Tim Wu

Timothy Shiou-Ming Wu (Chinese: 吳修銘; born 1972) is an American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the United States from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for significant contributions to antitrust and communications policy, coining the phrase "network neutrality" in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In the late 2010s, Wu was a leading advocate for an antitrust lawsuit directed at the breakup of Facebook. Wu is a scholar of the media and technology industries, and his academic specialties include antitrust, copyright, and telecommunications law. He was named to The National Law Journal's "America's 100 Most Influential Lawyers" in 2013, as well as to the "Politico 50" in 2014 and 2015. Additionally, Wu was named one of Scientific American's 50 people of the year in 2006, and one of Harvard University's 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine in 2007. His book The Master Switch was named among the best books of 2010 by The New Yorker, Fortune, and Publishers Weekly. From 2011 to 2012, Wu served as a senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission, and from 2015 to 2016 he was senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General, where he launched a successful lawsuit against Time Warner Cable for falsely advertising their broadband speeds. Wu also served on the National Economic Council in the Obama administration under Jeffrey Zients, and served under Director Brian Deese during the Biden administration. In the Biden administration, Wu notably helped author the 2021 Executive Order on Competition.