Lina Khan will be 'aggressive' in taking on Big Tech at FTC

America's tech giants have a new adversary in Washington, DC, with President Joe Biden's appointment of prominent tech critic and Columbia University Law professor Lina Kahn as chair of the Federal Trade Commission.

Khan, who's just 32 years old and made waves with her 2017 article for the Yale Law Journal titled "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," found support among both Democrats and Republicans during her confirmation hearing for the FTC, especially from Rep.

Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), herself a critic of Big Tech and member of the House Antitrust Committee.

"She understands we have to be aggressive in taking on monopolies and protecting competition with small businesses and choice for consumers," Jayapal said of Kahn in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live. "I think she is going to be aggressive in making sure that the FTC is both enforcing existing antitrust laws but also...taking on whatever big challenges they can," she added.

Khan joins the FTC at a time when both the commission and the Department of Justice are investigating the likes of Apple, Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), and Facebook (FB) for potential antitrust violations.

The FTC has already filed a suit seeking to break up Facebook, while the DOJ has filed suit claiming Google Search is an illegal monopoly. Amazon is also being sued by Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine for alleged antitrust violations.

Meanwhile, President Biden also tapped Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, a tech critic and the author of the "Curse of Bigness," to serve on the National Economic Council as a special assistant to the president.