Dana Mattioli speaks about her new book, The Everything War, which examines how Amazon came to dominate the U.S. economy through its “scorched-earth” tactics.

“I found just a ton of business practices driven by this toxic culture at Amazon, where the company lied, spied, cheated its way to the top,” she says. Mattioli also discusses the threat of antitrust lawsuits to Amazon and other Big Tech firms, political pressure on U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and more.

[...] Amazon has had a really bumpy history with both the [U.S.} Republicans, specifically Donald Trump, and also the [U.S.] Democrats. You know, [U.S. President Joe] Biden has been really tough on Amazon. He put in place Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, the agency overseeing them. And she brought forward this historic monopoly lawsuit against the company last year.

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Two major Democratic donors, media mogul Barry Diller and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, have publicly called for Kamala Harris to fire FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has led Biden’s antitrust efforts — that’s if Kamela Harris becomes president. Hoffman sits on the board of Microsoft, which was sued by the FTC.

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Lina Khan has become this lightning rod in CEO circles, but specifically in tech circles. We’ve seen CEOs and VCs become very frustrated with the FTC under Lina Khan, because she’s been very critical of them. She’s taken a very close look at their companies. They’ve brought lawsuits against all Big Four tech companies, between the DOJ and the FTC, as well as other companies. So it’s not surprising. But Biden has been a staunch advocate of hers.

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