. It's not that all mergers under the sun are illegal. It's really a subset where you see rivals, you know, buying up one another in ways that would deprive people of options, deprive them of choices. You know, it's interesting, dealmakers over the last few years have certainly been very vocal about the fact that the FTC has been aggressive. We won our cases and have chilled some of those illegal deals that sometimes people propose because they're saying, let's roll the dice and see if we can get this through, even if there are legal problems. You know, the economy's done pretty well. There have been mergers that the FTC has blocked, including the Nvidia ARM deal, where each company independently has done phenomenally well since the FTC took action several years ago. And they've actually been incentivized to invest and grow and independently flourish. And so I think you really have to look at the evidence here rather than make kind of hyperbolic claims.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

Hell, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

How'd that turn out?

[Jon Favreau]

Last week?

[Max Fisher]

How'd that turn out?

[Jon Favreau]

I know. I was just telling Ari, rug looks great.

[Max Fisher]

It's great. It worked.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Max Fisher]

It was.

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It was just a spritz.

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Just a spritz. And it was. At the end, there was a lot of water and ice. So I think that. I think the rug cleaner got it out.

[Max Fisher]

Great.

[Jon Favreau]

Emily, how'd you feel the next day?

[Max Fisher]

Oh, that didn't leave a mark at all.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, great. Well, honestly, I was gonna say about the drinking.

[Max Fisher]

Well, when it lands on the floor, it doesn't really hurt your morning. But no, you know what the worst part about that is? You know when you drop a cup at a party, you don't feel great about. About it. And so Emily, as the host, was so magnanimous. She walked up to me and she said so sweetly, great, great. The only rug you shouldn't have dropped it on, I'll send you the bill. And that really made me feel comfortable. That really made me feel at ease.

[Jon Favreau]

It's funny, because there were, I don't know, seven or eight children between one and six years old, and none of them dropped building. No, just John Lovett.

[Max Fisher]

No, a couple of them crawled across broken glass yesterday, which, again, was on me, not on them.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Favreau]

So Trump has named Andrew Ferguson to replace you as chair. He's currently a commissioner on the FTC who you've served with, so you know him. Do you think he'll continue the FTC's cases against Meta and Amazon?

[Lina Khan]

It's a great question. I don't know what his intentions are. It has been interesting though, to including on the Republican side concern about big tech platforms. Right. And concern about these digital gatekeepers and monopolies that are getting to pick and choose who gets heard, who gets seen online. You know, I've heard from a lot of small businesses that basically live in fear of are they going to wake up one day and have been demoted from the top of the search results page to page seven for some opaque reason and that's devastating to their livelihood and there's no accountability. Right. I think there is a deep sense that the amount of concentrated power and decision making that we see in a very small number of companies and sometimes even just a handful of executives is really anathema to what our system of governance is about. Right. And one of the reasons we have the antitrust and anti monopoly laws is actually as a complement to our Constitution. The Constitution recognized that we need checks and balances. Right. And if we want people to be free, free, hey, we just overthrew those monarchs. So let's create some systems to have checks and balances and not have people subjected to tyranny. There are analogous principles in the economic sphere. Right. There's this great quote from the history of the Sherman act which is, you know, if we're not going to be ruled by monarchs, we also don't want to be ruled by autocrats of trade. Because how people experience the economy in their day to day life has huge impact on whether they feel free. Free. And so if you have a democracy, but you're allowing people to be bullied and coerced in their economic life, that's not really going to lead to freedom. And so that's why I think on both sides of the aisle there's a recognition that we need to take these laws seriously.

[Jon Favreau]

You mentioned the autocrats of trade. It Certainly seems like that is what we might be getting as we head into another Trump administration, and not necessarily because of anything I know about Andrew Ferguson or how he run the ftc, but all the big companies that you've taken enforcement actions against, they're all making donations to Trump's inauguration, some of them personally, some of the founders and CEOs personally. Mark Zuckerberg just announced that they're getting rid of the fact checkers. Amazon is paying Melania Trump $40 million for a documentary, which I didn't know you could get that for a documentary. And I do wonder if, if a lot of these founders, CEOs, titans of industry, are thinking, you know what? The law is the law. I'm going to forget about the law, forget about enforcement. I want a system where favors and relationships can get me what I want. And in Donald Trump, I have someone who, if you flatter him or you have a relationship with him or you do what he wants, if you praise him, then maybe, maybe they can get what they want economically for their businesses. How much does that worry you?

[Lina Khan]

It's a really good question. And I think there's a really live debate about the future of populism and what does each party stand for. And I think more generally, we see some of the concerns that the founders had, that the kind of supporters of the antitrust laws had, which was that if you allow so much concentration of economic power and you have oligarchs and plutocrats, that means they have economic power, but it also gives them political power, and that's what's fundamentally so dangerous. So I think you're right. We're seeing right now, in real time, some of the real dangers of what happens when you have so much concentrated power.

[Jon Favreau]

I know your job isn't strictly political, but obviously politics has affected your job. It's one of the reasons you're leaving it. I wonder if you have a take on what happened in this last election and sort of the broader political moment we're in right now.

[Lina Khan]

You're right. I will defer to the kind of election analysts to fully get into that. You know, we've been focused on governing and using our policy and enforcement tools. That said, I did make it a real priority to, in this job, you know, go out across the country and really engage with people across all walks of life. It's very easy in these types of rules to but become very insulated and just hear from a handful of policymakers and powerful companies and their lawyers. And as I listened to people across the country, I Think there was a real sense that all too often people are not getting a fair shake in our economy. And people might not then say, hey, we need to bring a Sherman act lawsuit. But I think oftentimes in a raw, fundamental, visceral way, people know, know that some corporation is kind of screwing them in some way and they want the government to fight for them. And that's what the FTC has been on the front lines of, is kind of using the tools when we see law breaking, be it, you know, a monopoly that's illegally inflating drug prices or even, you know, companies making it hard to cancel your subscription or tricking you with junk fees so that you thought rent was going to be one amount, but then later there are all these additional fees, fees. You know, we've been taking on these problems big and small and just making sure that there's a basic sense of fairness and dignity in our economy. And that really resonated with people from both sides of the aisle. I mean, we proposed this ban on non compete clauses, these contractual provisions that basically prevent you from going to work for arrival or starting your own business. We got 26,000 comments from people across the country, people just, you know, taking time out of their day to go submit a comment to this obscure federal agency. And we heard from people in all 50 states talking about how these clauses had, you know, kept them stuck in abusive jobs, prevented them from taking higher salaries. People who ended up having to do, you know, five hour commutes every day and missed out seeing their kids grow up. And we had comments from people saying, saying, I'm a lifelong Republican, I'm a lifelong conservative, but if you guys ban non competes, that'll be the best thing government's ever done in my lifetime. And so I think there's a real hunger out there to see government fighting for people, even when it means taking on powerful corporate interests.

[Jon Favreau]

I remember back in 2012 when President Obama was running free election and he wanted to give a big speech about economic inequality before the race started. And one of the points, points he was really focused on making in that speech is one reason that economic inequality is quite damaging and harmful is because it makes democracy itself much harder and it actually robs people's faith in democracy. And I thought about that in this election because there was this whole debate on Democrats are making it about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy and defending democratic institutions. And after the election, I think there's been some reflection that it's tough to defend democratic institutions when people don't feel that those institutions are actually working for them and giving them a fair shake. Is that something that you heard from people when you had those listening sessions across the country?

[Lina Khan]

Yes, absolutely. And candidly, people would say, I appreciate you're here from the ftc, but I've never heard from this agency before. And guess, guess what? The last time there was a big grocery merger, you guys let it go through a decade ago and that meant I got laid off and now I live in a food desert. Right. I mean, I do think that people have been disillusioned, candidly, because for many years they didn't feel that the government was fighting for them. Of course we tried to change that and we have changed that, but we have to be aware that we're working against this trust deficit in many ways. And you know, it takes time to build that trust and build that faith. That's why we went out across the country and really engaged with people both to learn from them and listen from them. I think the other thing we see sometimes in economic policy circles is that there can be a privileging of just a particular type of expertise. People are experts too in terms of what's happening in their day to day economic life. And it was really important to me that we not just get stuck in these blind spots and engaging with people and really knowing how markets fundamentally worked was a key part of that.

[Jon Favreau]

If you were sitting down with the next FTC chair and they asked you for advice on, you know, future enforcement actions or rules or potential scams that you wanted to go after, what's your, what's the next big inhaler issue that you would, you would advise them on?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, there's so much more to do in healthcare. I mean, we have some big litigations underway, including a litigation against these pharmacy benefit managers, these middlemen in the healthcare supply chain. There's a lot more to scrutinize in terms of why our drug price is so high. And you know, we've done a lot of work there, but more to happen. I do think we have to take seriously some of the risks with AI. There's opportunity here, there's benefit here, but at least where the FTC sits, we've seen how these AI tools are turbocharging fraud, right? Be it the voice cloning scams, be it the fraudsters who can use these tools to now just disseminate fraud on a huge scale. So we've been using our tools to make sure we have rules in the road to stop that and to go after lawbreakers. But that's definitely going to be an area to stay vigilant on.

[Jon Favreau]

You have about a week left as FTC chair. I know you're focused on running through the tape, but you must be thinking about what you want to do next, what interests you?

[Lina Khan]

Well, I will first be catching up on sleep and then after that figuring out what does the next phase of this work look like. I do think there's a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, especially among kind of younger generations who candidly live through the financial crisis, who kind of have always wondered, is government really fully fighting for us? And so it'll be interesting to think through how can we harness that and make sure if we have another opportunity to govern in this sort of way, we have kind of even more people ready to come help us.

[Jon Favreau]

Have you ever thought about running for office?

[Lina Khan]

No.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, we need good people. I don't know if you've seen the Party these days. Lina Khan, thank you so much for everything you've done these last several years and really, really hope you stay in the fight.

[Lina Khan]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Jon Favreau]

Take care. Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Ilic Frank Jordan Kantor is our Sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Cherlin and Adrian Hill for production support and to our digital team Elijah Cohn and Delon Villanueva who film and share our episodes as videos.

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