FTC's Khan appoints Erie Meyer as chief technologist, Holly Vedova as acting head of Bureau of Competition, Sam Levine as head of Bureau of Consumer Protection
Diane Bartz / Reuters : Tweets: @ashk4n , @katyetc , @carlmalamud , @nancyscola , and @joshua_sisco Tweets: Ashkan Soltani / @ashk4n : Oh wow Erie Meyer (@chopraftc's incredible staff technologist/advisor) was appointed CTO of FTC Holly Vedova acting director of Bureau of Competition Sam Levin acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection https://www.theinformation.com/ ... Kathryn Peters / @katyetc : Love love love to see smart technologists and consumer champions in roles like this. @Erie's going to be a great CTO at the FTC. https://twitter.com/... Carl Malamud / @carlmalamud : Could not have made a better choice. Not only is @erie America's foremost technologist named after a Great Lake, she has a huge range of experience (and success) in govtech. Knows her stuff, gets results. https://twitter.com/... Nancy Scola / @nancyscola : And Sam Levine will be the acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. These are the folks who have been running things behind the scenes now stepping out in front. https://twitter.com/... Josh Sisco / @joshua_sisco : New FTC Chair Lina Khan names a group of top staffers, all of whom previously worked for Rohit Chopra, her key progressive ally on the commission. https://www.theinformation.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Three weeks into Lina Khan's chairmanship, this is the personnel move that converts her agenda into staffing: Khan has since drawn criticism for pursuing aggressive antitrust cases that may fail, and these appointments show her building the bench for them. Erie Meyer arrives at the chief technologist post once held by Ashkan Soltani and later Lorrie Cranor, coming from Rohit Chopra's office, while Holly Vedova and Sam Levine take acting control of the Competition and Consumer Protection bureaus — the two units that actually bring cases.
The 'acting' titles matter: they let Khan install aligned leadership immediately while permanent confirmations play out. The reaction tweets in the coverage — from Ashkan Soltani, Carl Malamud and others — frame this as consumer champions and technologists landing enforcement roles, which is exactly the profile the later profiles of Khan's FTC describe.
First-order effects
- The FTC's two case-making bureaus are now run by Khan allies on an acting basis, so the agenda in her interview on leading the agency and its regulatory failures no longer depends on holdover leadership to execute.
- Meyer's appointment gives the agency a chief technologist drawn from Chopra's staff, restoring the Soltani–Cranor lineage of technical expertise at the top of the FTC.
Second-order effects
- Companies in the FTC's crosshairs — the Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet matters Khan discusses in the related interview coverage — now face a Competition Bureau staffed to pursue technically grounded theories rather than only conventional market-definition cases.
- The acting-director structure puts pressure on the White House and Senate to confirm permanent leadership aligned with Khan, since every month on 'acting' status entrenches her picks' control over the docket.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the FTC institutionalizes technologist-in-enforcement as a standing capability — the CTO office as a recurring feature of antitrust and consumer-protection cases against platforms, not a one-off hire.
- Personnel as policy carries a known risk the later coverage documents: [[a:973012|Republican commissioners and some career officials reported feeling excluded under Khan's leadership]], suggesting the same loyalty-driven staffing that speeds enforcement can also deepen internal factional lines at the agency.
The trend: Khan is staffing the FTC with technologists and consumer-protection allies to give a more aggressive enforcement posture against large platforms the operational capacity to actually litigate.