Speech

The Federal Communications Commission has been ramping up our work to promote space-based innovation.

Senator [Tammy] Baldwin (D-WI) and I served together in the United States Senate. And it is, indeed, with her help, all across Wisconsin, that President Joe Biden and I have been able to create jobs, expand opportunity, and strengthen American manufacturing. We are here to discuss our continuation of that work. Take, for example, our work on high-speed Internet. In America in the 21st century, high-speed Internet is not a luxury.

What I won’t do is reflexively say that no regulation of artificial intelligence is a sine qua non for innovation. Instead, the throughline I think you can trace is that, where the United States has succeeded in technological development, it has done so through a mindful attempt to cultivate and potentiate innovation.

From my perch as the head of our Nation’s expert agency on communications, I can’t help but be an optimist about the future of AI. Every day I see how communications networks power our world. I know how their expansion and evolution can change commercial and civic life. I also know the power of those communications networks can grow exponentially when we can use AI to understand how to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our networks. Because the day is not far off when we will be able to use this technology to help self-configure, self-optimize, and self-heal facilities.

President Joe Biden (D) announced a milestone in the Internet for All funding from our $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment—or BEAD—program. Florida will receive over $1.1 billion to bring high-speed Internet service to every home and business within its borders. However, it is not enough to simply deploy Internet infrastructure. A connection to a family’s home doesn’t help if that family can’t afford Internet service.

There are about 8.5 million locations in America that lack access to quality service. In Virginia, there are more than 360,000 locations that are unserved or underserved. Each of those locations represents a generations-old farm that can’t harvest using modern tools, a fledgling small business stuck in an analog era, a working class family cut off from vital telehealth care, or a young student missing out on lifechanging opportunities that the digital world can provide. But as of this week, that all changes.

[The National Telecommunications and Information Administration] just announced the amounts each state and territory will receive from the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. That includes $813 million for Tennessee to build future-proof networks to connect everyone in the state. Our task is simple, but it’s monumental: we are going to bridge the digital divide. For good. But we cannot reach that goal without industry stepping up.

The first time in a generation, the path of the middle class seemed out of reach. I knew we couldn’t go back to the same failed policies when I ran, so I came into office determined to change the economic direction of this country, to move from trickle-down economics to what everyone began to call “Bidenomics.” I designed and we signed [the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act]. Think of it this way: Nearly a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Act — Rural Electrification — brought electricity to millions of Americans in rural America.

I know the evolution of libraries as the place where the public goes for books to the place where the public goes for everything is creating new challenges as you address new needs. But we know millions of people in this country are on the wrong side of the digital divide. Libraries help fill that gap. You have computer labs. You teach digital skills.

The [Federal Communications Commission] exercises tremendous power not only over the media, but also over consumers’ pocketbooks. Through the Universal Service Fund (USF) the agency has imposed burdensome taxes on American consumers to fund inefficient, ever-expanding programs. Nominees must be good stewards of funding and stand up for taxpayers’ interests. Despite being repeatedly excoriated by the [Government Accountability Office] and economists for failing to track where USF money was going, the current FCC leadership failed to learn from past mistakes in setting up the Affordable Conne