Episode description

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a once sleepy, three-letter agency in Washington that serves as the nation’s general purpose consumer protection regulator—dealing with everything from deceptive advertising to fraud. In recent years, however, the FTC has become somewhat of a household name thanks to current chair Lina Khan and high-profile cases against tech giants Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon. While some populists on right and left have praised the agency for taking on big business, others, particularly in the business community, have railed against the agency for an anti-business stance and preventing legitimate mergers and acquisitions.

Conservatives and Republicans have generally been skeptical of antitrust enforcement and government regulation, but in recent years they have been rethinking how to apply their philosophy in an era when trillion-dollar tech behemoths could be threats to online free speech. And as concerns around other tech issues like data privacy and children’s online safety continue to persist, the FTC sits at the center of it all as the nation’s de facto tech regulator. Is there a balance to be struck between Khan’s aggressive enforcement and the lax treatment preferred by the business world? And how should the agency tackle challenges like artificial intelligence?

Who better to help answer these questions than one of agency’s five commissioners. Evan is joined by Andrew Ferguson, one of two Republican commissioners at FTC. Prior to that, he was the solicitor general of Virginia and chief counsel to Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell.