Anti-trust advocate Lina Khan is on track for nomination to join the FTC in sign of a Joe Biden  crackdown on big tech following appointment of Facebook critic Tim Wu

•  She would join the five-member commission and provide Democrats a majority
•  She helped write House Judiciary report on anti-competitive practices
• Follows the selection of big tech skeptic Tim Wu to joint he National Economic Council
• White House declined comment 

President Joe Biden is making moves to elevate another progressive with antitrust views on big tech with the likely nomination of Lina Khan to join the Federal Trade Commission. 

A source with knowledge of the situation said Tuesday that Khan, a professor at Columbia Law School, was being vetted for a nomination to join the Commission. 

It is the latest sign that the Biden administration is positioning for a potential crackdown on tech behemoths including Facebook and Amazon. 

Khan has a special interest in Big Tech. As a staffer on a House Judiciary subcommittee, she helped pen report last year that promoted legislation to crack down on anti-competitive behavior. It dealt with major tech companies including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet.

She also wrote an article in the Yale Law Journal article titled 'Amazon's Antitrust Paradox.' 

'Elements of the firm’s structure and conduct pose anticompetitive concerns—yet it has escaped antitrust scrutiny,' she wrote.

'In addition to being a retailer, it is a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading provider of cloud server space and computing power,' she continued, pointing to its acceptance of short-term losses as potentially anti-competitive behavior. 

She called for 'assessing whether a company’s structure creates certain anticompetitive conflicts of interest; whether it can cross-leverage market advantages across distinct lines of business; and whether the structure of the market incentivizes and permits predatory conduct.' 

She would join the five-member commission and provide Democrats a majority by filling a vacancy if she is confirmed by the Senate. 

Her nomination, if it goes forward, would signal a tougher stance toward the tech platforms, especially following the selection of fellow antitrust progressive Tim Wu to join the National Economic Council.

Wu, who taught at Columbia University and previously served on the FTC and worked for the New York Attorney General, wrote the book The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.  

His appointment was backed by progressive groups and those who want to break up large tech 'monopolies.'

Wu wrote in his antitrust book: 'Extreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding the appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership.'

'You cannot simply buy your way out of competition,' he wrote in a 2020 New York Times op-ed after the FTC and states filed a lawsuit against Facebook.

'Facebook's strategy was similar to John D. Rockefeller's at Standard Oil during the 1880s. Both companies scanned the horizon of the marketplace, searching for potential competitors, and then bought them or buried them,' he wrote. 

The FTC works with the Justice Department to enforce antitrust law and also investigates companies accused of deceptive advertising.

Politico, which first reported the potential nomination, also reported that an FBI agent had made calls to Khan's associates as part of a background check for the position.

The White House declined comment. Khan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.