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June 2026

Half-Connected America

America has two half-connected segments and a third that is not connected at all, and the policy conversation gets all three wrong. The two half-connected segments are mirror images, each on a single network: the household with a phone and no home internet, 14.8 million strong at 11.5% of the country in the 2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates, and its mirror, the household with home broadband and no cell phone, three to six million adults the industry does not track.

How Hopkins Digital Access Initiative Met the Moment of Crisis

On Sunday, January 25, 2026, National Digital Inclusion Alliance Executive Director Angela Siefer received an email with the subject line “Help Needed in Minnesota.” By Monday morning, we were on a call with the leaders of the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative—Rebekah Crosby, Carolyn Leslie, and Beth Kivett—forging a new partnership to address urgent digital inclusion needs in Hopkins, a first-ring Minneapolis suburb, a community flooded with ICE and CPB agents.

Meeting the Challenge: The Hopkins Digital Access Initiative, Then and Now

Hopkins (MN) is a small town of around 19,000 residents, less than 20 miles west of Minneapolis. Compared to the surrounding suburbs, Hopkins is a different kind of community centered on a vibrant and walkable downtown. New residents face familiar challenges. How do they get connected? How do they sign up for utilities? How do they get to know what is available? How do they do all of the things that you would need to do just to live and work and play in today's society? Where are the parks? Where can they find daycare?

This flying solar-powered platform could deliver better internet from the air

As soon as August, a giant silver bullet will cut its way through the dry air of the southwestern US and cross the Pacific to reach the coast of Japan. Once there, the roughly 200-foot-long craft, built by the New Mexico–based company Sceye, will park some 18 kilometers above the ocean’s surface, in a wispy-thin layer known as the stratosphere.

AI evangelists chill out on worker-bloodbath rhetoric

The AI executives who loudly warned about mass job loss may have been wrong, said Zynga founder Mark Pincus. Several leading voices in Silicon Valley, including AI CEOs themselves, have softened their stance on AI-driven job loss. The softening rhetoric comes just before OpenAI and Anthropic are rumored to go public and also amid a surge in AI hate from consumers. Pincus said he doesn't buy "the doom and gloom that all the jobs are going to go away," mirroring the tone shift from AI's loudest evangelists.

AI agents are not your “coworkers”

Imagine coming in to work to learn that a new underling will report to you. The worker is not a person but an AI tool—one that your company nonetheless calls Alex, an “employee” with a title and defined responsibilities. How well do you think you would work with Alex? If you’re anything like the managers recently studied by Emma Wiles, a Boston University business professor, treating Alex as a “coworker” and not a software tool would lead you to do a worse job.

Who Stands to Lose in the Current E-Rate Debate?

On June 25, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a new proceeding that could fundamentally reshape—or potentially end—one of the federal government's primary tools for closing the digital divide. The FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on the E-Rate program asks some of the most consequential questions the program has faced in its nearly 30-year history: Has E-Rate fulfilled its mission? Should eligibility be narrowed? Should funding levels change?

How A.I. Is Changing the Way Politicians Run for Office

Republican and Democratic candidates and strategists who were once wary of A.I. tools or overwhelmed by them are now rushing to give their campaigns an A.I. upgrade. Those who do so could reap the rewards in the midterm elections in November and, ultimately, in the 2028 presidential campaign. Those who don’t could fall far behind.

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