Trump’s FCC Pick Is Threatening the Jobs His Boss Promised America

[Commentary] To meet the loss of the manufacturing industry, tech jobs are going to have to move outside of Silicon Valley, to the center of the country. This shift, however, won’t just happen—it depends on oversight by the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC ensures that internet access for ex-coal guys in Kentucky looks the same as it does for Mark Zuckerberg. This uniformity, called open access, is key: It helps level the playing field for people who live outside urban tech centers but nonetheless need to make a living in an digitized economy. It’s also necessary if you want to, say, create a tech hub in Kentucky. “I have been to coal country,” says Tom Wheeler, who served as FCC chairman during Barack Obama’s second term. “I have met with miners who are now coders. I have been to small towns where, because they were able to build high-speed fiber optic connections, there are more people working now than at the height of the coal boom.” It doesn’t make inherent business sense to build broadband in rural areas. But part of the way the FCC oversees open access is by treating internet like a public utility—meaning that everyone has to get access to it. But protecting those tenets makes little business sense if you’re AT&T, or Comcast, or Verizon. It makes much more sense to charge a captive audience as much as possible. Some can’t afford to play that game? Not their concern.