asserted federal control over the fight against coronavirus. he promised to end what he called dismal progress in vaccinating americans, saying a—hundred— million would be immunised in his first hundred days. he's also emphasising testing, and stricter rules on wearing masks. republicans in the us senate are asking the democrats to put off the trial of donald trump until around february the eleventh, to enable the impeached former president to prepare his defence. house speaker, nancy pelosi, said the trial would show america hadn't forgotten that people died during the assault on the capitol hill. european union leaders have decided to introduce tighter travel restrictions for the bloc�*s internal borders to limit the spread of new coronavirus variants. nonessential travel is discouraged and travellers from countries with high infection rates will be required to take a test before departure and undergo quarantine.

ben at top of the hour. now on bbc news... hardtalk with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk, i'm steven sackur. can and should anything be done to halt the inexorable rise of the western world's global technology giants, the likes of amazon, google and facebook? over the past decade, we've seen these tech titans come to dominate data collection, cloud computing, retail, social media, publishing — the list goes on. but now there is pushback from antimonopoly lawyers and sceptical politicians. my guest, american lawyer lina khan, is in the vanguard of the movement to tame big tech, but whose interest is she serving?

lina kahn in dallas, texas, welcome to hardtalk. thanks for having me. do you believe there is a new momentum behind the push to tame the big, the giant technology companies in the western world? yes, i think there absolutely is. i think we've seen a transformation in public opinion over the last few years and the public case for how these firms have so much power and how they're wielding it in ways that harm our economy and our society, i think have only become more apparent such that now we see a wave of

lawsuits, antitrust lawsuits, as well as new regulatory proposals that would curb their power. but in a funny sort of way, what we've learned through the covid—19 pandemic is just how useful, how incredibly important these technology companies are. i'm thinking of the likes of amazon, apple, google. we perhaps rely on them more now in this very restricted world of lockdowns than we've ever relied upon them before. i think that's absolutely right, and i think what the pandemic has underscored for us is the degree to which these firms essentially provide infrastructure for the digital age. these firms control the core infrastructure for both commerce and communications, and they are providing very valuable services. but it also means that you have a small group of private executives that are ultimately setting the rules of who gets to use the infrastructure and on what terms.

and that approach is historically at odds with how we treated infrastructure, which has always been accountable to public rules and has had to meet a higher set of regulations. but in your daily life, as you are right now, at home in dallas, texas, are you thinking to yourself as you use your laptop and your smartphone, are you thinking to yourself, "oh, my god, these services that i'm getting "really don't work, they're utterly dysfunctional "and they need to be changed"? because i dare say many people watching this around the world are not thinking that. that's a great question, i think, two things — one is, i think even when services are good for consumers, they can be hurting a whole set of other interests, be it workers, be it new business formation, be it democracy at large. and second, it's really difficult to know what we're missing out on. one reason why the us in particular has focused so much on competition policy is because there's been a view

that competition and forcing businesses to compete on the merits of their products and services is really one of the best ways to guarantee that consumers and users are getting the best products and services that are available. and when you instead have firms that gain monopoly power and are exercising that monopoly power in ways that inhibit new firms, new competitors from competing on the merits of their own products and services, you can lose years and years of innovation, years and years of superior products that users just never had access to because the incumbents, the giants, snuffed them out. so i think that counterfactual can be quite difficult to get at, but it's something that's very real to consider. all right. well, i want to dig deeper into that notion that the competition isn't working and isn't delivering for the public, and specific sort of ways in which you can make that case a little later.

but i do actually want to track back, just for a short while, and ask you how you got into this, because your backstory is fascinating. you came to the us from the uk as a kid with your family. you went through university. i believe you thought for a while you wanted to be a journalist and then you got very preoccupied with the law, but in particular with antitrust law and the way that the us capitalist system works and the way it's regulated by law. what drove your fascination with antitrust? so, one of the firstjobs i had after university was as a policy researcher and journalist, and my beat was to document how markets and economies across the us economy had really evolved over decades. so i did these deep dives into all sorts of sectors, including agriculture, chicken farming, the seed industry, the airline industry, the book publishing industry, rental cars. and what became clear after doing these deep dives is that there had been

a systemic trend across the us economy towards increasing concentration across the board. so, across sectors, markets had come to be controlled by a very small number of companies, and this was creating all sorts of problems for us as consumers, but also for us as workers, as citizens, it had contributed to a decline in new business formation. and so here was this systemic problem across the economy and it was interesting to encounter because the us has a set of antitrust, antimonopoly laws on the books. and so i got really deep into researching how it was that, on the one hand, we had all of these laws that were designed to prevent the exact situation that we were now confronting, and that led me to understand how, in the us, we've undergone this wholesale ideological transformation of how we view and enforce the antitrust laws. well, let me stop you there,

because i think this is really important. what you appear to believe is that the way in which the us government and the courts have interpreted antitrust laws changed fundamentally in around the 19605 and �*70s, and it became much more driven by a very simple notion of whether the consumer, the customer, was being served in terms of price, more than anything else. and as long as that was the case, as long as the customer was getting a decent low price and it appeared to be the customer was being well served, then antitrust laws didn't come into play. and your contention is that there's more to it than low price. am i right? that's right. foundationally, the us antitrust laws were passed in order to curb concentrations of economic power. there was a recognition that, in the same way that concentrations of political power — say, in a king — would undermine democracy, the concentration of economic power in the hands of industrial titans would also undermine democracy. and so there were these democratic roots to how antitrust laws were passed

and how they were enforced. when we underwent this revolution instead to focus the antitrust laws on consumer welfare, they effectively became focused on efficiency. and so the idea was that if companies are merging, but that they can promise that they'll lower prices, that they'll produce more goods and services, that that means there are no other problems. but surely you cannot argue that the sort of service being delivered, for example, by amazon, which has become a real target company of yours, you cannot argue that the service isn't both efficient and low cost, which is precisely why tens and tens of millions of people, notjust in the us but right around the world, have turned to amazon in the face of many, many alternatives for online retail, online shopping, they go to amazon because it is very efficient and relatively cheap, and that is surely

a success story? i think it's worth interrogating what we mean when we say amazon is efficient. there's one thing that's operational efficiency and then there's another thing when it's basicallyjust increased bargaining power over retailers, over brands and over third—party merchants. i think there's an open question as to whether consumer prices have fallen. amazon goods and services, prices change hundreds of times a day. and so there's kind of an instability of prices that limits our ability to actually do one—on—one comparisons. but in a capitalist system, isn't the ultimate arbiter what the consumer does? and the consumer turns to amazon. as i say, they have other choices. there are many other online retailers in most capitalist economic models across the world, and people choose amazon because they like what it offers. i'm just struggling to see how, in a competitive marketplace, which still, to me, it looks like it is, you can claim that amazon is breaching antitrust rules?

so, amazon in the us captures more than 50% of all online commerce. that's a very significant amount. and during the pandemic, its share has only increased. it also, importantly, not only sells its own products as a first—party retailer, but also serves as a host to third—party merchants. and there's been terrific journalism showing how amazon actually exploits those third—party merchants in order to basically mine that marketplace for information that it then uses to actually directly compete with those businesses and demote them in its rankings. and so i think there's a real question here about whether these third parties are able to compete on a level playing field. you know, the real essence of competition is the question of whether you can compete on the merits of your own product. so, if you have a third—party merchant that introduces a new, say, vacuum cleaner, 50% of all online sales

are made through amazon, so it has to sell on amazon. all of a sudden, amazon sees that the sales of this vacuum cleaner are off the charts. what it does oftentimes is it uses that information to go create a direct replica and then, all of a sudden, the amazon replica is number one in the rankings and this original merchant that took the risk is nowhere to be seen. this is an age—old argument, goes back to the supreme court judge louis brandeis a century ago and his phrase about the curse of bigness. you just don't like big, successful capitalist corporations, it seems, and the big tech companies, with their trillion dollar values these days, are the biggest of all. but is it enough to want to bring them downjust cos they're very big and very successful? so two things. i think there's actually ample evidence that these firms have actually not grown, you know, to the heights that they have simply through competing on the merits, right.

in the us, as well as in the uk, we have a series of competition rules that clarify what is fair conduct, what is, you know, pro—competitive conduct, and what is unfair conduct or anti—competitive conduct. and so, you know, if you're a grocery store and a new grocery store emerges across the street, if you go and, you know, burn down that store, that's not considered fair competition, right. there are all sorts of rules that limit what kind of conduct you can engage in. i think what we've seen from the lawsuits filed in the us recently, in particular against facebook and google, is that at key moments, these firms engaged in predatory and coercive tactics that were designed to maintain their dominance and squash rivals, rather than compete on the merits. and so i think those are the questions that we really need to be asking. separately, i do think we're at a stage of assessing whether these firms are now providing essential infrastructure to us as citizens, as consumers, as businesses. and if so, traditionally, we've applied a very

different set of rules to infrastructure, right. i mean, the railroads, which were also monopolistic 100,120 years ago, we required them to abide by non—discrimination rules. we applied rate caps that limited how much they could charge, because we understood that when companies are playing a gatekeeper role, they can use that gatekeeper power in all sorts of extortionary, coercive and predatory ways. and so, even if we're not going to break them up, we need to apply a set of rules that limits how they can use that power. right, which raises... and so that's really the conversation we need to have. right, raises the question whether your view of what should happen will actually happen, ie, is the us government really ready for a very big fight with the technology giants who wield an awful lot of power and influence in the united states today? you spent some time working inside the federal trade commission, which has a key role to play here. what do you believe today? do you think, right now, the us government is ready for that kind of a showdown?

the us government has already entered that kind of showdown, right. the justice department in 0ctoberfiled a landmark lawsuit against google. the federal trade commission in decemberfiled a landmark case against facebook. we also have somewhere between, you know, 48 to 50 state attorneys general that have brought their own separate lawsuits, two against google and one against facebook. so we are already in the throes of this fight, when it comes to antitrust litigation. yeah, but it's not clear how hard the government is going to press this, and it's not clear whether they're going to press it all the way, to calling for the break—up of some of these companies. there's a professor at columbia law school whom you know well, tim wu, who argues that the only remedy here is to break up companies like facebook, for example. facebook being sued on the basis that it has gone too far in its monopolistic practices by taking over whatsapp and instagram.

timothy wu says the only remedy is to force facebook to relinquish those branches like instagram and whatsapp. do you believe that can and will happen? well, i think there's no doubt that the government is requesting from the court that facebook be forced to divest whatsapp and instagram, so the government actually is already pushing for the break—up. i think, you know, we have to see how the arguments unfold in court, and what remedy, ultimately, the court decides in this case. that said, you know, lawsuits, antitrust lawsuits, are only one path to achieving break—ups. you can also achieve break—ups through legislation, which in the past the us has done, again, when dealing with infrastructure industries, be it railroads,

telecommunications firms, banks. and so if lawsuits don't get us there, i think there's a question about whether new laws could. yeah, but the point is, one looks atjoe biden and what he said about big tech and the need for government to intervene to change the rules of the game, and his signals are quite mixed. for example, those who know best say that his favoured pick to run anti—trust matters at the department of justice is a woman called renata hess...hesse, who used to work for one of the tech giants, and who, in the past, has talked about amazon in a very positive way, saying it's added hundreds of billions of dollars of value to the us economy, it's a brilliant innovator. you know, it doesn't necessarily sound like joe biden�*s top team are going to be as keen on this as you are. it's a great question, and i think we're all eagerly awaiting to see who he picks for that key role. you know, public advocacy groups in the us are very concerned that it could go to somebody who has a history of representing some of the same companies that the justice department is currently investigating

and litigating against. so i think that will be a key signal. but i also think... what...just as a matter of interest, what do you think of renata hesse? another quote from her, "the reason why people use google search, generally," she says, "is because they like it better." which goes back to the argument we were having earlier about the importance of consumer choice, and judging consumer choice by what people actually do. she doesn't sound like a woman who is determined to go after any of these companies. well, i think that argument in particular is one that has now been significantly rebutted by the evidence. actually, the uk's competition and markets authority did this fantastic report, very closely studying the search market and search advertising markets in particular, and noting all the ways in which, actually, google�*s dominance

inhibits competition on the merits, and so it's not just that, you know, users like google better and so they go to google for that reason, but that google has instead systematically deprived rivals of the type of traffic, of the type of data, that would allow them to compete on the merits. so i do think that that view, which my understanding is she expressed a few years ago, is increasingly out of date and not really corresponding to the new facts and realities that we're seeing on the ground. why do you think that in europe, for example, there appears to be a much greater readiness to hit these companies hard, and very soon? for example, the european competition commissioner, margrethe vestager, has said that the digital markets act and the other legislation that the commission is pushing forward will involve a willingness to impose, quote, "structural remedies, "divestitu res, that sort of thing". she's being very explicit with the stick rather than the carrot. why?

is it because they're...in europe, they're less pressured by the financial clout of these big american tech giants? it's a good question, and, you know, i would say that these giants have so much at stake that they're really able to, you know, throw a lot of money in all sorts ofjurisdictions. ithink, you know, europe has been quite clear eyed about the problem. the european commission has investigated and brought lawsuits against google for antitrust violations three times now. i think the real key issue that they run into is the problem of remedy, and so, in each of those cases, the remedy ultimately ended up being quite weak. and i think that's what's then pushed the commission to really argue in favour of structural rules, broader, marketplace—wide rules. and so it'll be really interesting to see what happens there. let's turn the focus from the raw economic power of these companies to their power as content providers, as... ..well, some would say publishers, although they

don't like that phrase. it's come into sharp focus over the last four years, in the donald trump presidency, and in particular, the last few weeks, with the ending of the trump presidency and with trump finally being taken off twitter and facebook, and then the right—wing conservative social media platform parler effectively being shut down because it lost its amazon servers. in these various different ways, were you happy as, if i may say so, a progressive person, that these things happened? or were you extremely worried because, again, it pointed to the power of big tech, the unaccountable power to actually decide what gets published and what does not? i think it's quite coherent to think both that, you know, facebook and twitter and, belatedly youtube, did the right thing to remove trump's messages, and that their unilateral ability to do so is a problem for democracy, right.

the context here was that messages from trump had helped incite a violent and deadly insurrection, and additional communications from him posed an immediate threat. but this also demonstrated the remarkable way in which private power is now governing our public sphere. and so i think, you know, the question of whether, on any given instance, these firms do or do not remove harmful messages is besides the point. the question is, really, who is setting the rules? is it democratically accountable public officials, or is it really a small number of private executives? right, but does it give you pause that angela merkel, alexei navalny, the russian opposition politician, tony blair, all of these individuals expressed deep alarm that twitter and facebook could just unilaterally take donald trump off their platform? there is a real issue here of freedom of expression, is there not, and who actually controls the way in which information flows

in the 21st century? i think those are the central questions that we're grappling with, right. the reason that there was so much alarm at the unilateral ability of these firms to cut off the president of the united states is because these firms are now serving as core communications infrastructure, right. if there were adequate competition or if there were real alternatives, then i don't think you would have seen the same level of alarm. so i think... just finally, then, is it time, because they are acting like publishers and they are making editorial decisions and judging content, is it time for them to be treated as publishers under us law, which they never have been in the past, and which is one more incredibly important bone of contention? i think the time is absolutely right to reconsider whether the section 230 regime in the us that we've had that exempts these firms from liability for the content that they host, whether that's still right. i think we've seen that it, in many ways, doesn't make sense any more, especially given that these

firms�* business models, facebook and google�*s in particular, incentivise them to promote, you know, hateful speech, propaganda, disinformation. and so i think that the business model also raises questions about, you know, whether they should not really be liable here. very briefly, lina kahn, will these tech giants, thinking of amazon, google, facebook, will they be with us in their current form, in the size as they currently are, or even bigger, in ten years�* time, or not? it's a great question, you know, i think it really will depend on the courage of public governments to take on these firms and ensure that their core infrastructure is really working for the public, and notjust a small number of private executives. and you think that, therefore, the answer is, they will be brought down, they will be tamed or not? ithink, you know, we are at a point where it seems like the us, at least, is finally interested in doing

so, and we have a strong history of doing so, you know, in the first gilded age, where we dealt with the first era of big monopolies, so i'm hopeful that we'll be able to draw on that tradition and do so again. lina khan, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thanks for having me. hello there. flooding continues to be of concern but the weather certainly isn't going to make things any worse over the next few days. the current situation — well, the number of flood and severe flood warnings has just started to edge down.

so, things are slowly improving for some communities. 0ther rivers though taking longer to respond. for example, the 0use in york. well, that's not going to peak until later in the day on friday. so, forsome, it could still get worse before it gets better. lots of snow around of course. that snow still with us at the moment across the high ground in scotland. still some strong winds and further accumulations. otherwise, it's a cold night with the frost. the showers, there is a risk of icy stretches dotted around the country. so, it will be another cold start to the day as we edge into friday. cold north—westerly winds with us pulling in this chilly air. it will be a day of sunshine and showers for sure, but some of the showers could be quite interesting. one of those particular showers that i've got my beady eye on is this clump of cloud you can see herejust west of ireland. that's, ithink, likely to push across ireland and then work into wales through the afternoon, and probably into the midlands as we head towards the evening. more about that in a moment. i think broadly speaking though for most of us on friday, it's going to be a fine day with sunshine. again, there will be showers

around, wintry at times, a bit of snow mixed in still across the north—west but conditions improving compared with recent days, i think it's fair to say. then, that clump of showers, well, i think it might go in across parts of wales as we head through the afternoon. could be heavy showers. if they're heavy enough, we might well see some sleet and some snow mixed in with that, and then that clump of showers if it's still there may well edge into parts of the midlands for the evening time. there is a bit of uncertainty about that but that might be something that you see during the day on friday. now, saturday's weather, again it's a showery kind of set up. showers wintry again, most frequent across the north—west but we do have a low pressure system just going in close to the south coast of england. that has rain and snow mixed in with it and it's not far away from south east england. so, we'll have to keep a close eye on developments there — if there are any. for most of the weekend, though, it isjust going to be a sunshine and showers kind of set—up.

0n into saturday evening and night—time though, we've got another trough that's going to be moving in. and that pushes in across england and wales and is more likely to bring a bit of snow even down to low levels. there could be some changes in the position of that feature. but nevertheless, a few of you will be seeing some snow at some point during the weekend.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm ben bland. on his first full day in office — president biden lays out his strategy to tackle coronavirus and warns it'll require a wartime undertaking to defeat the disease: it's going to take months for us to turn things around, and let me be equally clear, we will get through this. a year after china's first coronavirus lockdown — a special report from wuhan on how normality has returned. the so—called islamic state claims responsibility for the bomb—blast in baghdad, which killed 32 people and injured more than 100. and will the next

generation be able to unite america? we hear from two teenagers at the opposite ends