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- [00:00]
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Foreign.
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission during the Biden administration, now a professor at Columbia Law School where she teaches and writes about antitrust and the anti monopoly tradition. It's Lina Khan. How you doing, Lena?
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A
Great to be here.
- [00:29]
B
Thank you for doing it. I blurted out that we should have Lina Khan on the show when we had one of the tech bros who was complaining about you on a couple weeks ago. And so I'm happy that we made it happen. Thanks for doing it. You kind of emerged for me just like out of the ether, like in the blogosphere as like an antitrust warrior who had written an Amazon paper. Like, I know nothing about you besides that. So could you give us like an origin story? Like you existed before that, I assume, like you had a childhood and other interests. Could you like tell us where you came from?
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A
Yeah, I was born in England and grew up there until I was 11 when my parents moved to the suburbs of New York. I grew up here. I always wanted to be a journalist and a reporter. And so I spent a lot of my childhood and time in high school and college working on newspapers. I graduated during the financial crisis and so journalism jobs were pretty hard to come across and so ended up landing at a think tank where my job was to do business research and some reporting and really to be documenting how markets had evolved, how markets had consolidated, and what the real world impact of that had been. And so I spent years understanding how chicken farming markets were working or the rental car markets were working, or markets where we had gone from dozens of competitors to just a handful and what the real world impact of that concentrated economic power was. One of the biggest parts of that work that made an impression on me was just talking to regular people, talking to chicken farmers who would say, I used to be able to sell my chickens to numerous companies, but now I can only sell to one company. And so that company has total power over my livelihood. And that means they can push me around, they can bully me, they can threaten to retaliate. And it was just a firsthand, direct view of how extreme concentrations of economic power can result in all sorts of coercion and abuse. And this was in the 2011, 2012 era where questions around monopoly power were not really part of the mainstream conversation. And so I decided to go to law school. I thought we needed a revived anti monopoly movement. And that's how I got into this work.
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B
You can't be president. I guess Is that right?
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A
That's right.
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B
If you're born in England. Okay. So we're going to check you off the list on that. And I also love how I asked you to tell me about your childhood and your origin story and you immediately got into concentrations of economic power in chicken farming. I feel like that's very on brand and, you know, it's important, it's important to have a focus in life. You might have, you might have liked something else in high school, I don't know. Were you in a club?
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A
I was in the newspaper club. I did track.
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B
Do you ever smoke a joint? Do you have any joy? You know, were you kissing people in high school and college?
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A
You know, yeah, I had all sorts of exposure as American teenagers do.
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B
Okay. If you had to define yourself politically, like outside of the context of antitrust, I know it's kind of challenging, but like, do you have like a broader, you know, sort of political views or like where, where would you sort of align yourself?
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Would you say, I'm a Democrat, I was, you know, served in Democratic administration.
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Sure.
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I'm really focused on questions around how do we secure real freedom for people, be it in a political sense, but also fundamentally in an economic sense. I think the broader anti monopoly tradition, which thinks about securing freedom not just through ensuring protections and safeguards from an abusive state and a government that can coerce, but also making sure that people are protected from abuses of monopoly power, from abuses of private power, and really ensuring that we have an economy where people can experience real freedom and real opportunity. And so that's really what animates me. And when I think about kind of our political system and kind of who is most trying to stand up for those values, that's really what I gravitate.
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B
Towards because there are some anti monopoly rightists. I'm going to get to that too in a second. You have some strange bedfellows over there. But I want to hear first the big fights. I think the big thing that everyone has to talk about here is related to tech and big stuff at Silicon Valley and then also this sort of horseshoe element with the Bannon folks. But I've been listening to your other interviews and there are a lot of. I was about to say small ball, but that's not, that's not really the right way to phrase it. It's, you know, more like things that are off the political radar, I guess, as far as big controversies are concerned, you know, that you're focused on, you know, you mentioned, you know, kind of gym memberships, being able to cancel them and Right. To repair or something like I talked to Margaret Perez about. So talk about some of those things you're focused on outside of the context of the big tech monopoly stuff.
- [05:17]
A
Yeah, I mean at the FTC we've really had a front row seat to financial and economic challenges that millions of Americans are facing that could vary from, you know, people who had lost family members because they had been rationing life saving medicines that are just too expensive, to stories about people who are trapped in their job because of a non compete. And so we heard from people like a bartender in Florida who was being sexually harassed and when she tried leaving her job, she got hit with a lawsuit for tens of thousands of of dollars. Heard from a lot of farmers, literally had a farmer kind of break down in tears in my office recounting that they had lost an entire harvest once because of the repair restrictions that prevented them from fixing their tractor on time. So, you know, the FTC's purview was broad. And by really focusing on wanting to hear from everybody, including candidly people across the country who are not usually interacting with the government, who, who are pretty disillusioned with the government, who don't think the government usually fights for them, that really gave us a broad tapestry of what are the problems people are facing and what can we do to best address that. So that included, as you mentioned, you know, pursuing lawsuits that would make it easier for people to repair their products, pursuing rules that would make it easier for people to cancel their subscriptions. We've seen that. One big trend across the economy is that as firms have become more dependent on subscription based revenue, they have an incentive to make it super easy to sign up, but absurdly difficult to cancel, be it for a gym or a streaming service. We took on things like junk fees which inflate your bills, be it for a ticket to a concert or even your rent. And we ended up suing one of the biggest corporate landlords because their bait and switch tactics were inflating rents by thousands of dollars for millions of Americans. So you know, we were really firing on all cylinders. You're right that sometimes our work in the tech context gets heightened attention, but we were really focused on the bread and butter issues more generally as well.
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B
So it's interesting you talk about that, right, because all maybe not every single thing you just said, but a lot of that could have been uttered at like the National Conservatism Conference that's happening right now, like this right wing populist conference where they're trying to Talk about how, you know, they want to, you know, help, you know, like working people who, you know, are getting screwed over by, you know, the big elites. I mean, like, they would phrase it maybe a different way than you, but that is like an in vogue thing to talk about if you're J.D. vance or Josh Hawley. And yet like the administration, as it seems to me right now, this current administration has basically gutted all efforts to do the types of things you're talking about. I mean, you're watching this much more closely than I am. Like how would you assess what they're doing in this space?
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I mean, there's no question to my mind that this administration has been utterly catastrophic for working people across a whole host of dimensions. And you're right that for some time now, for several years, there has been this factional debate, the rise of kind of economic populace within the conservative movement more broadly. But I think, you know, we're now eight, nine months in and we've seen that when it comes to the actual policy choices that they're making while they are governing time and time again, they are choosing policies that are concentrating wealth upwards, that are basically doing special favors for elite interests at the expense of working people. Their signature piece of legislation delivers literally tax cuts for the rich while stripping Medicare. So I think to the extent that there are still true believers in economic populism on their side right now, it's not really looking good for them.
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B
So one of the things that I worry about a little bit as kind of a former Republican with some small government instincts about the things you're talking about is you're giving examples of. It's crazy that a bartender would have a non compete. There's certainly good opportunities for government intervention, especially where big corporations are abusing working people for sure. I worry a little bit about the concentration of power in the federal government in this way though, in certain ways. And you look at these guys now that are in there now that are kind of paying lip service to the same agenda that you talked about, to an antitrust agenda, but they're mostly using it to like bully companies and like bully foes and create more authoritarian power for themselves. Like, do you worry about that at all? That like they're kind of using the antitrust agenda to really advance their authoritarian aspirations?
- [09:59]
A
Yes, absolutely. I mean, we've seen several examples of that. We are actually seeing elite deal making lawyers be quoted and they're saying, look, the Biden administration folks were tough on antitrust, but at least we knew what they were about. And now, as our deals are being investigated, we're basically getting requests to make all sorts of political commitments, you know, shut down DEI programs, you know, commit to buying ads on Elon Musk platforms. And so we're absolutely now seeing these legal regimes be weaponized to serve their cultural grievances, to serve their political agenda. That's deeply troubling. You know, historically, there's been a close study of this question around what kind of economic structure in a country might be most conducive to authoritarianism and fascism. And some of the studies of Hitler's rise noted that in the years preceding it, Germany had actually become much more comfortable with concentration, with consolidation. And you can imagine how an economy where you have, you know, 10,000 CEOs or 100,000 CEOs that are controlling key parts of the economy is going to have a very different. That an authoritarian is going to have a very different rise to power and ability to kind of solidify their grip, rather than an economy where you have 10 or 50 or 100 most powerful people who are basically going to more easily bend the knee. And I think it's been really fascinating to see how many of these corporate leaders seem to be going quiet, and there is reports that they are also feeling some of that fear.
- [11:38]
B
That's a good point and something I totally aligned with. I do wonder, though, do you not worry a little bit about the arbitrary nature of some of this, though? Do you look back at. I mean, obviously you guys had metrics you're basing stuff on, but at the same time, you're trying to redefine what a monopoly is. Right. You know, was part of the work that you were doing. So do you worry about that? Just. And you could. You could see a leftist, authoritarian kind of regime take. Take power, too, and use this to bad ends. I mean, obviously we're seeing this now on the right, but like, you could imagine it either way, right?
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A
Yeah, I'm somebody who's skeptical of concentrated power in and of itself. And, you know, somebody like Louis Brandeis was a big skeptic of monopolies, but was also a big skeptic of outsized government power. And, you know, wrote very compellingly about government surveillance and sort of thing. And so I deeply share that. And I think when we're thinking about things like government surveillance, it's a great example of how private commercial surveillance and government surveillance can very much go hand in hand. And so you need really strong safeguards against both. You know, at the ftc, my goal was really to go back to the roots of antitrust and make sure we were enforcing those laws in a faithful way. For several decades, there had been a bipartisan agreement that we were going to be very hands off, that we were really going to depart from the core goals that Congress had laid out from the kind of core text of the statutes. And that is what had, I think, created a very permissive environment for monopolies for dominant companies in ways that allowed them to abuse their power. And at a place like the ftc, if you are seeking to take action, you have to file a lawsuit, right? If you're looking to block a merger, if you're looking to claim that a company is an illegal monopoly, you don't just get to do thumbs up, thumbs down. You literally have to make your case in court before a judge. And those, those types of checks and balances are already baked in.
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B
Y'. All. I knew fall was in the air when Aretha the cat came back into the house for a while yesterday morning. This cat, this is a New Orleans cat, it's a summer cat, does not like the cold weather and cold weather for this cat. It's kind of, Aretha and me are kind of aligned in this way. If it gets below 72, it starts to get a little chilly. I want to put on a jacket. Aretha wants to come into the house and luckily we had some food for him because this podcast. Yeah, that's right, it's Aretha the man. We'll tell you another time. The podcast is sponsored by Smalls. Smalls cat food is protein packed recipes with preservative free ingredients you'd find in your fridge and delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. To get over 60% off your first order plus free shipping, head to smalls.com thebullwork for a limited time only. Smalls was started back in 2017 by a couple of guys home cooking cat food in small batches for their friends. A few short years later, they served millions of meals to cats across the U.S. including our part time cat, Aretha. There's a lot of drama in the house right now over Aretha because as I mentioned, he doesn't come in in the summertime and that's making my child unhappy because the child likes to cuddle with the cat and bug the cat and annoy the cat. Really mostly play with the cat. And so I was getting, getting bullied over the weekend about how we need an inside cat now. And we were working on the terms of a contract or negotiations that had begun. And luckily, thank God for Smalls. You know, before that contract gets signed, I can just shake the cat treats and know that Aretha will come in the house and that'll buy me a couple. What are you waiting for? Give the cat the food they deserve. For a limited time only, because you're a bulwark listener, you can get 60% off your first Smalls order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com the Bulwark that's 60% off when you head to smalls.com the bulwark, plus free shipping. Again, that's smalls.com thebullwork all right. For people who've been listening for 14 minutes, who are not, like, deeply ensconced in the online debate, they might be wondering at this point why you are such a boogeyman. A couple, a couple of our recent guests have criticized you. Mark Cuban was not a big fan of yours, and I guess it was a couple weeks ago. We had Jason Kalikinakis, who is on the all in podcast, on the show and he kind of singled you out as a reason why some folks were upset with the Biden administration and moving towards Trump. I just want to play a clip from that and then we can talk about it.
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A
One of the really difficult things of the past four years was the anti business, anti capitalism sentiment of the Biden Kamala sort of administration. And they hired somebody named Lena Khan, as you know, and she basically froze our entire industry, no M and A. And she was going to magically, through being able to predict the future like a precog in Minority Report, predict future competition. I invest for a living. You know, the probably 10 companies I've invested in when they were under $10 million that became unicorns, I would never have been able to predict. I knew they were, you know, great founders, but you can't really predict these things. And I've done 500 investments. So the fact that she could do this was crazy. Since she's been removed and the wrath of Khan has ended, we've seen a flurry of M and A, we've seen a bunch of IPOs.
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B
The stock market has ripped the wrath of Khan. Clever, I guess. What do you say to that?
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Look, I took office at a moment where the antitrust enforcers had enabled decades of buying sprees for the largest tech giants. And there was now a bipartisan consensus that that was creating major problems. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft had collectively made over 800 activities acquisitions, which is partly what had allowed them to cement their monopoly power. And that was now basically squeezing out innovation. Right. I mean I, you know, I think it's important to remember Silicon Valley is not a monolith. I actually took several trips to Silicon Valley, sat down with some of the startups and the founders and one of the things they would say is all they want is a fair market. And for them a fair market is one where if they have the best idea, they should be able to bring that idea to market and compete on a level playing field rather than allowing one of the existing gatekeepers like an Apple or like a Google to cut them off. And you know, the idea that deal making froze these last few years is just doesn't match reality. I mean antitrust enforcers scrutinize less than 3% of all deals. We end up blocking an even smaller fraction. And there are actually some very specific examples of how that has been good for competition and how it has been good for innovation. Right. So one of the first mergers we blocked was the Nvidia ARM merger. Nvidia would have gotten control over a key input that would have deprived rivals of a key technology in areas like self driving cars. We blocked that. Nvidia has continued to be extraordinarily, they're doing pretty good. I think they're doing okay.
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B
I haven't checked the stock lately, but I think they're doing all right.
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And AAM ended up IPOing and is now basically trading at a multiple of what its value had been there. So you know, we've seen these independent firms as independent competitors continue to thrive. Figma recently went public that followed a failed acquisition by Adobe several years ago where antitrust scrutiny scuttled that Adobe had been trying to buy them for $20 billion. When they ended up going public their valuation was over 60 billion. So investors did pretty well there. And Figma is going to continue to be able to be a competitor to Adobe and make sure that as firms are competing they're actually having to try to make their products and service better to have customers use them rather than just be able to be an incumbent and become too big to care.
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B
And I heard from some other investors who were basically saying that, that they felt like there was a non acquisition policy essentially and that like disincentivized them from wanting to invest into startups because they just didn't know what the exit plan would be for that financially. I mean, is that, it sounds like you're saying that you don't think that's a fair characterization. A non acquisitions policy.
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A
I Mean, if you just look at the number, thousands of deals get reported every year. They got reported the last few years, and less than 3% even got investigated, which meant that less than 3% even had to wait more than 30 days before they could go through. So, you know, just from a numerical perspective, there were thousands and thousands of deals that ended up going through just fine. We were really focused on the ones where we thought competition would be undermined. Just to give you another clear example, pharmaceutical acquisitions was another area where there had not been much scrutiny. This is another area where investors sometimes argue, look, we have to put our money behind some of these companies that are taking on enormous risk, and they have to get bought out by a big pharma company in order for there to be a real exit and for it to be financially worth it. We saw a merger where Sanofi was already the monopolist in this area for drugs, for the Pompe disease, which is an awful muscular degenerate disease. They had a monopoly. Maze was this upstart that basically would have introduced another treatment for Pompe disease. And instead of having to go get biweekly infusions, you could have actually taken an oral pill. So this would have been a treatment that would have been a game changer for patients who suffered this awful disease. And when we investigated, we saw that allowing the existing monopoly to buy up this upstart would actually risk not allowing this new innovation to get to market. Right? Because Sanofi is already doing pretty well. It already has a monopoly in this area. It would not have an incentive to have this new drug. Come on. So we blocked that merger. A few months later, Maze ended up partnering up with another company. They were able to sell to a firm that did not already have a vested interest, did not have a conflict, and we had no issues with that. So that example just illustrates how if you have a startup who is selling out to a monopoly in their key line of business, and we determine that, that will actually threaten innovation. I mean, there are countless examples of even the big tech companies, right, making acquisitions and then killing the company, shelving the product, right? And so you have to think about what are the market incentives here to really allow innovation to flourish.
- [22:17]
B
Hey, I warned you. I warned you. Our Toronto show has sold out. The Canadians love Sam Stein so much that there are lines around the block to get tickets to it. But the good news is we still have tickets left for our live shows in Washington, D.C. and in New York coming up in early October. So go get those tickets now@the bulwark.com events. I'm missing LSU versus South Carolina for you guys. I'm going to be in New York for that. And so assuming that's an afternoon game, I might have a couple bourbons in me by the time we get on stage on Saturday night. So that one could be a rowdy one. So if you're looking for an excuse to get to the Big Apple, see it, you know, go see a show Friday night, come see us Saturday night. Could be a fun little weekend. Go get tickets. Like I said, thebork.com events thebuller.com events see y' all soon. Let's go to the big tech stuff for a second because I'm kind of of two minds about it. Like on the one hand, the area where I'm sometimes skeptical of the folks that are so focused on the antitrust side of things and the monopoly side of things is if you look in retrospect, right, like Google is maybe the clearest case of the tech companies of something that seemed like it had a monopoly in a marketplace when it comes to search and advertising. And yet if you were looking at it in 2019 or whatever in 2017, and here we are today and the Google search engine is a piece of shit. It barely works anymore. It's being totally disrupted by LLMs and other things that have emerged. And so like, maybe in retrospect, do you look back at it and think maybe like their monopoly power was not as cemented as it seemed?
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A
Yeah, it's a good question and very timely because Google has now been found to be an illegal monopoly by a court over three times. And there are kind of ongoing proceedings about what the remedy should be for that. You know, it's absolutely true that we have seen recently, recently a new kind of wave of innovation with some of these AI companies. Interestingly, one of the kind of critical papers that had to be published for then OpenAI's technologies to be able to take off that paper was actually originally published by Google, but the people who wrote it basically weren't able to get their innovation through. They basically had to leave the company because as we were just talking about, monopolies are not always incentivized to promote innovation. And so having an ecosystem where you are allowing the open AIs of the world to independently flourish is going to be absolutely critical. I think one really interesting question right now is with some of the past technological breakthrough moments, you oftentimes had the existing incumbents clearly being displaced or clearly being over overtaken. What we have right now, is some of the existing incumbents owning the critical inputs for these technologies? Right. The hyperscalers, the companies that have advantage access to chips, who owns the key cloud service providers? And so there is going to be a real question about if you're an independent firm that doesn't already have a foothold in any of these markets, are you really going to be able to compete on a level playing field and how do we make sure that they can so that we're able to fully, you know, get the most out of this really important innovative moment?
- [25:42]
B
You referenced recent Google case. I guess there was just a ruling this week. The judge rejected the Justice Department's request, forced Google to spin off its Chrome Browse browser and Android products. What did you, what did you make of that decision?
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A
You know, there's some parts of the remedy that are going to provide kind of more search data for some of the competitors, which could lead to a more open market. But I find it pretty stunning, honestly. I mean, the judge found that Google had illegally monopolized search and the remedy ultimately does nothing to displace Google of that monopoly or really make it pay for it in any sort of way. And if you're thinking about how do we do law enforcement in a way that deters lawbreaking in the first place, you know, saying to a bank robber, okay, you can keep all the loot, but will make you kind of do these things on the side, I don't think is a very compelling place to land. And so I do worry that unless you actually create remedies that are depriving the monopolist of the fruit of its law breaking, we're going to have a system where companies are going to keep being incentivized to break the law.
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B
On the other hand, spinning off the Chrome browser right now would be a pretty worthless company. Maybe, potentially, right?
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A
Maybe, Yeah. I mean, Chrome and web browsers do continue to be kind of a key kind of distribution channel and a key kind of way to be accessing a lot of these services.
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B
I guess my question for you is listening to all that, I have some other areas of agreement, but it's more fun to focus on the disagreement. Why do you think these guys hate you so much? I mean, I've been listening to all this and you seem to have some disagreements with understandably big VCs, et cetera, but you don't seem to be anti capitalism. You don't seem to be interested in engineering or workers revolution. Like what is underneath their ire for you?
- [27:33]
A
Do you think you Know, it's a really interesting question and I think, just zooming out more big picture, it is true that for several decades we've had a kind of bipartisan culture and a bipartisan system of elite impunity. Right. If you're an elite, if you're somebody who wears a suit and works in a C suite and you break the law, you will face a very different system and a very different set of treatments than if you're a pickpocket or shoplifting. And I think the law should be enforced without fear of favor. I think the law should be enforced in an even handed way. I think the fact that Americans see that elites get treated differently when they break the law creates a huge amount of disillusionment with our government and with our democracy. And so what we did was, was enforce the law without fear or favor. If we found that Facebook was illegally collecting data on kids, we filed a lawsuit against them. If we found that, you know, big corporate landlords were abusing renters, we took action. And we didn't then think, oh, are these people powerful? You know, donors to the Democratic Party? And then should we, you know, take a more hands off approach? I think especially at this moment when we are seeing so much of that corruption come from the Trump administration, it would be a very dangerous path to think, you know, we should allow lawlessness when it's done by people who we want to keep happy.
- [28:53]
B
Yeah. And maybe you can put this on a blue hat, but like, the elite impunity does feel like a good message for Democrats and for the left to go after Trump. And Trump has this aura of being anti elite himself. Right. And being against kind of the powerful that he was, you know, the Queensborough real estate guy, going after the, you know, cultural elites in Manhattan, like this type of vibe that he gives off. And yet I understand that you said that there was a bipartisan era of elite immunity going back, whatever, however long you want to say, 30, 40 years, but it feels more acute now than ever. I mean, the Trump administration's policy towards elite lawbreakers has to be the most laissez faire since going back to the robber barons. I mean, like, they're not doing anything, any accountability for elites, you know, unless, you know, it's whatever the person on the Fed they don't like. Right. Unless it's a political foe. Do you think that's a political. How can Democrats channel that? Like, where is the political opportunity there? How can you get people to understand that when the Democrats kind of give off this vibe as Being the elites. And Trump gives off the vibe of being anti elite.
- [30:02]
A
I mean, it's actually even worse than what you say because there have actually been a whole set of cases where in the prior administration, you know, the cfpb, for example, found that certain payday lenders had broken the law or other financial companies had broken the law and had entered settlements where those companies had agreed to actually pay back consumers. This administration has come in and actually said, no, actually we'll just undo those settlements and you can keep all that money that you stole from people. So, you know, not only are they not enforcing the law going forward, they're actually undoing the past law enforcement enforcement where companies had already agreed to pay out the money they had stolen from people. So it's truly wild. It's truly a big opportunity for a party for people who want to stand up against this culture of elite impunity.
- [30:51]
B
Do you have thoughts on how to get it to break through? I mean, I know, well, we might get to that, but do you have any thoughts on how?
- [30:57]
A
I'm not a politician, but are you not a politician?
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B
I've been seeing your name on the Internet. You know, a congressional seat just opened up in New York. People have been tossing you out there. Saw some chatter about Alina Khan versus Chelsea Clinton primary, which, you know, is I think, what the people deserve probably. Are you sure you're not a politician?
- [31:15]
A
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Congressman Nadler. He was actually a key anti monopoly leader and helped lead the big tech investigation that we're doing. But no, that's not something that, that I'm considering.
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B
Not even at all. Not. Not at all curious.
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A
I know I respect members of Congress, but I'm not interested in running to join Congress. I'm definitely interested in continuing to figure out how to serve the public. But running for Congress is not something that I'm interested in.
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B
Okay, well, we'll keep an eye on it. What about primary Chuck Schumer, is that more appealing? We'll let it be. I take that well as a silence. A no on primary ing Chuck Schumer.
- [31:53]
A
Don'T have any plans to be running for Congress.
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B
All right, back to the question. All right, as a non politician then as somebody who politicians call any thoughts on how Democrats can break through and offer more compelling rationale as being a party that can carry the mantle of going after elites who are screwing over regular people?
- [32:15]
A
Well, what I can draw on is my experience at the ftc and we went to all sorts of places, red states, we went to places like Iowa. Heard from a lot of people who would say, you know, I'm a lifelong Republican, I'm a hardcore free market capitalist, but I think what you're doing on Non competes or Right to Repair is the best thing that government has ever done. And there is a lot of skepticism out there. There's a lot of disillusionment. You know, they would say, well, it's so great you've come out here, but guess what? The feds haven't done anything for us for years. And I think one of the aspects of our work that really did give people more faith in what we were doing is seeing that we were willing to call out who it was that was not doing the law breaking right. As a law enforcer, you're filing lawsuits. It's FTC v. Facebook or Amazon or invitation homes or John Deere. And I think when you are showing people that you are willing to call out who it is that is making their life worse, who it is that through engaging in illegal behavior is making it so that they can't make rent. I think there is something about that that showcases a certain amount of courage or a certain amount of willing to stand up to power that people would share with us was something that gave them more faith in the government.
- [33:32]
B
All right, I want to ask you about a couple intro left conversations that are ongoing real quick with regards to the Biden administration. I mean, the former president gave you. I think you can correct me if I'm wrong. Free reign to advance some of these more aggressive interpret of antitrust and go after big companies. And yet that didn't really feel like it landed with people from a political perspective. He didn't seem to gain a lot of political benefit from it. And I feel like on the left, I see now a lot of people kind of acting like Biden had a centrist, corporatist administration. And the answer is to go even further to the left. So I wonder how you, you know, sort of reflect on that, like on what you think the administration did and what the kind of political fallout was from it.
- [34:24]
A
Yeah, I mean, from where I sit, the administration did make an important break with a kind of failed paradigm on several key areas of economic policymaking. When we think about kind of industrial strategy and investing in America, when we think about how we had been doing trade policy, they really did break with the kind of free trade, let's just offshore everything type approach in areas like antitrust, consumer protection, what the CFPB was doing. These were all areas where we saw a more kind of muscular view of what the government could do when it came to making sure people could lead materially fulfilling lives. What they were doing on the labor front at places like the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, really just transformative work. This work lasted three and a half, four years. It came after 40 years of really having steered the ship in a totally different direction. And so I think there's a first order question about just practically, when you're trying to undertake a shift in a pivot of this magnitude, when you've just been going in the total other direction for so long, just how long does that take? And that was a key question that I kept asking in terms of how much time will we have and will we be able to create reforms that are durable? Right. I mean, the last time that we saw such a sharp pivot on economic policymaking was the Reagan administration. They had eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush. And by the time that we came to the end of the Bush administration, the initial changes that were extraordinarily controversial, Reagan was pushing them in year one had more or less now become the new bipartisan consensus. We didn't have anything close to eight, let alone 12 years. And so I think, you know, the same institutional durability or even just the impact on real people's lives is going to be harder. There are absolutely ways that government and, you know, our administration could have been thinking through, how can we make sure that people are feeling tangible changes in their lives much more quickly? At the ftc, we try to kind of make sure that we were, yes, following all of the rulemaking procedures, but doing them with a sense of urgency. Because for things like non competes like these are coercive, people are facing harm every day, you want them to go away as quickly as possible. We have a judiciary that is much more hostile to executive agencies exerting certain forms of economic governance. That's going to be a challenge even when Democrats next come into office. So there was a lot of good work that was done, but obviously we needed more time and, and Democrats as a whole need to be very focused on how do we govern effectively.
- [36:59]
B
So that's your main reflection on it. You just feel like it didn't have enough time to, not to borrow a phrase from Reagan, but trickle down through the economy. Or was there another where you look back and think that you wish something else would have been done differently?
- [37:10]
A
I think that's part of it. Look, not the entire administration was kind of doing the same thing. I think there were different people kind of focused on different issues. But the agencies that I mentioned I think were all ones that were really fighting for working people. I think there is a question about how much did people really know about the things that these parts of the administration were really doing.
- [37:33]
B
Communications.
- [37:34]
A
Yeah, yeah. At the ftc, you know, we had a heroic but small team of, you know, a comms office of, you know, five to 10 people. And so other parts of the administration and government that have more of a bully pulpit I think can be thinking about what does it look like to be communicating that we were doing things that are very easy for people to understand. And there are broader communications questions in this new environment that I think everybody's grappling with.
- [38:01]
B
I'm saying it, not you, but there was a real weakness on that front coming from the top in the White House. Help me understand the feud between the antitrust and the abundance people. You did an interview with Sohrab Omari who somehow has not disappeared into the ether, which is probably what I would do if I was him. But he asked you about abundance. You said I haven't seen any credible analysis that suggested why Democrats lost was we didn't have enough donors on our side. This created like a big online dispute between abundance and antitrust. Like what is the fissure here that you see?
- [38:34]
A
Look, I think big picture we absolutely need to be thinking about what are the real obstacles to progress and you know, be thinking broadly and figuring out where our good idea is coming from. To the extent that some folks are identifying things like zoning reform as being necessary or figuring out how to make government more efficient, you know, great, absolutely, let's do that. I am leery of solutions that claim to be a silver bullet. I mean from my time in government, from my time studying markets, oftentimes we found that major obstacles to more stuff being produced or people being have having access to say healthcare at more affordable rates rates was not actually coming directly from the government. It was coming from dominant corporations that didn't want to face competition. I mean there are even in the housing context all sorts of lawsuits that are alleging cartels, collusion that are keeping prices high and production low to the extent we should be. You know, pairing strong antitrust with types of zoning reforms and making it easier to build. Absolutely, let's do that. I think the other part of this is that there has been a, you know, starting with the Reagan administration, there had been a multi decade project to really enfeeble government, to, to really hamper government, to make it difficult for government to be effective. That Looks like a variety of things. At the ftc, I was shocked to discover that we had actually imposed red tape on ourselves. We had added all sorts of procedures, all sorts of bureaucracies that were not required by law. And those had actually been pushed by corporate interests that wanted to slow down the ability of agencies like the FTC to get stuff done. So we should absolutely be looking all of that with fresh eyes, figure out where can this be streamlined, where can government be made more effective and more efficient? And I think we just need to have a rigorous approach. And, you know, when it is monopoly power, when it is dominant, corporations that are standing on the way make sure we're not afraid to take that on. When there are kind of government reforms that we need to be doing. Let's do that too.
- [40:42]
B
So you don't have an Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson voodoo doll and there's nothing like that. You have a text chain where you complain about the posts that they're posting?
- [40:54]
A
No, I mean, I think there's a time for healthy inter party debate and it seems like that's happening in all sorts of corners and, and so that'll just play out cool.
- [41:04]
B
All right, well, we can hash it out. We can do a. We can have, I don't know, a food fight or something. A food fight people want to have. You know, people are looking for a different path forward and I think are excited to hear from people who have differing views on what to do. I think definitely on the left, this is a moment where people are open to being like, pitch me something, pitch me something on how to make this work. Because we're not happy with the status quo. And I think that's healthy, you know, for sure. All right, last thing, sports. ESPN and has bought the NFL Network and now has 10% of the NFL. Can we get you back in there to do something about this? I feel like there's collusion happening on my, on my television screen and I don't like it. This is my escape from politics.
- [41:50]
A
Yeah, I mean, you know, certainly a grievance I'm hearing from, from NFL fans and there's all sorts of stuff happening in the sports arena that I think raise some antitrust questions.
- [41:59]
B
All right, we need a czar. We need a sports antitrust czar. All right, that's Leena Khan. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it. Let's stay in touch with everything you're doing. Not running for office, but with any other big projects you have going forward.
- [42:10]
A
All right, sounds great. Thanks for having me.
- [42:12]
B
All right, thanks. So much to Lena Khan. We got dorky today. We got nerdy today. I had a lot to get through with her. So obviously there's a bunch of other stuff happening in the news in our normal, you know, Trump authoritarian power grab beat and Trump trying to cover up the Epstein files beat and you know, what's happening in Senate races around the country. So if you're looking for politics stuff later tonight, Wednesday night, the next level will be out. So go ahead and check that out. Me, Sarah and jvl and we'll be back with another edition of the podcast tomorrow. We'll see you all then. Peace.
- [42:50]
A
Protective with my soul where you been? Is your GPS even on where you been Matter of fact I don't even care where you been bad get off of me out of here with that Barkery Treat my goals like property collecting like monopoly I probably won't come if there's not a fee and if that track comes stopping me I swear both ways that caught me I like women and men is your GBS giving on matter of fact I don't even care where you been here with that treat my goals like poverty collect them like monopoly like probably won't come if there's not a fee and if they try come stop me I show them my discography I like women and men work so much need a 20 twin twin.
- [43:58]
B
You.
- [44:00]
A
My pen even though I gave up my 90% for the window I've been on a road you protective with my soul Is your GPS even always matter of fact I don't even care where you been hell no I don't even care where you been hell no I don't even care Remember when when we made a album up that clico I never track my vocals so shout out to Eric just been building up I guess his friendship like Home Depot I'm so thankful working with my best friend.
- [44:59]
B
The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.