writer.

>> you will know her from her books and her work with cmn. and she was a grounding scholar before becoming chairperson of the ftc, and that's impressive because she's still very young, i think the '■youngest in history. what i'm most interested about today's discussion, carnegie has been doing a lot of work on

it has become a draw. i to say we live in interesting times, but eunusualness in our politics is an outgrowth in the unusualness of the political economy moment we're living thru in many ways. in that think, chairperson cox's remarks from r particularly important because she's somebody who has trayed to assert a new conception of one of the fundamentals of our political economy, how we should think about the idea of competition and what it does to drive innovation, to lor for consumers, etc. she has won, as you might expect for somebody trying to assert a new way of conceptualizing a fundamental concept in our political economy, she she's won plaudits from those taking on big tech in the name of consumers as well as raise criticisms and questions from those who wonder if those actions may weaken the united states' position on national security by negatively impacting

our competitiveness in the world or affecting the ecosystem here at home in the national security space. i concerns and others in her remarks. it's a pleasure to have you with us here today, welcome to the carnegie endowment and we look forward to your speech. [applause] >> good afternoon, everybody. it's great to be here with you all. many thanks to dan and tino and the carnegie endowment for hosting me today. i want to start off by thanking you all for indulging an ftc chair to come here to discuss our the federal trade commission enforces the antitrust and consumer protection law. we focus pri on the domestic markets an u.s. economy. through this work we get a ground level view of how markets are structured in america. and how the extent of competition or consolidation

drives outcomes that affect all of us. like many across government the f.t.c. is watching closely as the release of sophisticated a.i. tools creates tuns and risks. our work is already tackling the day-to-day harms these tools cantor beau charge from voice cloning scams to commercial surveillan■q.se immediate challenges, we face right now a more fundamental question of power and governance. wi opening up markets to free and fair competition, unleashing the full potential of emerging■ technologies? or will a handful of dominant firms instead concentrate control over key tools locking us in to ada choosing? the stakes of how we answer this question are enormously high. technological break throughs

candice rupt markets, spur economic growth, and change the nature of war and geopolitics. whether we opt for a national policy of consolidation or of competition will have huge as in prior moments ofes to contestation we are starting to hear the arguments that america must protect its domestic monopoliesay ahead on the globa. rather than doubling dunn on promoting free and fair competition, this national champions argument holds that coddling -- dominance. i want to explain why we should be extraordinarily skeptical of this national champions argument and why we should instead recognize that monopoly power in america today is a major threat to our national interests and global leadership.

let's begin by looking at the world of -- the role of competition in providing for a common defense. in 2021, an errant spark in an explosives factory in louisiana destroyed the only plant in the united states that makes black combustible product used to make mortar shells, artillery rounds and tomahawk missiles. there's no substitute for black powder and it has hundreds of military applications. so when that one factory blew up and we didn't have any backup plans, it destro the only black powder production in all of north america. there's a simple lesson here, don't put all of your eggs bask. this is but one of many examples of how consolidation today is threatening our nationalwut monopolies in consolidated markets as causing the problem of higher prices and lower outputs. wee how monopolies also

can foster systemic vulnerabilities since concentrating production also concentrates risk.■uld argue that it was more efficient to put all black powder production in one plant in louisiana. and maybe it was. until it wasn't. defense officials now identify the problem of monopoly now country as a strategic weakness. the pentagon has been warning about vulnerabilities in our national security supply chain for years. one top official recently noted that our increased reliance on a small number of contractors for critical capabilities impact ours ability to ramp up production. one early victory after i joined the f.t.c. was blocking the proposed merger between lockheed and aerojet. aerojet is the last independent u.s. supplier of key missile inputs and our investigation shows that the deal would have allowed lockheed to cut off

rival's access to this key input and jack up the price that our government and ultimately the public has to pay. it was the first time in decades that our government had sued the con sol -- halt conle is daition in the defense industrial base. it's not just the defense industrial base where we have a problem. the upon democratic showedilityy chains with shortages in everything from semiconductors to p.p.e.'s. and it's not just a once in seanchry pandemic. even more routine disruptions like plant contaminations or hurricanes have revealed how in a concentrated system, a single shock can have cascading effects yielding shortages in products ranging from baby formula to i.v. bag consolidation doesn't just cause problems with supply chains. for years successive administrations have sought to strengthen our cyber security defenses against a catastrophic

effect. just a few weeks ago, one of the main medical benefit claims networks in america changed health care was taken down for weeks due to a cyber attack, depriving homents and medical provides of the ability to bill for their services and wreaking havoc across our health care system. that network is now owned by united health group which was allowed to buy change d.o.j. lawsuit seeking to block the deal. quite simply, we have a fragility problem in america.ndn have left us more vulnerable and less resilient in the face of shocks. buthai. and the innovation economy, you might say. black powder and baby formula shortages are one thing but the coata centers and large language models are highly technical operations with tens of billions of dollars of capital to deploy, trillions in market

capitalization and some of the most highly skilled professionals. again, we should be guided by in the 1970's, walter reston, president of citibank and key leader on wall street, asked why antitrust enforcers were filing lawsuits against high tech american darlings like i.b.m. and at&t. he said, what's the public good of knocking i.b.m. you have a? the conclusion to all this nonsense is that people cry, let's break up the yankees because they're so successful. end quote. by contrast at that time, europe and japan were protecting their national championships. america chose those anti-monopoly lawsuits ended up fostering innovations,

including the cell phone revolution and the logic chip they feel national champions protected by japan and europe fell behind and are long forgotten. in the u.s., we bet on competition and that made all the difference. imagine a different world where today's giants never had a chance to get their start and innovate because policymakers decided it was more important to protect i.b.m. and at&t from competition and allow them to maintain their monopolies. famously an engineer at kodak had invented the first portable digital camera in the 1970's but kodak did not rush it to market in part because it didn't want to cannibalize its existing sales. more generally, significant research shows that while monopolies may help deliver marginal innovations improvements, breakthrough and paradigm shifting innovations have historically come from the disruptive outsider. it is our commitment to free and fair competition that has

allowed america to harness the talents of its citizen, reap breakthrough as an economic pow. the times when we have accepted the national champions argument now serve as a cauonar 1990's, e adviser noted that there was one very high tech firm that was, quote, a de facto national champion so important that you can be an out and out advocate for it in government. and we did support it, providing it with government contracts and allowing to it consolidate the industry. i'm referring, of course, to boeing which is the single best example of why a national champion strategy can be catastrophic. in 1997, boeing became the only commercial aerospace maker in the united states. it came to enjoy the status after buying up mcdonell douglas, the only other domestic producer of commercial airplaned by the f.t.c.

boeing is the clearest example of a purposeful decision to bet on national champions on behalf of american interests. to override european objections to this merger, the white house reportedly threatened the w.t.o. sanctions if the e.u. challenged it. policymakers wanted a national champion. and so they got it. as with most highly concentte■ds happened. as united airlines c.e.o. recently noted, this allowed tboing slow down innovation and reduce product quality. boeing's r&d budget has been lower than that of its only rival, airbus. worse quality is one of the harms most economists expect from monopolization because firms that face little competition have limited incentive to improve products.

second, boeing executives started to view their knowledgeable work force as a cost rather than an asset with tragic outcomes. as one put it in 2000, boeing has been less a business than a association of engineers devoted to building amazing flying machines. this corporation's engineers designed the b-52 in a single weekend. but the new, post-merger boeing, dez mated it work force, offshored production and demanded wage concessions. the third consequence was that boeing effectively bece o big to fail and a point of leverage for countries seeking to influence u.s. policymaking. in 2020, during koafd, congress carved out a $25 billion line item just for this one aerospace producer. relying on a national chamcreatd taxpayer liabilities but it also creates geopolitical as a result necialts that can be ex-ployed both by global partners and rivals. as it was buying

mcdonell-douglas, boeing held a board meeting in beijing and loied congress to end the annual review of china's trading rights so it could sell more planes. the chinese government in turn contingent upon certain u.s. policies like whether the u.s. held off on sending warships into the strait of taiwan or whether the u.s. lifted bans on the export of certain tech nolings. national champions are still corporations first. they have calls, shareholders and quarter profit targets. when policymakers in washington decide to back a single monopoly theirbut one concern among many for that corporation's senior executives. as then-exxon c.e.o. lee raymond said, quote, i'm not a u.s. company and don't make decisions based on what's good for the u.s., end quote. these days the national champions argument often gets made in the context of our

dominant technology firms. we often hear that pursuing antitrust cases agastregulatingl weaken american innovation and cede the global stage to china. these conversationswar like armh each country's firms in a zero sum quest for dominance. the reality today is that some of these same firms are fairly integrated in china and are seeking greater access to the chinese market. wile there's nothing intrinsically improper about these ties, we should be clear-eyed about how they shape business incentives. various incidents in recent years have highlighted how, when u.s. corporations are economically dependent on china, it can spur them to actn ways that are contrary to our national interests. even if america's dominant firms are not prioritizing america's national interests, what do we make of the idea that they can keep america in the lead only if they're left alone?

this too is an argument we should treat with great skepticism. history shows us lumbering monopolies mired in red tape and inertia cannot deliver the breakthrough innovations and technological advancements hungry startups kend to it is precisely these breakthroughs that allow america to harness these cutting j technologies and made our economy the envy of the world tomorrow stay ahead globally we don't need to protect monopolies from innovation, we need to protect innovation from monopolies. we need to c6f over national champions. putting this into practice, in 2021, the f.t.c. blocked nvidia's attempted acquisition in what would have been the largest semiconductor chip the merger would have allowed a major chip provider to control key computing technologies that

rival firms depend on to develop thow chips. next generation tecs affecting everything from data centers to self-driving cars two. years on, nvidia contied to provide innovative products at lower costs than we predibbed they would have with the merger. choosing competition works. the final argument i'll leave you with protecting monopolies over competition is dangerous because it can leave our democracy more brittle. -- more brittle. over the had the chance to hearm thousands of people from across america from nurses, farmers and grocery store workers, to tech founders, hotel franchise yeses and writes for the hollywood. a recurring theme across their

stories has been a sense of fear, anxiety and powerlessness. people from strikingly different weusks life shared accounts of how markets monopolized by dominant coercive tactics. they feel that their ability to make a decent living or thrive in their craft is too often not a functio■0of their talents or diligence but instead is dictated by the arbitrary whims of distant giants.bt a basic tenet of the american experiment is that real liberty means freedom from economic coercion and the arbitrary, unaccountable power that econom. our antitrust laws were passed as a way to safeguard against undue concentrations of power in our economic spheers just as the constitution creates checks and planses against concentrated power in our political sphere. i want to offer that recommitting to robust antitrust

enforcement and competition policy is gad for america because it will make safer, our technologies more innovative and our economy more prosperous. but also because it is essential for ensuring real opportunity for americans and that people in their day-to-day dealings experience liberty rather than coercion. as folks in this room know all too well, when people believe the government has stopped fighting on their behalf and become a strategic weakness that outsiders are only too happy to exploit. thankfully, over the last few years urn the biden administration, we have seen enormous progres across government in ensuring that we are centering everyday americans in our policy decisions. from trade and industrial■n policy, to national security and competition, the administration has learned from past experiences and adopted new paradigms. a common throughline across these approaches is a commitment to discarding outdated theories

in favor of reality and evidence. fighting back against the challenges that we face is about more than just enforcing the antitrust laws. but by seeking fair competition and by demonstrating to the american people that the era of monopoly dominance over their live kans end and is not inevitable we can help rebuild not just the confidence of the consume or the worker or the entrepreneur but also a belief in american government and its leadership both at home and abroad. thanks so much, i look forward to the conversation. [applause] you, chair khan for those remarks. it is now my pleasure to introduce our moderator. >> thank you so much. thanks to carnegie and thanks to

chair khan. first of all i want to amplify a few thickus said. there was so much iat speech. you know, the idea that resiliency matters. that we've had an efficiency model for the last 40 years or so ealy in our economy which is about sending things wherever it's cheaper, that rules in a lot of concentration, a lot of siloing. we discovered in the pan tell democrat -- pab democratic that this has vulnerabilities. this comes with limits. chips is a great, you mentioned chips as a great example. it was always kind of amazing to me as somebody who has traveled a lot in asia, covered global business, that anybody, not just the u.s. but china or europe, thought that having 92% of all high end semiconductors in one highly geopolitically contentious island was a good idea. i'm curious, as you think

through the paradigm you're bringing to antitrust, where do you see some of those choke points now? where do you see shove those places out there in the supply chains for defense but also in our industrial comments? in data? that you are concerned about, thinking about. >> yeah, i mean it's real quite prif lent. i think much more than, you know, should give us comfort. in our work we ealy see it in parts of the digital economy. but also in all sorts of more routine areas like baby form lavment a couple of years ago, you know, when americans were waking up and finding they couldn't find baby formula on their shelves the f.t.c. launched a study to figure out what are the root causes of this? one of them was that we've seen significant concentrations such that when you had a single bout of con testimony nation at a single factory it ended up having ripple effects. i think more generally we've

seen some of the risks of concentration in cloud. in the cloud computing sector. where at various points a single outage can result in pars of internet being down. the f.t.c. in particular has also been looking at the cloud computing sector and trying to understand what's the market structure here. what's leading to decent amount of concentration, is it just that there are such high fixed costs here. such economies of scale. or could there also be potentially anti-competitive tactics keeping this competitive? and what are the downstream risks of concentration? be it for businesses that depend on these technologies and might wake up one day to see that their cloud computing costs have soared overnight, who might struggle to be transporting their data between different class computing company, but also from a data security perspective, it's paramount that we've seen that concentti espece

so many cyber security risks, can leave a lot of people's data exposed be it at equifax or other areas. >> that's important, can people hear me? that's an important point. when i talked to the pentagon and the security community in general i hear discussion about decentralization as a way of creating more robustness. as a way of creating more resiliency. last lot of concern that that kind of heavy concentration, one and done, putting all your eggs in one basket, as you said. which you looked at that as we move into a world of a.i., as we move into a world where, you know, wars are going to be fought in cyberspace, in data -- and data becomes more important. that national champions have this new role. that this time is different. to use a phrase that i hate. but i'll put forward that argument and i want to hear what you would say about it. the argument that i hear is that

masses of data simply matter when you're thinking about things like a.i. china for example, a state that has no assumptions of privacy, you can gather data at will, the state has control of that. a lot of big tech companies, a lot of people that run them and, would make that argument. is a.i. different? is big tech different in some fundamental way? >> based on our experience historically there are significant risk wednesday you concentrate so much production or are so reliant on a small number of companies. some of these risks are intrinsic. some are more in terms o whether these corporate actors are really able to be good proxies and faithful proxies for u.s. interests when their entangle. s may be all over the place. and a more fundamental level, the f.t.c. has been taking a look across the a.i. stack from

the chips to the cloud to the models to the downstream applications and figuring out, you know, what is the market structure that we're turnery seeing in each of these layers. what are the factors that are contributing to some of the concentration. historically even when we've had parts of the economy that are highly concentrated like the railroad, like certain telecommunications infrastructure. what we've done is applied certain rules that limit those infrastructure firms from using their power in abusive ways. i tnk us to be understanding what are the properties across each of these layers. do we think antitrust and competition will be sufficient to discipline market power and the abuses that can follow? or do we need an additional set of policy tools and levers of the time we traditionally applied in somewhere of the infrastructure markets? >> i want to dig into two pieces

ofhave lots of time for questions and we'll take them virtually too. we'll open it up in about 15 or -- in about 10 or 15 minutes. this idea that companies are not country, nor should they be really, that's fundamental. how can we expect them when they are in, many big multinationals are in 100 mark, 120 markets. a lot of them are in china. a lot of big tech companies would like more business in chin how can we couldn't count on them being national champions even fa that were an argument we're willing to accept. it's because if companies become national champions there would be more limits on what they could or couldn't do overseas, yeah? is that something orr hearing? what sides of that argument resonate to you? >> i think historically we've seen companies want to have it both ways where they be want the freedom that comes with being a national champion and skirting, you know, regulation or antitrust enforcement but

then sign up with the limbs that would come with the obligations and responsibilities of being more faithful stewards of american interests. so you■( know, unfortunately, i think we see some of that opportunism in terms of the arguments made. >> i want to talk a little bit ab you were talking a little bit about the impact of concentrations downstream on consumers but also on markets. something i have seen in my 33 years of reporting, a lot of it on the industrial comments is when you get concentration and you get a lot of, let's say, offshoring of production, taiwan chips would be a great example. you're then taking abentire ecosystem and you need iteration. you need a lot of pieces working together in order to innovate. we're now at this point in the u.s. trying to rebuild the chips industry. not so easy to rebuild from scratch. something i'm concerned about right now, i see private equity

a lot of small, mid sized private industrial companies that may be part of the green transition or some of the reindustrialization that might be part of our future here in the u.s. what do you think about that? how do you think about concentration and the overall industrial common, data commons and ecosystem? >> i think one of the most innovative and impact. parts of this administration's economic system is the industrial position and theless involvement by government can have less enforcement and we should use that as a tool to shape innovation and technological developments in the direction we determined are in the nation's interest rather than assume there's no role for us to be playing and these are free market forces. so i think that's the really important pivot and we see right now the result of that in action.

right? terms of the efforts to be really encouraging production and manufacturing in america. you know, the f.t.c. plays a -- an adjacent role there in terms of making sure that companies that are making their products in a losing out business to firms that are lying about products being made in, many. or for example if we're giving out enormous subsidies or grants to try to incentivize domestic production that we have markets where those newcomers can thrive and compete. one area, a little outside of what we're discussing, was where the administration handed out a lot of funds has been agriculture. where we've seen small and medium-sized business operations get support from the government in order to try to create we need to make sure that in order for that to work, these small and medium sized operations are not coerced or

muscled out of the market through mo knopp olistic tactics. so you see how antitrust policies is a really key complement to making sure some of our industrial policy or other economic policy goals are advanced. >> it's anyone, i think agriculture has a lot to do with security. i'm remembering a piece i did about a woman at darpa who is running a program to decentralize food scorsing because of what you're saying. we all felt that interestingly during the pandemic. everybody had the bizarre-o sense of restaurants are empty yet you can't get what you want in the grocery store. very highly stylized supply chains, they're not talking to each other. that's kind of what you're getting at. >> i think you're absolute liely right, all these pieces are interconnected in some fundamental way. >> am i going to see question time up here on the screen? i'm not wearing a watch, you guys have to prompt me. >> four minutes. >> ok, four minutes to questions. be sureyour questions.

i forgot my watch today. i want to bring up an idea i'm hearing a lot in europe, i work if a bri publication. europeans, particularly small european nations but also allies and smaller nations in asia get very, very worried when they think in this new post neoliberal world they've got two choices. china,er tboogle. that worries them. so how do you think about that? and also there's been a little bit of a pause on this conversation but late last year there was going to be a conversation between the e.u. and the u.s. about clean energy supply chains, coming up paradi. what kind of interactions do you have with that conversation? >> as a general matter what i think is important about competition and antitrust, it's about oxygen ating the market

and -- joks yes nateing the -- oxygenating the market and opening up the market. opening up the market will allow the next step of innovators to come in and enter and compete on the merits. i think promoting antitrust can be entirely aligned with countries making sure they have more options. have several more questions i want to ask. i want to start opening up and hopefully figure out how to get to virtual questions. we have a mic in here, does anybody want to start? and if you can just, we're on the record so, we have a question over here. you can just say your name an affiliation, please. >> i'm roger, an editorial contributor on tech knoll and space policy for the hail newspaper. i have recent hi been trying to

understand an f.t.c. approach to artificial intelligence. this is not on antitrust but it's regulation. it applies across the board to many systems. my question is, you should what circumstances should the exact same activity, if it's committed by a natural human being, using no artificial intelligence, versus the exact same activity if it's committed by a natural human being using artificial intelligence be treated differently or punished differently in in other words, a deceptive -- impersonation is something that's been used in marketing and politics since ancient rome and greece. you know there's a wide range of things you can easily imagine which are identical from the point of view of the recipient if it's done by a human

impersonator. so my impression is the f.t.c. has gone down the path of treating the use of artificial intelligence sort of the way we do the use of a gun in aike tha. it's a different category if you use artificial intelligence even if it's the exact same thing as if one didn't use it. could you distinction wirn between the -- distinguish between the activities that require separate, more punishment, if artificial intelligence is used? thank you. >> there's a broader policy conversation going on in congress and elsewhere to figure out what is the right liability regime for a.i. given that we're going to face some of the very issues you identified from thjhe perspective of the f.t.c. we have been focused on making sure that firms know there's no a.i. exemption from the laws on the books. so if you use a.i. to engage in

price fixing if you use a.i. to engage in fraud, price fixing and fraud are illegal under the law. using ample i. doesn't get you some type of free pass. impersonation is one of the -- impersonation fraud someone of the largest sources of fraud we get every year. even prix-a.i. tools, becoming more widely used. so people pretending to be the government, the inch r.s., people pretenning to be legitimate businesses. and so we've been, you know, proposing a rule to make sure at we can actually go after that type of impersonation fraud and levy civil penalties and create deterrents. we've thought to modify that rule further to make sure recovering impersonation of individuals. because we know with voice cloning, these types of impersonations of everyday people is becoming much more common as well. we're very actively trying to figure out how do we update our tool kit to start addressing the

kind of new a.i. tactics we're going to be seeing in the marketplace. i think there's more for congress to be doing as well. >> there's a good question here virtually. we have several hundred, i think, virtual parties pans. maintaining america's position amidst geopolitical rivalries requires a comprehensive approach. how do we balance regulation and legislation to ensure american growth and dominance on the global stage? i heard you in the speech saying allowing competition, you feel, is the way to competitiveness and security. but maybe you can talk a little by about the idea of a comprehensive approach andt youn doing this job had particular tension points where you saw something in the market that, kosh, i would like to clamp down on this but what will the second or tertiary be for security or competitiveness? >> i think we see

about potential tradeoffs between competition and opening up marks and the effects on data privacy or security. i think in practice, you know, the f.t.c. always tries to understand, are these just kind of pretextual arguments or is there a real tension? we have technologists on board so we can pressure test some of those arguments more. it's a case-by-case determination. i think more generally one area where i think we see a lot of alignment is on this issue of data privacy and kata security. so in the u.s., it's really the f.t.c. that's on the frontlines of enforcing our existing laws that cover data privacy and data security protections. we've really seen that it's been a wild, wild west out there. data broker ecosystem that we have means that people very personal, intimate information is being freely trafficked. so somebody's precise location, their sensitive health data, their browsing data. there was research last found te

abroad you could, without too much difficulty, actually buy very sensitive data on u.s. military members. in ways that people worried could, you know, be susceptible to blackmail and really challenging situations. so i think we've seen and the administration has recognized that having very few regulations on data privacy and security is actually creating much more risk. the recently issued a data security executive order that's very attentive to these risks. as you know, charging agencies across the federal government to be thinking about how do we protect american's data from foreign adversaries? i think that's an area where we see more alignment even though sometimes the argues that get made are in the other direction. >> it does take a little more whole of government, holistic approach as did the biden jicial e.o. around competition in july, 2021, which was about let's get

everybody working together within government on these issues. do you speak to folks in the security commu do you speak to n.s.c. are you having a conversation about this stuff with them? >> yeah, we're in pretty regular contact with them in all sorts of areas. we were specifically mentioned in that e.o., data security is the most obvious but very regular conversations on a whole host of issues. we've worked closely with the department of defense. any time where we're reviewing a defense industry merger and so when we -- blocking the lockheed aerojet merger reflected a close work with them. from their understanding what would the impact of this deal be? the whole of government approach is not just and ideal it's happening in practice. >> let's take another question from the audience. right here in front. >> thank you, i head a public

policy group. very nice to hear you today. a different level of something which i'm sure you will have talked about but you did not mention it is the practice that in the u.s. what we have seen largely was a very strong promotion of economic democracy all over the past. lately, this policy seems to be moving ahead of competition policy by the inflation reduction act and chips act and so on. it is a little surprising but i suppose it has its own test. having failed that, as tech grows, the return to capital and loi boar will converge.

it is evident in the policies you spoke about in any part of the world. now there is ever-increasing quality and economic growth is not inclusive. that's evident in the kind of support trump has been getting in the u.s. as aboutcome of this. what would you respond to that? >> that's a lot. it's a really interesting point. in my conversations across the country i've also sensed when people feel like they're not able to get a fair shake in markets, in our economy, that really does implicate their sense of democracy and whether government is working for them, right, in some fundamental way. so we do see that deep connection. this is where across the government we've seen pivots in policy, right? take ambassador katherine tai who has been eloquent about the

ways we've been shifting to a worker-centered approach to trade policy, recognizing that if you're just focused on short-term efficiency metrics, that can really come at the expense of long-term stability and health domestically. i think that's one area where we've seen a reorientation based on our the last couple of decades. but i think it's something we're seeing more broadly too. >> i want to amplify something the questioner said. i think the entire bargain, the neoliberal bargain, of cheap capital for cheap labor as long as prices are going down and share prices are going up. that's board model. that's not the new model, the president said that in his e.o. we're looking at a more holisti, businesses of all sizes. it's an interesting point. about that.ome back to the

let me come over here and see if there are questions on this side. >> i'm michael nelson, i work two floors up here at the carnegie endowmented on technology. if you read the business press you see a lot of stories about competition policy with bylines from here in washington and brussels. there's a lot of other countries involved, china, u.k., india, japan. i'm wondering as you look around the world if you see competition authorities that are doing some new, innovative, useful things? and should get more attention. and then the other side are there places where you think, wf these agencies need to think twice about the way they're looking at antitrust issues? >> that's a good question. >> the f.t.c. has a long stapping history going back decades of, you know, working with -- cooperating with enforcers in other jurisdictions. of course every jurisdiction has

its own laws and policies, so every take theirs ownaction wite principles in mind. i think one thing that was interesting for me when i joined the f.t.c. was talking to enforcers in other countries was a sense that for the past couple of decades, the message that some of these other enforcers had been hring from the u.s. was, you all are doing it all wrong and the best thing to do is to be more hands off. so we have been in a mode of exporting a more hands off approach to antitrust and competition policy. so as they have seen a pivot here domestically, i think it's been really interesting for them to figure out what that means, you know, more globally. but i think, you know, we've seen a lot of jurisdictions grapple with more challenges and questions around how does competition work in digital markets? how do we make sure we're how do we make s and framework for thinking about competition in very high tech or fast moving

sectors and some of the paradecisional smokestacks that. type of shared learning and you know, erns appearance is always really useful. but ultimately everybody has their own laws. >> ok. i'm going to take one more question from the audience and then i've got a last last question for you. the lady over here. >> hello, everyone, thank you for the session. i'm with the financial times. i think much has been said about smort of of cooperation between sort of both regulators on both sides of the atlantic with your arrival at the f.t.c. and jonathan canter's . i was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that specifically in relation to a.i. following a move that had been made on both sides in this space, sort of the f.t.c. launching an inquiry into the relationship between open a.i. and big players in tech but also

the u.k. and the e.u. signaling they're also looking at things like microsoft's investment in open a.i. what are the conversations like now in that space for you specifically when it comes to rule making or enforcement more broadly? >> i think these are all fairly independent kind of organic areas of interest. the various jeurs dirks are pursuing. of course we're always really keen to know what are other enforcers learning so when we see a jurisdiction put out a report or study with their find wetion look at that very closely. sometimes the facts on the ground will differ quite significantly based on which country you're on. we have to account for those distinctions. but i would say right now there's a general posture of curiosity and really wanting to make sure we're sharing learned experiences and lessons. and i would say a sense that we want to learn from the missed opportunities of web 2.0. so in the early 2000's there was

a sense that digital marks are so fast-moving that if you are to see problems of market power that will self-correct so the best thing for the government to do is to get out of the way. two decades on, i think we've seen that some of those assumptions were unfounded and if anything we've seen how digital markets can be much quicker to tip. how network effects involve reinforcing advantages of data can lock in monopolies in way that invite greater government scrutiny and vigilanceuch earlier. so i think across jurisdictions it's fair to say that there's a sense we want to make sure we're learning from those experiences as well. >> we've got just a couple of minutes left. i want to come back to the point you looked at in your speech and earlier in answer to a question about a sense of americans having individual agency and choice within their own communities. it's interesting to me that economic models that form the basis of a lot of policy still work on the idea that you can

go, if you get tired -- fired tomorrow and walk across the street and get another job. how many people actually they they could walk across the street and et get another job. maybe on k street you could but i don't know. i'm fascinating by that and i'm fascinating by what i see in polls, gallup i think, say as many americans see price gouging, corporate price gouging as being responsible for inflation as they do fiscal stimulus. it's right up -- so there's a sense of trust, agency, belief in government, starting to dove tail with issues of antitrust which is you wouldn't have maybe thought that 10 years ago. seems like this was a wonky, technocratic area. but how do you think about that? any final thoughts on that? >> i think you're right that we wouldn't have seen that 10 years ago but we did see it 110 years ago. the election of 1912 in the united states was centered

around the question of the monopoly problem. and a key issue on which different candidates had to share trues -- views was what are you going to do about the monopoly problem? i think there was a real sense that the monopoly problem had huge implications for people in their day-to-day live, how much they were pay, how much they were making, but also in a more fundamental level whether decisions and outcomes many in people's day-to-day lives were being made through the arbitrary dictates i think one shift we have seen in the u.s. over the years people are connecting the dots more and more between the decisions we are making here in d.c. in antitrust and hoich they are paying for meeds and switching jobs or locked in. it is like to navigate the health care system.

this isn't just the inevitability but legal choices that we can make in one direction to favor a sma or proe democratic approach. it is exciting to see a lot of engagement with the f.t.c. we proposed a rule that would eliminate noncompete clauses co. >> on an average? >> usually a few thousand max. the only other one where we had more was in the junk fees' rule and got it to 60,000. a sense from people that policy choice would allow these noncompetes resulted in effectsf people having to stay tied to

toxic or abusive work commute hundreds of miles because noncompetes prevents them taking a job locally and there are labor markets and product markets and the results on innovation. so i thinkverall g■reater awareness in the choices we are making affecting peoples' lives and wanting to make sure policy makers are held accountable. >> and it can evolve. thank you so much for everything that you do. thanks for the great questions from the awed -- audience. [applause] i would like to invite everybody into the lobby. thank you so much for coming.

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