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The Wrath of Khan

Read that chilling headline again, and let it settle in for a minute.

We’ve often argued that Ms. Khan -– a Columbia law professor who attended Yale (of course), is all of 34 years old, and has never had a real job in the private sector for as far as we can tell – is quickly becoming the most dangerous woman in America. Any company that is enriching your 401k plan by making a healthy profit is a suspect monopolist.

Khan is a hyper-regulator who has already sued Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Nvidia. Now she is plotting to hunt down companies as potential monopolists “before it becomes fully fledged.”

This is like a traffic cop pulling you over and giving you a ticket because he thinks you MIGHT speed when you go around the corner.

There’s more. According to Axios: “Khan is hunting for evidence that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon require board seats or exclusivity deals in return for their investments in AI startups.”

Since when is asking for a board seat in exchange for a major investment in a startup company a crime?  If it is, this won’t hurt the Amazons of the world but it will inhibit startups.

Khan says her philosophy is that it’s important for “policymakers to help structure markets.” No, it surely isn’t. We have two industries that policymakers have been trying to “structure” for years: EVs and green energy.  With all the helping hands of the government, they are both teetering on bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the companies that are blowing away the high-tech competition – America’s “magnificent seven” – have come to dominate global tech markets and are now trying to intervene in artificial intelligence.

But in the Lina Khan rule book, their extraordinary financial success – with hundreds of billions of dollars for American mom-and-pop investors and retirees – is prima facie evidence that these companies are price gouging. That’s a bewildering claim because these companies have been lowering prices for everything from toys to potato chips, to information gathering, to cell phones. These “monopolists” account for almost all of the stock market gains in recent years.

Lina Khan seems hellbent on blowing up the American economy by bringing lawsuits against the most successful and profitable companies. That is a good strategy to forfeit U.S. economic leadership. She might as well be on China’s payroll.

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