President Joe Biden on Monday confirmed his intention to appoint lawyer Lina Khan, known for her hostility to the monopolies of tech giants, as head of the US competition agency (FTC), a further sign of the will of the Democratic government to do battle with Silicon Valley.
Read also: Lina Khan, the lawyer who makes Amazon tremble
Google and Facebook face several lawsuits for abuse of dominance, launched under the Trump administration by federal authorities and coalitions of US states.
Various investigations are underway, including the practices of their neighbors Apple and Amazon.
The pressure is unlikely to ease if Lina Khan's appointment is approved by the Senate.
The law professor at Columbia University, New York, was recently part of a team of researchers tasked with producing a report for the House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee.
In a voluminous file released last October, specialists accuse the Gafa (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) of monopolies and abuse of a dominant position in their respective sectors.
Lina Khan, 32, also served as legal counsel to Rohit Chopra, an FTC commissioner Joe Biden appointed to head the Financial Industry Consumer Protection Agency (CFPB).
The scholar first rose to prominence in academia in 2017, while still a student, by publishing an article titled
"Amazon's Antitrust Paradox"
in the Yale University law journal.
She considered that the American legislative arsenal was insufficient to fight against the monopolistic practices of groups like the giant of online commerce.
Message of firmness
The FTC is made up of five members, with a maximum of three members from the same political party.
In early March, Tim Wu, also a professor at Columbia and defender of much stricter anti-concentration laws to frame the power of the Gafa, announced to join the prestigious National Economic Council (NEC) of the White House.
By choosing such profiles, Joe Biden's government is sending a message of firmness to the American technological pillars.
Under Barack Obama - of which Joe Biden was vice president - Silicon Valley was broadly aligned with Washington.
But ties have been loosened, or even broken, with a large part of Democrats, worried about the power of these companies over personal data, public opinion or the major economic markets.
