Exclusive | Mark Cuban backtracks after urging Kamala Harris to fire Big Tech trust-buster Lina Khan if she wins White House

PITTSBURGH — Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban backpedaled on his assessment of Biden’s controversial Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan Saturday, telling The Post that he doesn’t want to influence personnel in a would-be Harris White House — after previously saying he’d ditch the trust-busting FTC chair.

Stumping for Harris in Pittsburgh at headquarters for Duolingo, a language-learning tech company, the Shark Tank celeb said he’s not lobbying the VP for specific staffing choices.

“I’m not trying to get involved in personnel at all,” Cuban told The Post, adding that he hasn’t talked to the campaign about Khan “at all.”

“I haven’t said, ‘Hire this person or that person,’ and I don’t have the intention to,” the mogul said.

Cuban previously said that if he were Harris, he would keep Khan out of a future Democratic administration, echoing calls from major Democratic donors across Wall Street and Silicon Valley to sack the anti-monopoly crusader.

Specifically, Cuban’s anti-Khan comments were for fear that breaking up big tech companies would hinder American dominance in artificial intelligence.

Specifics aside, Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out swinging in response to Cuban’s comments on X, threatening an “out and out brawl” if donors come for the sitting FTC chair. 

Caught between progressives and billionaires on either flank of her party, Harris has so far refused to embrace Khan or her aggressive antitrust agenda.

Khan has advocated for breaking up Big Tech companies to stimulate innovation, arguing antitrust suits against IBM and other “national champions” eventually gave rise to the internet and generative AI.

Under her leadership, the FTC has sued Amazon for favoring its own products on its marketplace and Meta for buying up would-be social media competitors Instagram and WhatsApp.

The federal agency is also investigating Google, Microsoft and Amazon’s multibillion-dollar AI deals to stop monopolies in their tracks before they stifle innovative startups from competing in the emerging technology field.

“My concern was not if she has sanctions or rulings against big AI companies, but if she broke them up,” Cuban told The Post, calling AI a “zero sum race.” 

“Either we’re the best in the world or not,” he said. “If you look at the foundational AI companies, they’re having to spend tens of billions of dollars. There’s not a startup, at least the way the technology is right now, in terms of cost performance, that’s just going to walk in and spend ten billion dollars.”

While Cuban disagrees with Khan on breaking up Big Tech, he praised the Biden appointee’s work suing pharmacy benefit managers for artificially raising drug costs.

“What she’s done with click to cancel, scam companies, pharmacy benefit managers has been phenomenal,” Cuban said, whose online pharmacy venture allows consumers to buy drugs at lower prices without the traditional pharmacy and insurance benefits system.

Cuban said he and Khan have influenced Harris’ policies to increase transparency in the pharmaceutical industry and crack down on the middle men “setting prices in insane ways that are impacting people’s health.” 

Still, the billionaire emphasized that in the event of a Harris presidency, he’s “not trying to influence policy at all.”

Fellow tech titan and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman is singing the same tune as a prominent Harris backer in the business world, insisting that he hasn’t met with the veep and doesn’t seek to influence her potential administration. A venture capitalist who co-founded LinkedIn and serves on the board of Microsoft, Hoffman has been a major critic of Khan, whose commission is investigating whether Microsoft and an AI startup founded by Hoffman avoided antitrust review of a $650 million deal.

Cuban also said Saturday that he doesn’t want a job in the administration, but told CNBC in September he talks to the Harris team frequently and asked them to consider him to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose current chief has clamped down on cryptocurrency.

Some town hall attendees worried Cuban’s hands-off approach to Big Tech might influence Harris.

“Once you have the power, you don’t want to give it up,” said Michael Yom, who works in healthcare in Pittsburgh, advocating for a “healthy tension” between Google and AI startups.

“He’s going to have to tone it down a little bit. He’s a little bit more on the business side, and she’s more center,” Yom said about Cuban.

“If they work together, he’ll have to be more accommodating. I don’t know if he has it in him.”