Big Technology Podcast - Regime Change In Cuba, Through Internet Access? — With FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wants to provide internet access to the people in Cuba so they can document and share the abuses of their government without censorship. Commissioner Carr, who rose to his rank after initially serving as an FCC intern, joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss his plan, how the technology would work, and the ethics and advisability of accelerating regime change by providing internet access to a population.

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is one of the most interesting people in Washington and one of the key voices on the policy decisions that govern the Internet. He's FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. Brendan, welcome to the show. great to join you. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate you being here. You're in a very interesting position. I feel like the conversation about policy on the internet has never been more dynamic and you're right at the heart of it. So it's going to be great to get a chance to speak with you today and hear a little bit more about what's going on out there in Washington. The thing that we're going to get to is your suggestion about how we should, we as Americans, should provide Q. human citizens, the internet, and allow that as a channel for their free expression and dissent against the government, which I find fascinating.

But before we get there, I think that the occasion calls for a little bit of a discussion of your background and actually the remit of the FCC, which is fascinating, and doesn't get enough talk. I feel like we hear about the FCC every now. And again, when net neutrality comes up or something people are mad about, but it's a very important government agency and I don't think it gets to do that it deserves. So let's try to do that here first. So we'll start with you. You actually are a FCC success story. You started out as an intern there and then spent a bunch of years away and now have returned as a commissioner. So I'd

love to hear a little bit more about your personal journey. And when you were an intern there, I'm curious, do you ever think, hey, maybe one day I'm going to be sitting on the commission itself? No, never. Yeah, happy to give a quick intro to those. those issues and then circle back to where, you know, we're at such an interesting time, I think, for conservatives in tech policy and happy to sort of talk about some of the shifts taking place there. I'm a rare sort of Washingtonian, grew up in northern Virginia, went to undergrad at Georgetown, went to law school at Catholic specifically to do telecom law. And so I was in this institute for communications law there at Catholic and had a chance

of an internship for then FCC commissioner Kathleen Abernathy, who was an alum of Catholic. And I was an intern for her. So I sat in the little intern pen that we have in the opening of the suite area for every commissioner and did some mostly very mediocre work for her. And then, yeah, flash forward about 15 years later. And now I actually had the exact same office that she had when I started at the commission. So every morning I'd walked past that intern pen to the back office. And it was a humbling, a gratifying experience. I think for so many of us, our careers are like rivers. They take twists in turns that we never, ever could have predicted. And that's certainly the case for me.

You know, what is the FCC's remit? We've heard, you know, a lot about net neutrality, but also there's part of it is helping to provide communications infrastructure to the citizens of the United States. And then, of course, there's some of the stuff that you've talked about, which is, you know, providing internet to Cuba, which is, you know, or Cubans, which is, you know, quite far afield, but seems to come under the remit as well. Can you talk a little bit about sort of the purpose of the FCC and what it has authority over? It's a really great agency.

And most of the stuff that people hear about that are not in the telecom bar, it's net neutrality, it's 5G. But there's obviously so much more that we do that thankfully and correctly never breaks above the fold of any newspaper. The best way to think about the FCC probably is like a mini Congress for purposes of tech and telecom issues. So there's five commissioners, typically, three of the president's party, two of, that are not with the president's party. Right now we are two-two. We're waiting for the Biden administration to appoint a third Democrat. So as I say, you know, being in the two-two position is the second best thing to being in the majority. But soon enough, I will make my eventual move fully into the minority.

But we have different operating bureaus, the media bureau, which deals with a lot of licensing of TV and radio stations, if there's a merger between entities in that space, then we'll review that. under the public interest standard. We have rules that limit how many TV stations one entity can own, and there's obviously very arcane rules around that. We've got a wireline bureau that focuses in large part on this $9 billion subsidy program we have called the Universal Service Fund. And there's a charge 30% on your telephone service that goes into this fund. So thank you for paying into that.

And then we disperse that for subsidizing Internet bills and areas where there's no private sector business case for subsidizing telehealth services, low-income programs. So there's a range of programs that we administer through that universal service fund. We have a public safety bureau that deals with a lot of communications for public safety officials, as well as different alerting systems. So there's a very, very wide range of things we do, including 5G. You know, we issue licenses to wireless carriers. We do a lot of behind-the-scenes work between, you know, a lot of the federal government has a lot of

spectrum. And so there's a lot of negotiations about how do we get a little more spectrum out of the federal government's hand into the market for 5G services. Infrastructure, we have a rule, a role to play in making it easier to build out 5G, which we did a lot of the last two or three years. And it's paying off big time with record-breaking internet builds right now. So there's a lot, there's a lot that goes on. It's an interesting place. Yeah. And so it's always good to be able to shine in a light in terms of what the agency is doing. And I appreciate you coming here to talk about, it. Thank you for this for the intro. I feel like it was needed for me. I hope the listeners have found it valuable as well. I'm sure they will. So let's get to Cuba. Why don't we, right?

So you've been pretty vocal about seeing what's happening in Cuba, which is that there's some protests against the government there and saying, hey, like the government is shutting down internet or slowing it down for folks or censoring it. And the United States should go in and and give internet to the people of Cuba to allow them to express themselves on the internet and register a dissent that's been suppressed so far. So why don't you start with a little bit of the background about what's happening there and why you think it's a good idea for us to do that? Well, we've seen these historic protests erupt in Cuba about two weeks ago,

and I was actually on a regularly scheduled work trip down to South Florida when this started happening and reached out to some of the government officials down there to see how we can be helpful. And what we saw is something that we see around the globe right now. As soon as people take to the streets to fight for their freedom in the face of a brutal dictatorial regime, one of the very first things that people do now is they pull out their smartphones. They take videos. They take pictures because there is nothing that, you know, brutal dictators like least than the spotlight of the world's attention shining brightly on what they're doing. doing, and that's the power of the internet. So while the first thing that people do is go to the

smartphone, the very first thing that dictators do is go to shut down the internet or portions of the internet. We've seen it in Myanmar, in Venezuela, in Iran, and we're seeing it right now in Cuba. They're not cutting off the internet entirely. What they're doing is they're looking for, through filtering technology, that is, from what we can tell, provided and backed by the communist regime in China, they're looking for the digital fingerprints of certain applications like WhatsApp, like Facebook that people use to share videos and messages and they are shutting down those applications. And so I think, you know, America invented the internet. We are a beacon of freedom. And the internet still has the power for all of the tech clash that we're experiencing now to be an

enormous, enormous vehicle for good. And so I think we should support the people of Cuba by supporting the restoration of internet services there. And I've said that we should do that through a two-part path. Path one is we should be helping to introduce new internet services that don't exist on the island today. It could be these high-outitude balloons that we have authorized before at the FCC. It could be Wi-Fi off of the embassy there, the U.S. Embassy in Havana. So can you share a little bit about the balloons? Where has the FCC authorized those in the past? Yeah, people have been very focused on the balloon technology in part because I think it's a visually interesting thing. And what I've tried to remind people is that's one technology, but we should be

putting all technology options on the table. At the FCC, we authorized this balloon technology back in 2017 to restore service in Puerto Rico after a hurricane came through and wiped out the landline communications there. And this is a service that, to be frank, obviously, has had some commercial challenges. It's not a technology that necessarily you're going to, well, not necessarily, that you wouldn't even drop your Verizon or AT&T, 4G or 5G phone for. But if you're talking about generating emergency connectivity in circumstances like this, it can work. And I'd remind people that in Cuba right now, the speeds for Wi-Fi service on the island is something like two or three megabits per second. And that's slower than Copperline

DSL in the U.S. So if the baseline is how do we get some amount of connectivity into Cuba so that some of these photos and videos can continue to be shared, then this type of technology can work. So we saw it in 2017 in Puerto Rico. I've been to Kenya, where this technology was used to support rural internet builds. And I've been to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where there's a manufacturing plant that makes these high-altitude balloons. Google Loon was the face of this technology, and they shut down their operations in January, again, because it wasn't a great, from their perspective, commercial product in terms of competing with, you know, 4G or other services. But the company that was behind that effort that actually did the engine. engineering still exists. They're the ones that are based in Sioux Falls. And they currently do a lot of

work for the government. They do the high altitude balloons that NASA uses for weather satellites. Those are something like 160,000 feet up and carry, you know, massive payloads. Here we're talking about balloons that would be 60 to 75,000 feet and carry, you know, a couple hundred pound payload. So that's one technology that we've seen in action in Puerto Rico, in Kenya, and actually in Peru after natural disaster came through there. But there's other things. things that we should look at. We should look at beaming Wi-Fi off of the U.S. Embassy in Havana. And back in 2013 and 2014, we inserted satellite-backed internet connections, internet devices into Cuba. And the Obama administration shut that down, at least according to public reporting,

due to political considerations as they were looking to restore their relationship with the then, I guess, Raul Castro regime, the Castro regime didn't like that we were inserting those satellite-based internet devices. So they took those down. So there's a number of ways on that track one that we can introduce new connections to the island. But if you're looking at an overnight impact, it's this track two idea of the circumvention technologies. Again, the internet is still on in Cuba, they're just blocking certain applications. And with essentially sophisticated VPNs, we can get around that. There's a company out of Canada, Saifon, the U.S. has funded before. They're a very sophisticated VPN operation. They have two million users just in Cuba right

now that are getting onto the internet and getting around this circumvention technology. So we need pursue both tracks, looking at introduction of new internet services on the one hand and bolstering support for circumvention technologies. And I'll just say on that first piece, there's an immediate need in Cuba. There's also a long term, in my view, strategic need for the U.S. We have Radio Marti, which I visited down in Miami two weeks ago that broadcasts radio content into Cuba. Cuba doesn't like it. Cuba says it's a violation of Cuba law, international law. We say we don't care. We have radio operations in other parts of the world. And I think the modern day version of that is the internet.

So I think we should have a long-term strategic capability in this country that when a brutal dictator is faced with a movement for freedom in their country and they do the go-to move of shutting down the internet or blocking portions of it, we should have the strategic capability to come in and provide that internet connectivity. Right. And with the VPN, Siphon that you mentioned, would it just be from your perspective on a policy level? would it just be using that to basically promote it within a Cuban society to get them to download it? Or is there anything more that we could do to help implement that stuff? There's a couple of steps. Step one is funding. So I don't sort of back any particular technology in part because I can't give in my job. So there's other VPN technologies out there as well.

But it takes money to keep these up and running to keep the servers up and running. And there's no current flow of funding that I'm aware of that's going into these companies. There had been funding in the past. So step one is to provide some minimal amount of funding to keep these technologies working. Step two may be using that Radio Marti broadcast content into Cuba to spread the word about these technologies. They spread through word of mouth right now. And again, they've got about 2 million people that are on there. But we would love to find a way to double the number of people that are on these Siphon and other sophisticated VPN technologies.

Which interesting is, you know, it's a constant battle between these VP. technologies and the countries that are trying to identify and basically break these VPNs. And what we're seeing in Cuba is the digital fingerprints of the communist regime of China that are backing the efforts to, you know, filter the Internet services in Cuba. So that's another interesting element of what's taking place with respect to Internet activity in Cuba right now. What is going on on the ground in Cuba that's making this accessible now for us? From what I understand, I've read a little bit, I've listened to your conversation,

when Antonio Garcia Martinez and wrote a little bit about what he's written about it. It turns out that the Cuban government was long resistant to putting Internet in the hands of its citizens or at least smartphones and Wi-Fi and wireless connectivity, but that's changed in recent years. Can you go through a little bit about the history? And then also, what are they protesting about now and what's created this moment where there is, you know, a real dissent movement brewing there. Well, one of the interesting things about internet connectivity in Cuba is that the people of Cuba experience the internet very differently than the way we experienced here in America. In AGM, I think, sort of put this in very good terms. They deal with the internet

in very time-shifted technology-shifted ways. So they will download content on a smartphone. They'll take a SIM card out. They'll swap it on another phone. They'll put it on a USB drive. They'll go to a laptop and sort of interact with the internet as we would conceive of it there and then, you know, reverse that and send it back out. And that's part of why I think it's so important to give even some connectivity to the Cuban people because they've been so resourceful with respect to how they use internet connections. So, you know, for instance, will Cuba try to, you know, jam or block the delivery of internet services if we do it from the balloons or from the embassy? Sure, of course they will. They try to jam and block Radio Marti, but we're not talking about needing 100% coverage for, for 100% people all the time, it's, you know, how do we give a taste of additional internet

connectivity and then let the people of Cuba find ways through their own resourceful mechanisms to use it? And here's what's going on on the ground. You know, look, we're seeing historic protests, one of the largest, most active protest we've seen in decades. The words and chance that people are using at Libretad, they're waving the American flag. And so I read this very much as a push for freedom to get out from under the yoke of communism. but there are others that are more expert, obviously, in the politics of Cuba than me. I just know that we've got the technology that works and that we should be pursuing that avenue. So are you aware of a set of events that set these protests off?

And if so, you know, is it just more of a decentralized protest like we've seen in places like the Middle East and, well, I guess even in the U.S. here? Or is there like a particular goal? Like, are they trying to overthrow the dictatorship, or they're trying to get more rights? What are the aims of these protesters? Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, this is something that I heard about, obviously, you know, on my way down to South Florida and spent some time with local leaders there working on it. It certainly, you know, has the appearances of a decentralized movement. We're seeing it in

multiple cities, multiple places, multiple times. And the regime is engaging in, you know, very brutal tactics to crack down on it. The first couple of days, we saw, you know, black clothing, security forces, abducting and beating people. Then they got wise and started. started wearing, you know, playing street clothes to engage in that activity. So it's a movement that I think, you know, we should be supporting. And again, I think this, you know, connectivity is the way to do it. Yeah. And you've been pretty vocal about this over the past few weeks in terms of, you know, enabling some of this connectivity. What response are you seeing in Washington? And do you think this is something that might actually happen out there? Or is it sort of like

a nice thing to talk about? But there's a little chance of actually practically seeing it implement it. It's been interesting. So when I first started talking about this two weeks ago, you know, providing internet connectivity to Cuba, whether this new services or whether it's the circumvention technology, it wasn't clear to me that it was going to go too far. But I thought, you know, I have a value ad here because I've seen this technology work. So I think there's a space for me to speak about how do we technically accomplish this, which I did. And I was sort of surprised within a day or two, and this isn't because of me speaking out. There was a lot of people speaking about internet connectivity in Cuba. You had President Biden speak at a press conference and say that

his administration is looking at ways to restore internet connectivity. You've had the White House Press Secretary, Jen Saki, say that they're looking at these types of options. I've provided some feedback myself to people inside the administration, which I don't want to sort of get too far in the weeds on that, but I provided, you know, my thoughts on how we can do this through both tracks. And I was initially very hopeful, given that President Biden said we're looking at restoring internet services that we'd see some movement. But we're now. two plus weeks on. And I'm really worried that we're going to be stuck in a naval gazing situation where this moment is going to be allowed to pass. And I don't know if it's just

the way the decision making is going inside the administration. But again, it's not a technical challenge. It may be a political challenge, but I think we should, you know, rise to this moment. And even if people don't do anything right now, again, I think as a long-term strategic matter for this country, we should be, you know, bolstering our ability to restore Internet services. So if you'd ask me, you know, the moment people started speaking up, what are the odds of this? I would say long. If you'd ask me 24, 48 hours in after President Biden had spoken, I'd say, wow, that's a game changer. Maybe we're going to get there. And two weeks later, not seeing much, you know, I'm not very hopeful. Now, maybe we end up with some more financial support for that,

you know, VPN type technology. I mean, that's just like such low-hanging fruit. How could you not do that. But it's disappointing that we're this far in after that much attention, including from the president, and we're not seeing a lot of action. So I'm disappointed at the moment. Yeah, does the FCC, so I guess, like, I'm wondering how much action the FCC itself can take. From my understanding, it's just a domestic agency. So, and it's actually rare to, at least from my perspective, see commissioners speaking up on international affairs. Is that, is that the right read? It's sort of out of your hands, but you can help guide the policy discussion. that other agencies in the White House might be able to take.

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, you talked about when I worked as an intern at the FCC. One of the very first projects I did as an intern at the FCC, this must have been 2002 or 2003, was on sort of a flotilla that was heading from South Florida to Cuba, try to broadcast radio content in. And so, you know, there were some FCC angles there. What can the FCC do here?

One, we can potentially authorize use of spectrum by the different technological solutions, whether it's that former Google Loon project or otherwise. But this is why I've said that it needs to be someone very high up within the Biden administration, including Biden himself, that gives a green light because there's going to be, you know, FAA issues. If we go one route, there's the international, you know, FAA rights that might need to be implicated. There's arguably it's a violation of international law to beam internet connectivity into Cuba. So there's a number of reasons why I think ultimately this should be a federal government initiative that uses these private sector technologies. I think the FCC can

have a role in terms of some of the authorizations of the use of spectrum. For my part, it's just that I've seen this one technology, these high-altitude balloons work in South Dakota, in Kenya, having authorized at the FCC, when people said, hey, there's different ways to do this. And people initially looked at SpaceX-type technology. I said, that's one option. But with SpaceX, you need infrastructure on the ground with these high-out-to-do balloons, you can go right from the balloon, from international airspace, directly into the handset. So some of that isn't necessarily the FC's regulatory jurisdiction. It's just, I've seen this technology work and thought I'd, you know, offer up, you know, one path to getting there. Yeah, and you said it could be a violation of international

law to beam internet connectivity into a country, into another country's territory. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that law exists? Well, the world is filled with pinheads. So, Radio Marti broadcasts today into Cuba. They do so from Marathon. They do so from some facilities in the Carolinas as well. As I mentioned, Cuba takes a position that's a violation of Cuba law. And there's an organization called the ITU, which is basically the UN for telecom and spectrum issues. And they have all kinds of rights and allocations who can be on what spectrum where, who has landing rights. And I believe their position is that Radio Marte today is a violation of ITU laws, but yet we continue to do it. So, My guess is both of those entities, Cuba and the ITU, will take the position that beaming internet into a country without that country's authorization is a violation of international law. And I say, you know, I don't care. I think this is an important enough issue, 90 miles from the U.S. That is something that we should go ahead and do. But again, the government should do it because if, you know, it's a violation of law, we don't want to put a private sector entity as the face of this.

Yeah. Do you think that this could be like a new way that countries invade or wage war? I mean, I'm thinking about, you know, it's one thing to, I mean, yeah, like, think about the proportionality. It's one thing to do it in Cuba. I mean, what would happen if the United States did this in China? So I'm curious what you think about the sort of, and you mentioned that. You think that in Cuba, some of the censorship that's being done there is with the, you know, not in help of China. So what is, does this fall along the line of like an invasion of another country's sovereignty?

And what is the future of this type of stuff if we try it in Cuba? I'm just trying to take it down the line. Yeah, I think we should engage in this type of activity in other countries. And if someone from the state department was here, they'd probably jump on the mute button and try to get me to stop, you know, speaking. But as someone in an independent agency, you know, I have the freedom to speak my mind. But also, remember, we're not breaking new ground. You know, the Obama administration introduced these satellite internet devices into Cuba, contra to what Cuba wanted. We've long been broadcasting Radio Martini, contra to Cuba.

Former Secretary Pompeo tweeted that we'd engage in some activity in Iran to boost internet services there during protests. We beam, you know, radio content into Asia historically inside different countries. So it's not necessarily, well, it's not a line that we have not crossed before. But yeah, there should be people that can consider some of the international implications of this. I just think we've always looked to the modern form of communication as a way to shine a light on regimes. And when you have the free flow of information over whatever the modern form of communication is of the day, that accelerates the end of regimes that rule without the consent of the government. You can go back to the printing press in the revolutionary era. You can go to, you know, pamphlets that were dropped in World War II, or you can go to radio

Marquis broadcast into Cuba today. If you look through the course of history, the free flow of information over the modern means of communications accelerates the downfall of regimes. And we have historically played a role in making sure that that type of communication takes place. The version of that today is the Internet. So, yeah, I think we should do this. And I'm not too worried about what brutal.

dictators, whether it's Iran or Venezuela or Cuba or Myanmar, think about that activity. I'm sure there's people about a mile or so here from Foggy Bottom that have lots of thoughts on that and would prefer me not to speak about it, but such as life. Okay, I want to continue that conversation specifically about accelerating the fall of regimes. Why don't we do that when we get back from the break right here on Big Technology Podcast? Hey everyone, let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them.

So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app. like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on big technology podcast with Brendan Carr. He is an FCC commissioner speaking with us about broadcasting or making internet connectivity available inside Cuba. So before we took the break, you mentioned that this could accelerate the fall of the regime there. I am kind of curious, like what you think about what happens in the aftermath.

Like what happens if we do end up making the internet available in. inside Cuba and that does end up causing the fall of the regime. What happens next? I feel like a lot of times we have these conversations in the U.S. and we don't talk about, you know, the consequences and what happens afterwards. So what do you think happens afterwards? Well, look, I think it's inevitable that this regime ends. I think it's inevitable that we will see greater freedom in Cuba. The question is on what time scale? I think if we can provide this internet connectivity, that will accelerate the time scale. All the issues and questions that you raise are ones that are going to have to be raised and answered and addressed. It's just a question of when. And given that

we are only 90 miles from Cuba, that we have the ability to do this, I think it's something that we should do. But part of that is why I've called for the Biden administration to be involved. Let's get the State Department involved. Let's get other agencies involved that are going to be part of this endeavor. But so far, we've heard largely radio silence on these issues. Should the U.S. still be involved in pushing forward regime change as opposed to like allowing these events to take their natural course, like you mentioned, if this is going to happen anyway? Should the U.S. still push for regime change? I mean, we have a pretty checkered past in terms of our success rate when we do that. You know, obviously, that's a complicated question and room for lots of debate and disagreement there. What I would say is when we're talking about is, you know, providing open means of communications and then seeing what happens from there.

there, I think that's very different than some of the other activities you've seen historically from the U.S. government directed towards regime chain. And so I think there is a valuable, and I think sort of to some extent, non-controversial role of opening up free communications and then whatever consequences flow in terms of the regime, they flow. Yeah, but that's kind of why I asked the question earlier about whether this is like the new form of invasion. Because, you know, we've seen with the internet, especially over the last few years, that you don't need an army necessarily to, you know, accelerate the overthrow of a foreign government or even in our own country where, you know, we've had our internet sort of turned against us

and turned Americans against each other here. So, you know, I know it's not the traditional way of pushing forward regime change, but don't we need to think a little bit more deeply about the consequences of this type of stuff, given some of the negative effects or, you know, potential downsides that might ensue, as opposed to just like jumping in, you know, right, eagerly and pushing it forward. I think if we were breaking new ground here, I think the point you making would be particularly compelling, not that it's not compelling as it is, but particularly compelling. But again, given that we have done this before, you know, with the, you know, the internet satellite

devices under the Obama administration with, you know, Radio Marte, which again, it's broadcast, not internet. But given that we've been here, I don't think that the step that I'm advocating right now is, is sufficiently different that it should lead to a different result than what we did in 2013 with the satellite devices, what we do with Radio Marte right now. One thing that's interesting, though, is as we push for unfiltered, uncensored internet connectivity abroad, you know, that obviously raises fresh questions to your point of where are we domestically with our policy in at the same point in time that we're calling for unfiltered, uncensored internet access in Cuba, including some in the administration. You know, we've have revelations of

people inside the White House. I don't know what the right word is you want to use, but potentially coordinating with big tech companies to censor users to take down what they label as misinformation. And I think that puts us in a in a difficult posture globally. So what I would say is, you know, we need to support this capability to insert uncensored, unfiltered internet around the world. And in order to do that without seeming like hypocrites, I think we should also make clear. And by the way, we're not going to put a thumb on the scale from our government to private big tech companies in favor of censorship. Because obviously, that looks fairly hypocritical if we're saying, you know, unfilter the internet in Cuba. But, you know, Facebook, Twitter, take down these, you know, misinformation posts that me, government official don't like.

Yeah, and it is interesting that it would be the same platforms, right, giving like the platforms you've mentioned are, you know, that we'd want to help enable inside Cuba, something like a WhatsApp, you know, owned by Facebook and that's where the conversation over our internet here exists. So it's a complicated conversation for sure. I want to get to that a little bit more, but I just want to ask one more question along this line. And then we can start talking about big tech. does so if we're going to do this in Cuba why not do it in China like isn't it like maybe it's a slippery slope or maybe it's a natural evolution it seems like the internet in China is well we know the internet and China is definitely censored and dissent is crushed there so what's the you know is there a reason why we would advocate for this in Cuba and and not in China and then what are the implications of that oh I think we should go beyond Cuba Like I mentioned, I think, you know, we should look at this in Venezuela. But China and specific. Yeah. China.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we have former Secretary Pompeo, again, talk about the U.S. government engaging in similar activities. I'm not sure exactly what he had in mind in Iran. I wasn't privy to those and to China. Yeah, I'm open to all of that. I mean, look, if an open line to the Internet makes it untenable for your regime to stay in power, I've got no problem with that. I think we should be supporting globally the first. free flow of information. I'm not supportive of, you know, the censorship practices that U.S. companies engage in right now in China. I think there was always this idea, similar to the position that people took with the entry of China and the WTO, that if we give them a taste

of freedom, if they see economic prosperity from international organizations, that they will move towards freedom and away from authoritarianism. And I think what we've seen recently with Hong Kong, with WHO, with all of this shows that that's not true. And I draw that analogy to businesses that go into China, like Microsoft, and say, look, let's give the people of China a taste of freedom, a censored version of Bing search, for instance. And NetNet, we will pat ourselves on the back and say, we're doing a good thing. Okay, we're making some money, but we're also doing a good thing because we're giving people a taste of freedom. I think that idea of, you know, play ball, give a taste of freedom and the communist regime will come our way has proven to be a failure

across the board. And so while I respect that thinking that says we'll go into China, we'll give them a censored internet, and it's net net a good thing, I increasingly believe that it is a net net, a bad thing. I think if we flash forward two or three years from now, I think we're going to be in a, there's a significant chance. I don't want to overstate it. There's a significant chance that will be in a posture of sort of greater decoupling when it comes to economic activity in China. And frankly, I think that's a good thing. Yeah, we've talked a lot about on this show about the splinternet and how, like, we have, like, one internet that is governed by the U.S. vision and another one that's governed by the China vision. And it would be interesting if we ended up broadcasting, you know, some of this unfettered internet, I don't know if broadcasting is the right word, but making this unfettered internet available there.

Yeah, we should. We should, you know, break through the great cyber wall of China. Yeah. And I'm sure companies in the U.S. would love that because they wouldn't have to, you know, kneel before the research. in order to operate in China, and it's a pretty big market. On either hand, like, yeah, I think that there is reason to be very, very, well, skeptical of these type of moves because, you know, when we've come in and meddled in other countries affairs, you know, sometimes we get good results, and other times we get, we end up creating a power vacuums and ISIS steps in. So I do wonder about what the implications are there.

All right, why don't we take one more break and then talk a little bit about the FCC in big tech. You mentioned censorship. Some people might call it content moderation. It's like you do 30 stuff. Let's just spend the last 10 minutes here talking about that. And we'll do that right after the break. And we're back here for one final segment with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, Brendan.

Thanks for being with us here today. It's always great to talk to you. Okay. So actually the first part of the big tech conversation I want to have with you is about the Universal Service Fund. And you mentioned it in the beginning of our conversation, but it's something that doesn't get talked about at all. And it's a big part of, I guess, the way that we make Internet available in the country now. And in particular, it helps Big Tech a lot, helps their businesses a lot.

So then you have proposed some changes to it. So I'm kind of curious if you could first explain what it is and then how it benefits Big Tech and how do we make it a better solution for everyone. So the FCC, as we mentioned, has this $9 billion a year universal service fund that we use to support, principally internet builds and parts of the country where there's no private sector business case. And the way we've been funding that is by adding a 30% charge to your telephone bill. And that's not sustainable. It started as a 5% or 6% charge. And it's just been spiraling above 30%. And it looks like it's going to keep going from there.

The biggest... It's a 30% premium on a bill is going to. to help with this program? That's right. It's a portion of your telephone bill that gets the 30% charge. Not all of the telephone bill, but still, it can be a significant sum. It's a lot of money. Exactly.

And so it supports these rural internet bills and other sort of initiatives. Big tech benefits tremendously from this Universal Service Fund. In fact, there's a study that shows that 70% of downstream traffic on these rural networks is attributable to just the big streamers alone. So Netflix, Hulu, those companies, and 90% of the cost of maintaining these networks come from that 70% of traffic. Historically in this country, the businesses, the enterprises that benefit from communications networks pay a fair share for it.

That's how the telephone networks was built out. We looked at 1,800 numbers, fax lines, businesses paid higher rates, even for local calling, and consumers paid relatively less. But somehow we got away from that model over the years. And so now end user consumers are paying full freight for this $9 billion program while Big Tech is benefiting from it. So what I've said is that we should look to Big Tech to start contributing a fair share into that Universal Service Fund. And that will relieve and eliminate the burden that hits everyday Americans right now in their pocketbooks. And it makes sense because that's the entity, Big Tech, that derives billions, if not trillions of dollars of value from this Internet.

So why not ask them to contribute some amount to the maintenance of us? I put that idea out there, and it's gained some pretty good traction. We see a lot of support now in Capitol Hill for the FCC, at least exploring whether we should do this. And who do you define as big tech? I was reading this story on tech policy press from a law professor, I think, at University of Nebraska, who was saying that one of the issues with this is that the definition of who big tech is, is kind of amorphous? Like, do you include Disney Plus in there?

So what's your definition of big tech? There's a couple. Who gets the money? Like, is it the FCC that takes the money? You just Congress taxes. Tax it. How would this work? So the money would go back into this same universal service program.

So this idea wouldn't change how much moneying or where the money goes. It would just be where the money comes from. For these purposes, there are several concrete ways that you can apply this to big tech. One is if you look at digital ad services alone. So Google and Facebook. Facebook, this is a over $100 billion industry right now. There's no consumer facing charge. You're not charged for the advertising that you see. So we could put a very small fee on the digital ad services, and that could replace entirely the current universal service regime. So that's one sort of rifle shot way you could do it. I think you can make the case for going beyond that and apply a test that basically says, look, if your business is benefiting substantially from America's world leading internet connections, then you should contribute. In that broader view, you could bring in potentially the App Store, you could bring in Microsoft Xbox. You can potentially bring in the iPhone itself. We don't

necessarily have to go that far. Again, the rifle shot is digital ad services, but I think you can make a case for applying it more broadly. And what about Disney? Sure. Yeah. That's fine. Okay. Sounds good. Streamers are responsible, again, for a big, big portion of the usage of these networks and derive a lot of benefits. So, yeah, I think, you know, digital ad services makes sense. Rifle shot, maybe the next tranche you go to is the streamers, including Disney Plus, and maybe you want to go, you know, all the way, as I've indicated, then you could look maybe to, you know, the App Store, iPhones, things like that.

Yeah. Okay, let's do a little rapid fire before we close out here. First of all, Section 230, do you think it ever gets repealed? Conservatives have been focused on repealing Section 230, which, provides the tech companies with immunity for what's set on their platforms. What do you think versus from a legislative feasibility? I mean, everyone that I speak with seems to think that there's very little chance of this actually changing. What's your take on the ground? Well, Republicans and Democrats are pulling on opposite ends of the reform thread. Democrats want,

in my view, at least more censorship. Republicans want less censorship. Pretty tough to get to a compromise when you're yanking in those directions. But I don't think the status quo was going to hold with 230. Even at the FCC, you know, we have the power, and I think we should have exercised this last year, to interpret Section 230 and give it a narrower construction because some courts have really blown the doors off of the restraints that Congress put in place. So I think the FCC, if we have the right composition of people here, could give it a narrowing construction. And, you know, maybe there's a path forward depending on who's empowering Congress as well. What's your take on the Biden administration so far? I really want to

just focus on the working relationship you have with them. It seems like they took your suggestion seriously when it came to beaming the internet into Cuba. Do you view them as a functional administration? What's your take on how they've been doing so far? You know, relations at the FCC are going pretty well. I mean, again, we're two-two. We're compromising. We voted on a, you know, unprecedented $7 billion program to connect school kids to the internet. We voted on an unprecedented $3 billion dollar program in order to connect low-income Americans, the Internet. So we're getting a lot done in a bipartisan way. I am worried about what's to come with the Biden administration, the executive order.

You know, maybe there's some good stuff in there on competition when it came to some of the stuff in the FTC. Big antitrust one. Yeah, exactly right. But the FCC stuff was very backwards looking. It was going back to sort of Obama-era utility regulation of the Internet. And it was as if nothing had changed with respect to thinking about the Internet. ecosystem and the challenges that we face since 2014. I mean, in 2014, we were still the era of

social media platforms saying that they are the free speech wing of the free speech party. If you're worried about, you know, the blocking of URLs or information on the internet today, then that shouldn't take you to the ISPs. It should take you to action with respect to social media companies or edge providers. And yet the FCC portion, at least, of that Biden competition executive order was silent as to any action on big tech. So I'd like to see some more action on that front as well. And there's some different directions going forward. We've got something like $800 billion that have been voted on by Congress or allocated to agencies for a variety of projects, but that could be used for bridging the digital divide. So we've got enough money to close the

digital divide multiple times over. The question is, are we going to see overbuilding? Or are you going to see waste, fraud, and abuse? And I'm very worried that that's where we're going to go. But we don't have to. There's time to course correct here and get this right. Okay, last question for you. Do you think on net the Internet's done more good or harm to American society? It's unquestionably. It's done far, far more good than harm. There are issues with respect to the power in my view of big tech. There's issues with respect to content moderation, as you put it, censorship, as I put it, but unquestionably, we are in a far better situation economically and otherwise because of the power of the Internet.

Okay, friend in car, thank you so much for joining us. It was great having here. We hope you're a repeat guest, and we can keep these conversations going. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you, Nate Guantini for doing the editing this week on a short time frame. Appreciate it.

Welcome back from vacation. Thanks to Red Circle for doing the hosting and ad sales. And again, to you, the listeners for coming here each week. And engaging with us here on the Big Technology podcast, it's great having you. And we'll be back next week with another show. Until then, take care. Thank you.