The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 130 | The Truth Behind the 5G Airline Hysteria | Brendan Carr | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

The rollout of 5G has begun across the country … except at airports. Rumors are everywhere that the new 5G networks could cause massive — and deadly — disruptions to air traffic. But is this a factual fear, or does it belong in the same bucket as the billion other conspiracy theories surrounding 5G? Population control, invisible propaganda, hundreds of birds that die all at once, wavelengths that microwave your brain ... And what about the less far-fetched concerns about what 5G could usher in: Increased Big Tech monitoring, ESG scores, the metaverse? Since President Biden isn’t doing anything to calm America’s fears, Glenn sits down with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to cut through the noise and separate fact from fiction. Yes, Carr explains, there is a lot to be concerned about. But he also details why he’s so optimistic about the potential a 5G-powered world could have. Sponsors: The ministry of Pre-Born and Blaze Media are partnering to help rescue babies from abortion in 2022. Will you help rescue babies’ lives? To donate, go to https://preborn.com/glenn Formulated by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, the world-renowned doctor that President Trump credited with his successful early treatment protocol, Z-Stack has been scientifically formulated, is Kosher and GMP certified, and is produced right here in the USA. Go to https://ZSTACKLIFE.COM/BECK and enter the promo code BECK to get 5% off your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to world entire. Trouve of little enterprises like that other. So, Amazon.com. Population control. Audably transmitted viruses, mind-altering radio frequencies, wavelengths that microwave your brain,

invisible propaganda from blinking towers, in the distance. Hundreds of birds that will die all at once. Cancer, electromagnetic radiation, bio-warfare. These are some of the craziest idea. The science fiction nightmares, right? They are also just some of the events that defined the 5G apocalypse, according to the conspiracy theories, about 5G. I want you to know, I am skeptical of almost everything, especially, a technology like 5G. And I don't want to make light of anyone's fears. I get it. The pace of our new world is daunting. Many of those things were said about a field that I have been in my own life, radio or television. Here's the thing. We now live in the era of velocity. Speed will determine

absolutely everything. And if we have learned anything in the last 30 years, it is that technology is a lot more complex than we are. But it is important to know the facts about technology. So you're not bamboozled either in or out of something that will change life forever. And what will change people's lives is 5G. The reality of 5G maybe is worse than all of that. I mean, we could find ourselves quickly under the thumb of a real dystopian, atopoeuvre. democracy. Wars don't take place in fields anymore. Wars may not even involve people soon because of things like 5G.

The clandestine combat of the Cold War is a relic. We still use humans, but that will change. Because war takes place now through digital technology and the technologies in your life and mine. the nation that develops and dominates the latest technologies and the biggest pipeline of information, data and communications, that is the one that will win the war. And at the moment, China is far more advanced than any of us realize. And right now, we are intentionally shooting ourselves in the foot. as commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, today's guest is one of the few people that can actually help us clear away the fiction to get to the truth. Something is very wrong with what's being said about 5G. Today on the Glenn Beck podcast, welcome.

Commissioner Brendan Carr. Since Roe versus Wade, over 63 million babies have been aborted in the U.S. That's nearly one in four pregnancies. They end in death. Choice to choose to kill the child. In the midst of this awful tragedy, we can do something about it. It's called pre-born. This is where technology comes in.

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You are the hero of every preborn baby in this nation and an ambassador for eternal life for every mom, dad, and family that walks in to every preborn partner clinic. Here's what I'd like to ask you. $28 will sponsor one ultrasound to help save a baby's life. $28.40 will save five babies. Give him a chance at least to life. All the gifts are tax deductible. I challenge the audience, but I challenge you how many babies will be born because you live and you partnered. An ultrasound machine will save countless.

lives for years to come. They're about $15,000. Much more than the centers can afford. Your donation will place a machine in a needy women's center where it's most likely for abortions to happen. So please, will you help rescue babies' lives? Donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound 250. Keyword baby or go to preborn.com slash glen. Commissioner Carr, how are you, sir? I'm doing great. Good to see you again. Yeah, good to see you. Thank you for being on. There's a story that I'm perplexed by, and it all revolves around 5G.

What the heck is happening with the rollout of 5G and the airports and the airlines and all of that? What is real here? Yeah, well, look, I agree with you. I'm very perplexed as well. And let me take it from the start, which is this concern that's been raised at 5G. is going to cause harmful interference into the altimeters of airplanes. This is simply incorrect. The FCC addressed this issue over almost two years ago now. We looked at the science.

We looked at the real world experience, the fact that 5G is live over C-band in nearly 40 countries. We put in a massive 200 megahertz guard band, which is a lot in spectrum sense. And in fact, we've doubled that large guard band here. And the wireless carriers are going to mimic the same spectral environment that exists today in France. So if the aviation industry believes the fearmongery that they're putting out there, then they shouldn't be flying in and out of Charles de Gaulle every single day. So I think this has a lot more to do, unfortunately, with bureaucratic politics. And frankly, this reflects a broader pattern within the Biden administration of just chaotic decision making. This was a

decision that was teed up the way Congress intended it. The FCC looks at it. And this has gone off the rails, you know, pretty late in the process. Okay. So let's start with a basic understanding of 5G. Let me tell you what I think it is, and then you tell me where I'm wrong or in hands. From what I understand, if the internet today, if 4G were a garden hose and all of that information coming through that garden hose, it's pretty packed tight. 5G is the size of the chunnel compared to the garden hose. and it allows information beyond our wildest imagination to go back and forth.

It will allow all of our refrigerator to talk to everything. Everything will be connected. Is that an accurate description? That's almost right. The only tweak I'd make to your analogy is the garden hose actually is staying the exact same width. It's just through technology, the bits or in your analogy, the water is being packed. immensely more efficiently. So through that same sized pipe,

you're moving a tremendous amount of new data. So you're essentially right in concept there. Okay. And is that like a, I mean, I hate to go here because it's probably so ridiculous, but like a zip file, it just compresses all of it, gets it through the pipe and then opens it back up? You got that basically right. Yep.

Okay. Here's the concern. The concern is this will. this will be, this will allow for dystopian kind of monitoring if it would go wrong, correct? China. Well, to someone say, you're right. You're right. And that's why we have stepped up activity, particularly, you know, in the last administration,

on entities like Huawei and ZTE. Because look, to your point, when the internet was about sending email files back and forth and looking at cat videos, that's one thing. But now to your point that every single thing is getting onboarded onto the internet, not just banking, financial information, to your point, security camera, everything is now connected to the internet in this 5G world. The concerns about national security and cybersecurity are heightened. That's why we, during the last administration, essentially kicked Huawei out of our network, kick ZTE out. We prevented China mobile from connecting to our network.

And I've raised a red flag about DJI, which is a Shenzhen-based drone manufacturer. So you're exactly right that the increased capacity, the increased functionality, increase of things going on on the internet, underscored the need to be very vigilant about personal security, cybersecurity, and national security as well. So here's a concern of mine on China and what this argument is about. It doesn't make logical, as a guy who I'm not a technology guy, but I am, you know, futurist wannabe. I know enough to be dangerously wrong. Okay. and I know enough to say this is bull crap.

What they're talking about at the airport is bull crap. Now you put that into perspective knowing that the United States has been behind the eight ball with China and things like Huawei for a while. And it is a race. If Europe, if everybody else goes with Huawei, we can no longer trust any kind of network. work to be able to share with our partners, China will own all of the information that they want. Is this obstacle at all in any way helping China get footholds either here or elsewhere while we are damaging ourselves? I think you brought the exact right perspective.

So as a general matter, 5G from China's perspective is sort of the. digital version of their belt and road initiative, right? So they're going into Africa. They are building ports and airports and bridges. And when, you know, that type of, you know, debt diplomacy doesn't work, they end up foreclosing or at least threatening to on those ports and bridges. Well, now they're similar going out into Africa and other parts of the world through Huawei, through ZTE, building this digital infrastructure. And now when you don't do what they want, rather than foreclosing on your fiscal port, they got your data. They got everything at that point. So it's a big risk. And so to your point,

for the Biden administration to go out there, and President Biden himself addressed this yesterday in the press conference, and was described by Politico as donning the jersey for team delay when it came to 5G. This isn't a good sign for America's leadership. When you go back before the Trump administration, 2015, 2016, we were losing to China on 5G. They were outpacing us. And we kicked it into gear the last three or four years. I think it's one of the great legacies of the Trump administration. We leapfrogged our global counterparts. We freed up spectrum, including the C-band, which was vital to catch up to China.

And then at the last minute, we're putting the kibosh on it based on a misinformation campaign that this is going to cause damage altimilar. So, yeah, the winner here is, you know, China continuing to exert leadership in 5G, and America pumping the brakes on a vital sort of element of our economic leadership. I'm, I just did a monologue today on radio that we're the United States of America. And I'm so sick and tired of hearing about, you know, the breakdown in the global systems and, you know, we can't get this or can. Well, what are we doing to make our own medicine? The one thing we should have learned in the last two weeks is we are far too. dependent on every other country. We are the United States of America. I don't like going into a grocery store and seeing shelves that would have been in Poland in the 1980s. I've only seen them in America two times during a winter storm for maybe a couple of days and now. And we're accepting this. And it is time for America. We are the ones who have always led the way into new ideas. We now are being led into really dangerous territory by communist, fascistic, authoritarian dictators who want our information.

What has to happen for us to clear the path to get government, at least on the side of America winning? Yeah, this episode with CBN is not very. comforting because again Congress made the decision that said look all you federal agencies feed into a process the FCC at the end of the day is going to call the balls and the strikes our experts that do this for a living and they did and you know moving forward C-band would have presented another opportunity for an infrastructure build for America leadership and look there were officials at the FAA at other agencies that sense weakness within the Biden administration and

instead of having leaders in the White House that stood up and said look Congress said the FCC makes this call call, you guys had a fair and full airing of your views. They decided against you, move on. The White House said, you know, come in, let's talk about it. Let's think about it. And it showed weakness. And they ended up having to cave when this big misinformation campaign came out. But look, there's a lot of talk about infrastructure and 5G is infrastructure. And right now today, the hard work's been done. The towers have been built. Tower climbers have gone up. They've hung the antennas. And all we have to do is flip the switch to turn it on.

But for all the talk of infrastructure right now, that infrastructure is sitting there lying fallow for absolutely no reason. Never in my life have I seen a time where doctors tell us, oh yeah, you got something really, really bad and you could die from it. You know what? Go home, take an aspirin. Call me if it gets worse. Excuse me? Is there nothing that I can do? Is there nothing I can do except the vaccine and the booster? If the last two years have taught us anything is you have to take control of your. your own health. I have done this and I'm the only reason I do not do, I don't do commercials for pills and everything else. I just don't. What you put in your body is your business. But when it

comes to pain relief, I do recommend one thing because I take it every day. Same with this. This is called Z stack. Don't rely on the government or big pharma. Z stack. Here's what this is. It's a especially formulated immune boosting supplement that includes zinc, I think it's Cucerton, vitamin C, vitamin C, vitamin D. This was all formulated by the guy who has treated me for COVID and got me on the path quickly to wellness. His name is Vladimir Zalinko. He's the guy who President Trump said, this is an early successful treatment protocol. It's Zelenko that was the one and said, you should take hydroxychloroquine. You should hear Zalinko talk about hydroxychloroquine.

It's insane once you know the facts. Anyway, Z-Stack has been scientifically formulated. It's kosher and it's GMP certified. It is produced right here in America. And more than ever, it is important that you take control of your own health and your family's health. I want you to go to Zstacklife.com slash Beck and enter the promo code Beck at 5% off your first order. Z stacklife.com slash Beck. Promocode, Beck. How much is 5G going to change

the average person's life or experience? I mean, what is really going to be the thing that we look back in five years ago? I cannot believe we lived at a time what didn't have this. What changes? It's a great question. I think a lot of consumers feel a little, maybe disappointed as to where 5G is today because we've been talking about it for so long. The way I describe it to people is think about your life when we transitioned from 3G to 4G, right? How did you get across town? You had to hail a cab, you know, pay exorbitant rates. Well, now as 4G came in, you got Uber, Lyft right there on your phone. Or think about he did banking in a 3G world. You had to go to a brick and mortar facility.

You had to stand in one of those rope lines. You had to use a pen that was always lashed to a table and out of ink. Well, now we've got Square and other Venmo apps right on our phone. So 3G to 4G address pain points in your life that you didn't recognize. And that is what we are on the cusp of seeing with 5B. It's not fully there yet because it just takes some time. So 5G is going to take pain points in your life today and develop a solution that wouldn't have been possible in a 4G war. Maybe it's AR VR.

Maybe it's connected cars. Maybe it's telehealth application. So we're still on the front end of seeing that because we're just building this technology out. In the short term, it's more competition for in-home braband. Not as sexy as some of those other whiz-bang ideas, but 5G is being used today to give people choice and competition for high-speed service in their home where maybe they felt like before they only had one option for high-speed service. So I'm still optimistic about it, but we've been talking about it for a while. And I think that people are like, I'm ready to see something that's actually real and different than 4G.

And I hear that. So 5G, correct me if I'm wrong, what we're introducing will reduce what's called latency to the point we can't do telesurgery right now. because it's a hundred of a hundredth at best. It'll be a hundredth of a second behind. Well, if you cut the wrong, you know, place, you can bleed out and you can't fix it. You have to have real time, very low latency. Is this 5G that they're rolling out? Give us that kind of reduction in latency where we'll be able to see people in New York

operating on somebody, you know, that has 5G? in Africa? Yeah, the responsiveness of the 5G network is so far beyond what we had with 4G that it is exactly those types of applications and many others that, frankly, if I could think about it, I probably get out of the government and invest at them at this stage, but even I can't see what it is. But, you know, connected cars, right, if you take, you know, a millisecond difference in breaking could be the difference between, you know, life and death.

There's all kinds of applications that the lag in the lack of responsiveness of the 4G internet has resulted in technologists saying, I've got this idea, but the network isn't powerful enough to do it. So now we are building the network out, except in the areas where the Biden administration has held it up with CBN. And the technologists are ready to pour in and say, again, you're going to have a pain point in your life that you don't know. Take grocery shopping. I hate going to the grocery store, but I like to eat, so I got to do it. But maybe you have ARVR, maybe you get ARVR goggles with 5G that you're transported to your own grocery store virtually. And you know your own aisles. Right. I like to go down the.

the aisles in a particular direction, helps me remember stuff. And so that's an advance over going on to whatever grocery shopping apps there are right now. So there's things that, you know, again, are pain points. We don't recognize someone's going to solve it and they're going to solve it because of the speed, resilience of the 5G network that we didn't have with 4G. We're living in a time right now that, I mean, it must be in some ways thrilling to be an FCC commissioner because you're seeing all of this. You're there at the, at the space that's like, okay, do we do this or we do not do this? You know, I've done radio for 45 years. We, for most of the time, it was the Communications Act of 1933. So it wasn't very

exciting. Now, however, we are wrestling with things, for instance, you just said AR or VR, we're wrestling with things like the metaverse that I don't think people really truly understand. That's ready player one. And it will change us as people. It will change relationships. It will change how we view ourselves. It changes fundamentally everything. Do you spend much time or do you and your colleagues spend much time, even if you don't have to decide thinking, gosh, which part of this is good and which part of this could destroy?

us. Yeah, look, I flip back and forth through a couple of lenses when I do this job. One, I say very grounded in where we are and where are we falling short today. There's still too many parts of this country that have zero megabits per second when it comes to high speed service. Yet, there's parts of this country where we're making tremendous progress. We're bridging the digital of eye. We want to sing the praises of that work. So you've got to balance in your mind the positives of where we are with where are we still falling short and then we can address it. It's your point to the future. What is the upside?

What is the good side? What are all the great things that are going to happen from innovation? And having your back of the mind, some of the downside. In the main, we as regulators try to help create the platform and we don't try to then, you know, micromanage what's good or what's bad about it. But we have to keep an eye on it. And the most important thing to me is freedom, diversity of thinking, right? This 19, I'll go back.

The very first op-ed in this country was launched on the pages, believe it or not, of the New York Times in 1970. Why? Because John Oaks, the then editor said, diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of democracy. The moment we insist that everyone think the same way we do, our democratic way of life is endangered. That was a very progressive, left-wing view at the time. And unfortunately, I think progressives have turned heel on that view. So as we go into this future, sort of where we started from, there's a concentration of power in corporate hands. And as a culture, we have to return to the embrace of diversity of views. If Twitter, gets into the financial services space and starts taking their block list and denying people

financial services, that's not good. If we see the metaverse developing the same way some of the Facebook censorship has, that's not good. So I do think it is incumbent as a cultural matter that we stand back up for free speech. And that for those in government like me to continue to work, to try to get enough votes to say, look, we need some core political anti-discrimination rules out there. More speech is better than less. So that's one thing that does worry about me about the increased connectedness is the consolidation of that power in big tech. You know, we're going to see the creep of censorship from Twitter, which is bad enough to have censorship.

But imagine getting financial services denied and everything else that's going to be connected in the future. Right. And that is part of the Great Reset. I don't know how much you're up on the Great Reset, but we're already seeing states take action against banks who are saying, we're going to have a certain score, ESG. If you're not on the environmental bandwagon, you're going to be a risk to the bank, so you won't get alone.

Also, E is environmental. S is social justice and G is governance. Who do you have on your board of directors? It's truly a frightening, frightening thing because it's an end run around Congress and our Constitution. It is a public-private partnership where you might like it today, but if the other side gets in,

that's a very dangerous weapon. I mean, I went on today to Google and YouTube, And I've posted hundreds of videos on the on the Great Reset. If you go to YouTube and you type in Glenn Beck, Great Reset, my videos don't come up. Now, how is that possible? I'm very concerned about the, it's not just the tech companies. It is they're in bed with many of the regulators or the government. And that is extraordinarily dangerous.

And I don't see anyone, especially on the left, really taking this seriously. Look, I think this was a blind spot for so many Republicans for so long. Look, we had this great moment where we sort of solidified a lot of the theoretical approaches of the conservative movement in the 70s and the 80s. And the idea then was the greatest threat to individual liberty is government power. And what has happened since then is the unprecedented rise of corporate power, in part, as we're talking about, because that power happens in the digital space. When you have railroads and other sort of historic instances of monopoly, manipulative, it was a slow-moving monopoly. It took a while to build a railroad.

Well, now, Facebook, Twitter, they can go from nothing to having a network effect that impacts millions, if not billions of people. And so Republican Party, conservatives were very slow to see that the rise of corporate power and the threat that it poses to individual liberty. Thankfully, that has changed and it's changing very fast. If you look at where, you know, for instance, you know, the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy is with some of the ideas that he's putting out there and how we hold large corporations accountable, I think that's a sign that Republicans have woken up. And they say, yeah, the government, don't get us wrong, is still a threat to individual liberty. but the consolidation of corporate power is equally a threat. And to your point, when you blend the two together, when you've got the Biden White House saying,

yeah, we've talked to large technology companies and told them the types of misinformation that we don't like to see on your website, that blending now of corporate power and government power together is incredibly dangerous. And I do think we now have a set of Republican leaders. And at some of the Democrats push back on this as well, Glenn Greenwald, not a conservative,

has been very focused on. Well, this is a danger that Republicans were slow on, but I think we're finally coming around to realizing we have to use government power to push back on the intrusion of the individual liberty that come from the abuse of corporate power. It's one of the things that I think is a huge win for the American people. And I don't know if it did ever get traction. You know, we're entering a new space, jobs, everything is going to change. 40% of all jobs that exist today will be gone in 2030. replaced by what? I don't know. But that's why a lot of people are talking about UBI, et cetera, et cetera.

Because there's going to be a few that have great power that is harnessed by AI and especially quantum computing. That the world won't have to do the things that we do. Our life will be a lot easier, more complex in some ways. Right now, when you look at the power of the power of the, these companies, they get their power from information. We've given them all of our information. And so they use it in a myriad of ways. And some people, they don't care. But is, is it possible to create a situation to where the individual, their rights continue to how they live their life, what they think, what they do, and they always own that information. And if you want to make

money, then you can sell it to the highest bidder if you want. But you are the retains, you retain the rights to all of your information. And if you never want to share it, then you don't share it. Isn't that a, is that workable at all? Should we be thinking that way? I think you're right. We are seeing some, some pushes on a bipartisan basis in Congress. rest to do exactly that. And it's a mixed bag. You know, America is very diverse. People are very diverse. To your point, some people are aware of how much data they're, you know, getting taken from them by big tech. Some people don't care and some people have no idea. I think the bathroom don't know. I mean, so for instance, if you take Google, other smartphone manufacturers,

you can have your phone off entirely, not connected to anything. And that phone records and knows based on barometric pressure sensors in the phone, what floor you are in a house. When did you open the door to a car and close the door to a car because of the change in barometric pressure. It knows where you go and it sends all that data back. So at some level, you could say, people don't care. At another level, you could say, well, people know when they don't care. I honestly do not believe. I think people will be blown away if they could look and see it all of their data that is getting collected on their phone even when it's not even on. Now, look, I don't think that means we, you know, smash our phones and become Luddites.

You know, I'm not someone that says, you know, this technology is all bad. but to your point, let's empower people to make more informed choices. And again, the data has a lot of value. Not necessarily individual value. It's the aggregate value of it. But still, let's put some power back into the hands of everyday people here. But it is aggregate power now. You know, they always say, we can't read metadata.

Well, that's not entirely true. And especially in the future, they already have more information on me and you and everybody else. then we even know about ourselves. They can predict exactly what we're going to do in many cases. That's not only dangerous, but it is also extraordinarily valuable, and it blurs the line of, well, was that my idea to go on that vacation or to go there or to eat this? Or was I manipulated subtly in ways that I can't even know?

that's not only important to discuss and know, but it is also important to be able to control and say, no, you know what? I don't want you in this part of my life and data. None of that is shared. Yeah, you're right. Look, this is, again, conservative Republicans, we are hopefully no longer deferring entirely to whatever a big corporation wants. We are for it. And this is why, you know, we need not just Section 2.3.

30 reform, not just what I would view as sort of political anti-discrimination requirements, but we need transparency. And to your point, not transparency where they, you know, show you the ones and zeros of your algorithm. There's a way they can just bury you with information that doesn't mean anything. But we need transparency in a way that is understandable to people so that they can decide to your point. Yeah, this part of my life, I want cordoned off.

You know, I'm fine with data being, you know, taken and put to use over here. But the lack of transparency about what is going on with your data is a real problem. Is this something the FCC should be roping off and leading? Yeah, I think there's a, yeah, I think there is a role for the FCC. You know, when I was in the majority at the FCC in the last administration, I pushed pretty hard to try to get two-thirty reform. The votes weren't there. So there's a role for the FCC, no doubt.

There's a role for the Federal Trade Commission. There's a role for Congress. That's why, you know, I really like the idea that a Republican leader McCarthy has put out. Catherine Morris Rogers, Republican leader of the Energy Commerce Committee. they have a big tech accountability platform. There's some very, very good ideas there. And I'd hope, maybe on a, hopefully on a bipartisan basis, we can get together and pass them. But, you know, we've moved from the stage of, you know, not thinking there's a problem,

being blind to it, to thinking there's a problem. And now we're actually at the stage where Penn is getting put together, you know, smart legislation is getting put together. And now we just got to get that across the finish line. So let me switch to subject that seems so old and antiquated, but it is near and dear to my heart. I'm a, I'm a radio broadcaster. I always have been. I always will. And we've been talking about the end of like AM radio forever. Radio is performing. It is absolutely the opposite of what's happening to television.

Television is going way down the tubes and people are finding it. You would think when Apple is providing music and you can create your own station and everything else that that would hurt radio. radio is actually performing well. However, I've built digital studios. I'm in all kinds of technology. Nothing is really changing in the radio industry. And it kind of has this idea that it's dying. The mom and pop, local broadcaster, the local radio station that is controlled locally,

is vital to anything that this country might face in case of trouble, that it is locally operated and run, and that it has viable technology. Is there anything on the horizon that is trying to shut down voices on radio, to lack the diversity that has an actual, you know, cash cow into it that can do it? And is there any place that the FCC should look at and say, you know, broadcasters, feel free to go here. Invent, think about, open up, deregulate on any place. You're right about a lot there.

I mean, first and foremost, there is, I think the old saying is there's no greater, more visual medium than radio. It paints a picture in people's mind. It is such a powerful medium, despite all the other whizbang technologies that we have out there. And you're right. There's a lot of local radio broadcasters that are struggling right now. I was in a small town in Wyoming, was in relatively big town. There was a radio station there that was thriving. They had local news, local reports, drove about an hour away, another small town. And there was a radio station there that was effectively playing music off of a HP laptop that was pumped in from someplace like Chicago. And the FCC had rules in place that said, you know, owner that owns that thriving radio station that wants to purchase. that smaller radio station that's just pumping in canned music and actually bring in talent, live people to run that program. The SEC said no, because we want a diversity of ownership. And so therefore, that HP laptop keeps spinning those tunes from Chicago, you owner that lives in Wyoming that once opened a second station and actually put real people there, you can't do

that because we want diversity of ownership. And so there's some very backwards looking regulations there that I've advocated that we should get rid of. It's controversial. It ends up not happening. You know, we have rules on how much stations anybody can own. Again, well-intentioned. We want diversity of views, but it ends up preventing investment. The other point there is, when you look at these wireless carriers, why do we have 5G? It's because the government doesn't regulate that in the sense that we give you spectrum, put 4G on it, put 5G on it, whatever you need, and upgrade from 40 to 5G. In broadcasting, we have a whole different approach that says, If you want to go from one broadcast technology, ATSC 2.0 to ATSC 3.0, whatever it is, you got to come to the FCC, you got to ask permission, you got to go through a rulemaking.

So people say, why aren't broadcasters innovating more? Well, they got to get a lot more government approvals than the sectors that aren't as heavily regulated, and therefore, that they are innovating. And with respect to diversity, I am worried. Look, there's been some pretty strong push at a Democrats, particularly in South Florida, that look at some successful. Hispanic radio stations, they filed petitions at the FCC asking us to, you know, deny license transfers, to open investigations. And they've been pretty upfront about it and said, look, we don't like, you know, our electoral chances if the Spanish language speaking community get to hear conservative radios. We have to see shut it down. I've been very vocal about that. I said, look, the FC is not an arm of the DNC. It's not our business to police and shut down speech in that form. And so, yeah, to your point, there's a lot we could do. We could allow

more investment in these struggling stations. We can give more permissionless opportunities to upgrade and innovate technologies. And we can make clear that, you know, we're not shutting down diversity abuse. So let's, let's end there on that question. It's been a year since Rush Limbaugh died. Many of us who are in talk radio owe our careers to him. He was the pioneer, but he was also the meat shield for a lot of us. He took the hits.

all the guns were aimed at him and he took the hits um there is a movement now to go over to go after podcasting and also to go after uh talk radio are you concerned about as i get ready to possibly sign another contract with radio is are you concerned about the security of radio and our voices? I do think there's reason to be concerned. I'm not in panic mode at this point just yet. You know, we need to continue to allow these diverse voices to flourish. And we need to continue to stay strong for, you know, this idea of promoting a diversity of

you. I'm certainly going to use my platform at the FCC to do that. And I think that while we've got to stay vigilant, I'm pretty confident we're going to be continuing to see, you know, a flourishing of views here. Good. Commissioner, thank you so much. Any idea when we'll know about 5G? Well, it's being launched right now and it's being launched outside of the C-band, which was just a small portion of the spectrum here. So there's non-C-band 5G that it's up and live as to when this portion of the 5G spectrum, the C-band will get back up and running. You know, I just hope that we can get some adults back in the room at the White House

and they can say, look, we're going to side with the science. We're not going to side with the this area. When that happens, then this C-Bin will get fully lit up again. God bless. Thank you very much, Commissioner. Thanks. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.