Lina Khan: The Courage to Confront Power
When Lina Maliha Khan took her seat as Chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in June 2021, she did so with the calm of a scholar and the fire of a revolutionary. At just 32 years old, she had already unsettled the world’s most powerful corporations with a single academic paper. Now she was at the helm of an agency that could hold them to account.
Her appointment wasn’t just a generational shift, it was a declaration that the old playbook of power, where monopolies quietly consolidated, tech giants ruled unchallenged, and the public interest was an afterthought, was no longer acceptable.
In an era when corporate reach often exceeds national borders, Lina Khan dared to ask a question many leaders avoid.
Who gets to decide how power operates?
Khan’s journey began in London, where she was born in 1989 to Pakistani parents. When she was eleven, her family relocated to Mamaroneck, New York, where she later studied political science at Williams College and spent a year at Oxford’s Exeter College. After earning her J.D. from Yale Law School, she published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox (2017), a paper that challenged the central assumption of modern antitrust law - that harm only exists when prices rise.
Her argument was deceptively simple and deeply subversive.
She wrote that focusing solely on consumer prices blinded regulators to the structural power of tech platforms and the way they control data, dictate terms to smaller firms, and lock consumers into ecosystems they can’t easily leave.
That article made her a household name in policy circles and a founding voice of what became known as the New Brandeis movement
When President Biden nominated Khan to the FTC in 2021, few expected her to be named Chair on her first day. Fewer still anticipated the scale of change she would bring, but under her leadership, the FTC became more assertive, more philosophical and yes, more controversial.
She made it clear that competition wasn’t a spreadsheet issue. It was about democracy, opportunity, and fairness.
“When you have dominant gatekeepers dictating terms and conditions across markets, that distorts our economy and undermines freedom.” Khan told a Senate panel
Her vision was unapologetically moral. She wasn’t against business rather she was against corporate abuse of power.
During her tenure, Khan confronted some of the most entrenched corporate practices in modern capitalism. Here are a few of those key highlights.
The FTC under Khan took a harder stance on mergers that threatened competition.
From healthcare to technology, she argued that unchecked consolidation suffocates innovation and limits consumer choice. Her team launched high-profile cases against several corporate combinations and helped prevent a series of mega-mergers that would have further concentrated market power.
She proposed banning most non-compete clauses, arguing that they trap workers in low-mobility jobs and artificially suppress wages. Her proposal was challenged in court, but the message landed. Workers deserve the freedom to take their skills elsewhere.
Khan led efforts to enforce “right-to-repair” laws, targeting firms that restricted independent repairs of devices, and opened investigations into “surveillance pricing,” where companies charge consumers different prices based on their personal data.
Beyond individual cases, Khan revitalised the FTC’s rulemaking powers, pushing the agency from a reactive stance to a proactive one. She encouraged cross-disciplinary teams to study how digital ecosystems distort markets and to re-centre public interest in corporate oversight.
But as well know, bravery often invites backlash.
Khan’s assertive approach drew fierce opposition from business lobbies, legal scholars, and even some colleagues. Critics accused her of overreach, citing a series of court defeats and internal morale challenges at the FTC.
But the criticism kinda missed the point. For Khan, success wasn’t just about winning cases; rather, it was about changing the conversation and by the end of her tenure, tech companies had adjusted merger strategies, investors spoke of “Khan risk” in boardrooms, and competition law was again a matter of public debate.
Lina Khan’s courage lay not only in taking on billion-dollar corporations but in redefining what leadership in public office looks like. She was:
Bold enough to question orthodoxy.
Resilient enough to endure institutional resistance.
Agile in navigating politics, law, and public sentiment.
Visionary in redefining fairness in the digital age.
Ethical in her refusal to trade courage for convenience.
Those five traits—Bold, Resilient, Agile, Visionary, Ethical—mirror the principles of BRAVE Leadership I talk about.
In many ways, Khan embodied the very ethos that underpins courageous leadership in complex systems. To challenge power, act with integrity, and make the invisible visible.
Khan’s impact shouldn’t be measured solely in lawsuits or policy memos. It should be seen in how regulators now speak about power, how business schools teach antitrust, and how the public expects accountability. Her story is a reminder that leadership isn’t about comfort, it’s about conviction. It’s about walking into institutions that have forgotten their purpose and daring to remind them why they exist.
Leadership isn’t about control; it’s about capacity. That learned ability to adapt, decide, and stay ethical when it matters most.
And Lina Khan did exactly that.
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Creative Commons Image:
File:Lina Khan, FTC Chair.jpg
(Credit: Federal Trade Commission / CC BY-SA 4.0)
Please note this article was written by me, but source and grammar checked using Ai.
