Lina Khan on AI and More

Lina Khan, who chaired the Federal Trade Commission under Joe Biden, is one of the smartest and most influential thinkers about antitrust in our high-tech era, and one who has blazed new paths in policymaking. I spoke with her at a Graduate Center event back in March, and caught up with her again earlier this week for another enlightening conversation.For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube.. . .TRANSCRIPT: Paul Krugman in Conversation with Lina Khan(recorded 7/14/26)Paul Krugman: This week, I managed to get to talk to Lina Khan, who was the incredibly influential and smart head of the FTC in the previous administration—with the current administration doing everything it can to undo her work. She played an important role in the Mamdani transition team and has had a lot of smart thoughts about technology and policy right now. And I thought we could talk for a bit about this, well, it’s always a bizarre moment these days, but this is the bizarre moment we’re in. And so, hi.Lina Khan: Hi, great to be here.Krugman: I want to get into technology and AI, but I wanted to just start with something that just happened. One of your special causes, which is “Click to Cancel,” which you tried to get as a national policy, just went through in New York City. Can you talk a little bit about what was achieved here and why?Khan: I’d be happy to. So, last week, the Mamdani administration announced that they are moving forward with two consumer protection initiatives. One was the finalization of a “Click to Cancel” rule, which basically says that businesses have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one.This rule is responding to the fact that we’ve seen a pretty significant pivot to service-based revenue, and more and more companies are relying on subscriptions as a regular business revenue line. And that has created an opportunity for firms to create a lot of friction when people are trying to unsubscribe. A lot of people can relate to situations where it’s very easy to sign up, or sometimes you’re enrolled without even your full knowledge or consent. But then once you try to cancel, companies can make you jump through all sorts of hoops. Maybe you signed up with one click online, but to cancel you have to phone somebody, except the hours are really restricted or there’s nobody there to pick up the phone. In some instances, you may actually have to go in person.When we were at the FTC, we got thousands upon thousands of complaints, and people shared how, even during the pandemic when they were looking to cancel their gym membership, some gyms required that they go in person even after they had left the state. So this has been a growing problem, and people lose real money from it. I mean, there are estimates that, in New York City alone, people could be collectively losing over $160 million a year. So this rule, which is going to go into effect in October, is an incredibly important step forward.The administration also announced that they’re going to be proposing a rule to tackle junk fees. These are the fees that oftentimes show up at the very end of a transaction, even though they were not reflected in the original advertised price. Sometimes they’re called convenience fees, service fees, or amenity fees. And these are non-discretionary; people have no choice but to see them included. Companies will, again, often not advertise them on the front end, which is both deceptive for consumers but also gives them an unfair competitive advantage, because honest businesses that are marketing the all-in price then lose business to those firms that instead do pricing where they market a lower price and then add all the additional fees at the end.So, I’m really thrilled that the Mamdani administration is moving forward on these two initiatives, especially because we have seen some very serious backsliding at the federal level, where consumer protection initiatives have either been abandoned entirely or powerful companies that have connections to the White House can basically pay their way out of legal accountability. And so it’s incredibly important to see cities and states fill in that gap.Krugman: I couldn’t actually quite figure this out, but there’s this other initiative from Mamdani: public interest technology. Are you involved with that?Khan: It is something we considered during the transition and wanted to set up the ad