FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty

When I was a gymnast, we competed under what’s called the “Code of Points”, the rulebook that defines how routines are scored and how difficulty is evaluated. Over time, that Code changes. And when it does, athletes must adapt. Skills that were once cutting-edge become baseline. Combinations that once impressed judges no longer earn top scores. To stay competitive, I had to learn new skills, more difficult tumbling passes, more complex combinations, and sometimes routines that felt risky and uncomfortable at first.

Communications networks do not stop at national borders. Data flows across continents in milliseconds. Fiber-optic cables connect nations beneath the ocean. Wireless ecosystems rely on global supply chains. And increasingly, our digital economies are intertwined. Because of this, network security is not something any one country can achieve alone. Secure networks require cooperation, shared principles and trusted partnerships. This is precisely why gatherings like this one are so important.

Ultimately, ensuring network resiliency and security is a shared responsibility. Interagency and industry coordination is paramount. The Federal Communications Commission has an important role to play working with its federal partners, industry, and Congress, on a range of issues, including: reevaluating outage reporting to reflect modern networks; strengthening transparency around supply-chain risks; and supporting responsible space and satellite growth.

Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty spoke about artificial intelligence (AI) in her keynote speech at the State of the Net Conference on February 9, 2026. "AI is no longer a future concept or a pilot project. It is here. It is deployed," said Commissioner Trusty. "And it is already reshaping how our communications networks operate, how people connect, and how services are delivered. The real question before us is not whether AI will transform communications, but whether our networks, our spectrum policies, and our regulatory frameworks are ready to support it at scale.

I want to talk about the enduring relationship between competition and innovation in communications, and what that relationship means as we enter an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. If you span the history of telecommunications, whether we’re talking about voice, video, or data; long-distance or local service; wired or wireless, one theme stands out: competition. Indeed, over time, communications policy in the United States has increasingly focused on promoting competition, where we have more providers, more choices for consumers, and better quality services.

I recently returned from Baku, where I made my first international trip as a Federal Communications Commissioner to represent the US at the World Telecommunication Development Conference. For a new Commissioner, it was a remarkable way to see the global communications landscape up close. One thing became clear very quickly: even though the FCC is fundamentally a domestic agency, none of our challenges are purely domestic anymore.

Earlier this year, I spoke about creating a “Golden Age of Communications,” a moment when American innovation, investment, and ingenuity converge to deliver both unprecedented opportunity and unmatched security. Wireless will be at the very center of that vision.  It’s the connective tissue linking every sector of our economy, from defense and energy, to healthcare, transportation, and education.

On September 18, 2025, Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty spoke at the Free State Foundation Luncheon, where she touched on her three priorities for her time at the FCC: (1) Universal connectivity, (2) public safety and national security, and (3) restoring U.S. leadership in nextgeneration technologies. "The choices we make today, about spectrum, infrastructure, competition, and security, will define our nation’s trajectory for decades.

Build America Agenda into meaningful wins for U.S. businesses and consumers. First, we are working to create a regulatory environment that empowers you, the private sector, to build and innovate. Through the Chairman’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative, the Commission is eliminating obsolete rules, from outdated telegraph provisions to regulations tied to expired deadlines. We are also taking a hard look at rules that impose unnecessary costs without serving the public interest. Second, we are making more spectrum available for commercial use.

Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) represents a fundamental shift in how we think about spectrum use. Traditionally, sensing and communications have been two separate functions. You had radar systems designed to detect and track objects, and you had communications systems designed to transmit data. They lived in different spectral lanes, were managed by different agencies, and developed along different paths. ISAC breaks that mold. In an ISAC world, sensing and communications co-exist in a single, harmonized system.