Senator Elizabeth Warren, aka “Senator Karen,” is at it again. The Senator from Massachusetts is leading a group of her colleagues trying to block Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot.

She sent the Federal Trade Commission a letter stating: “We urge the FTC to oppose the proposed Amazon – iRobot acquisition. Amazon’s anticompetitive practices stifle innovation and harm consumers, workers, small businesses, and the economy as a whole. The FTC should use its authority under the Clayton Act to prevent the company from further violating our competition laws.”

I find this type of language and posturing from the likes of Senator Karen eerily similar to the actions of the Chinese Communist Party and their regulation against Tencent and Alibaba.

Will the FTC attempt to block every acquisition attempt made by Amazon, Google, and Meta? It seems that way. The Chair of the FTC is Lina Khan. When Khan was a Yale Law Student, The Yale Law Journal published her article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” How is Khan supposed to be impartial in evaluating antitrust law with anything regarding Amazon?

Amazon is a profitable company. Many founders build startup companies to get acquired by companies like Amazon. Not all founders of startup companies want to continue competing and potentially get wiped out by their competitors. Many want to cash out on a lifetime of hard work instead of heading a publically traded company. Do you think Brynn Putnam regrets selling her connected fitness company, Mirror for $500 Million to Lululemon? Does Jamie Siminoff have a lifetime of regret selling Ring to Amazon for over $1.2 billion? Many of these startups can use their parent company’s resources and expertise to reach more users when they become subsidiaries. Most importantly, they don’t have to deal with the likes of Senator Karen or Lina Khan trying to regulate their companies to death.

Both Warren and Khan act on ideology and politics. Earlier this year, the FTC sued Meta to stop them from buying Within Unlimited, a small startup virtual reality fitness company. Khan did so against the advisory of her staff, which recommended the FTC not sue Meta.

This crusade against Big Tech is all about gaining power and influence. Companies that became too profitable, and now the government wants to intervene. Remember when Warren ran for President, she was clamoring to break up Amazon, Google, and Facebook but at the same time gladly took their donations.

From an investment standpoint, I see the government meddling in every acquisition as a bad result for everyone. Based on Warren and Khan’s vision, they want to break up these companies and turn Big Tech into the airline industry – A bunch of barely profitable companies with no differentiating advantage and subservient to the government. If the government continues to regulate Big Tech, they will eventually have to bail them out just like they did with airlines, the auto industry, and banks.

I am reminded of Chapter 3 of Zero to One: All Happy Companies Are Different:

U.S. airline companies serve millions of passengers and create hundreds of billions of dollars of value each year. But in 2012, when the average airfare each way was $178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Compare them to Google, which creates less value but captures far more. Google brought in $50 billion in 2012 (versus $160 billion for the airlines), but it kept 21% of those revenues as profits—more than 100 times the airline industry’s profit margin that year. Google makes so much money that it’s now worth three times more than every U.S. airline combined.

Is the goal to turn Amazon into United Airlines? I hope not.