JK

Jonathan Kanter

Things Jonathan Says on Podcasts

Led the Justice Department's Antitrust Division as Assistant Attorney General from 2021 to 2024, overseeing major cases against technology companies including Google, and is now a distinguished professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Appears regularly as a guest discussing antitrust and tech regulation, including on Decoder with Nilay Patel, Prof G Markets, and Pivot.

“But when I hear that they want to slow down, there's a degree of suspicion, which is if you really think you're building something harmful, you don't have an obligation to ship it, right? If Boeing has a door flying off mid-air, it doesn't need Airbus to ground its planes in order to figure out how to fix its problem, right?” — Jonathan Kanter, WSJ's Take On the Week “I think these big data centers look big, but they don't necessarily employ people. I challenge people all the time to think of a person that they know who's actually worked in a data center. And I don't think yet I've gotten a response for somebody outside the tech industry.” — Jonathan Kanter, WSJ's Take On the Week “If you believe your product is going to destroy humanity, then don't build it.” — Jonathan Kanter, Decoder with Nilay Patel

Where to Find Them

Jonathan Kanter has been a guest on Prof G Markets (7 times) , Squawk on the Street (6 times) , Squawk Pod (4 times) , Decoder with Nilay Patel (4 times) , On with Kara Swisher (2 times) , Pivot (Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway) (2 times) , Odd Lots , Hard Fork (NYT) , Bloomberg Law , WSJ's Take On the Week and What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future .

Recently: “How AI Regulation Could Help the Public—and Investors Too” on WSJ's Take On the Week (October 2026); “10AM Hour: 5-10% Pullback Coming? C.H. Robinson CEO of Deal for RXO, Former DOJ Antirust Chief on AI Regulation 10/5/26” on Squawk on the Street (October 2026); “Does AI need an antitrust exemption so it doesn't kill everyone????” on Decoder with Nilay Patel (September 2026); “Geopolitical Expert: Iran War May Drag On For Years” on Prof G Markets (September 2026); “Truth Social’s Advantage & AI Anxiety 8/13/26” on Squawk Pod (August 2026); “The Iran War’s Oil Shock — How Bad Could It Get?” on Prof G Markets (March 2026).

What They Said

“But when I hear that they want to slow down, there's a degree of suspicion, which is if you really think you're building something harmful, you don't have an obligation to ship it, right? If Boeing has a door flying off mid-air, it doesn't need Airbus to ground its planes in order to figure out how to fix its problem, right?” — Jonathan Kanter, WSJ's Take On the Week

Kanter responds to AI company leaders who say the whole industry should slow down together. He argues that a company worried about its own product can simply hold it back, and that rules with real consequences would push companies to compete on safety.

WSJ's Take On the Week · 2026-10-25 Permalink → Listen →
WSJ's Take On the Week Around 26:53 into the episode
Jonathan Kanter

And so, and so- It's how they're

Miriam Gottfried

legally obligated to behave. Yeah, right.

Jonathan Kanter

…going to be wildly successful. They're still going to make money hand over fist. There's still going to be plenty of opportunity for great returns. I think what we're hearing, including from the shareholders, is just tell us where the lines on the road are. Tell us where the stop signs and the traffic lights are, and then make the consequences significant enough so that we can adhere to them. But when I hear that they want to slow down, there's a degree of suspicion, which is if you really think you're building something harmful, you don't have an obligation to ship it, right? If Boeing has a door flying off mid-air, it doesn't need Airbus to ground its planes in order to figure out how to fix its problem, right? And so I think we want my view is we want companies competing to develop safe and secure products, and we want to give them the incentive to do that. And I think that is good for shareholder returns. It's good for the public. And it's going to be necessary if we want products that are safe and secure. And I think we've learned our lesson on the first generation of the internet that just some…

Telis Demos

So we've been talking about regulation a lot from kind of the user's point of view. I think there's a couple other areas, which is in order to say that we have a fair competitive market, because at the end of the day, too, if these are products, we want them to be priced appropriately, right? If…

Jonathan Kanter

Yes. Right. Of course, it does. I mean, this is why the antitrust laws exist. It reminds you a lot of, you know, the trusts from antitrust were these organizations that had their kind of ownership interest all over the economy. And that circular ownership was actually part of what led to the…

Miriam Gottfried

So we've talked about competition among U.S. companies, but we haven't talked about a thing that the Trump administration brings up a lot, which is competition with China. How could regulating our own AI industry hold us back from competing with China? Is that a fear? Because that's something…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“I think these big data centers look big, but they don't necessarily employ people. I challenge people all the time to think of a person that they know who's actually worked in a data center. And I don't think yet I've gotten a response for somebody outside the tech industry.” — Jonathan Kanter, WSJ's Take On the Week

Kanter, the former head of antitrust at the Justice Department, says local opposition to data centers is really a proxy for a broader loss of public trust in tech companies. He argues people feel they were promised jobs and growth and suspect they're being conned.

WSJ's Take On the Week · 2026-10-25 Permalink → Listen →
WSJ's Take On the Week Around 15:58 into the episode
Miriam Gottfried

Wow. I don't

Telis Demos

think I followed that.

Jonathan Kanter

Thankfully, it didn't pass, but it almost did. And so now we have the states stepping forward. And here's, I think, the data centers in large part are a proxy for the broader concern and lack of trust that the public has with respect to tech companies. And this goes back to the internet era, social media, and all these areas where they were promised a rose garden, but they got social media addiction. And so part of what's happening here is the public is saying, hey, I think I'm being conned. I think these big data centers look big, but they don't necessarily employ people. I challenge people all the time to think of a person that they know who's actually worked in a data center. And I don't think yet I've gotten a response for somebody outside the tech industry. So

Miriam Gottfried

they're not providing the jobs that people thought they would be.

Jonathan Kanter

Exactly. And so what's happening, and I think the public is picking up on this, is you have these big boxes that consume lots of natural resources that potentially tax the grid, but don't employ people. And then the wealth from the products and services go back to another area. And so I know…

Miriam Gottfried

So if you could wave your magic wand and somehow make Congress functional, where do you think lawmakers should begin when it comes to regulating AI without curbing innovation and growth?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
“If you believe your product is going to destroy humanity, then don't build it.” — Jonathan Kanter, Decoder with Nilay Patel

Jonathan Kanter, who ran the Justice Department's antitrust division, was arguing with Nilay Patel about whether ordinary products-liability law can reach AI harms. He had just finished a long complaint that Congress is incapable of setting basic safety rules and that the tech companies asking for regulation are lobbying against it. Then he refuses to let any of that work as an excuse, and reframes safety as an engineering problem rather than a regulatory one.

Decoder with Nilay Patel · 2026-09-19 Permalink → Listen →
Decoder with Nilay Patel Around 09:45 into the episode
Jonathan Kanter

…be more than products liability. You're just people doing bad things or companies creating technology that's doing bad things. And the products liability framework actually. Did work most recently in the case against Meta for Facebook and Instagram and child safety and security and mental health.

Nilay Patel

Wait, hold on. I want to hold. That is really fascinating to me. Like this is a thing I'm really interested in talking about because it took a decade for it to. That's

Jonathan Kanter

…And frankly, if the political scientist in me would trace that back to things like gerrymandering and Citizens United, where our process has gotten out of control. And Congress, which should be doing its basic job of putting basic safety standards and responsibilities in place, hasn't done that. That having been said, the lack of action by Congress is not an excuse to deliver dangerous products. If you believe your product is going to destroy humanity, then don't build it. If you believe your product is going to go break into someone else's stuff, then go back to the drawing board and figure out how you build it in a way that's safer. And guess what? That's innovation. These are innovation problems, not just regulatory problems. We need to do a better job incentivizing our companies to build safer and secure products. And when they do that, those products will…

Nilay Patel

let me make the comparison to social media regulation just a little more tightly.

Jonathan Kanter

Okay.

Nilay Patel

We just had the big meta case that is a products liability case, right? Your products were designed in a way that caused harm to teenagers. Meta settled the case because I think Mark would prefer to build AI than care about

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

Collections They Appear In

Money & Markets Tech Strategy & Big Tech US Politics