The digital divide is a real division in the country, affects more than just rural areas and keeps Americans from crucial access to 21st Century skills, a diverse panel of digital inclusion experts said at Next Century Cities' Bipartisan Tech Policy Conference. The digital divide affects more than just rural areas, said National Digital Inclusion Alliance Executive Director Angela Siefer. Benton Institute for Broadband and Society Senior Fellow Jonathan Sallet compared the conventional focus on internet access and subscriptions to the needed prioritization on technology and people. People have to actually use the technology to reach opportunities and solutions, said Sallet.

The Commerce Department’s efforts to tighten the noose on Huawei is facing a formidable obstacle: the Pentagon. Apparently, Commerce Dept officials have withdrawn proposed regulations making it harder for US companies to sell to Huawei from their overseas facilities following objections from the Defense Department as well as the Treasury Department. The Pentagon is concerned that if US companies can’t continue to ship to Huawei, they will lose a key source of revenue—depriving them of money for research and development needed to maintain a technological edge. The Treasury Dept wanted to make sure that Sec Steven Mnuchin had a chance to weigh in. Cabinet officials are expected to meet on Huawei and other China issues in the coming weeks.

Here are the leading presidential candidates’ positions on Big Tech.

• President Donald Trump: Has stopped short of calling for tech giants to be broken up, but said “obviously there is something going on in terms of monopoly,” when asked about major tech companies in the past. President Trump’s Department of Justice announced in July it was conducting an antitrust review of “market-leading online platforms.”
• Former Vice President Joe Biden: Slammed big tech companies in Jan, saying he had “never been a fan of Facebook” and arguing that online platforms should not be allowed immunity for content posted by users. He also clashed with Facebook and Google over their political ad policies after they refused to take down a Trump ad that the Biden team said contained false claims about his son Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine.
• Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): Leading the charge to break up big tech companies on the grounds they hold outsized influence and stifle competition. She has called for legislation to restrict large tech platforms — which she would designate as “platform utilities” — from owning and participating in a marketplace at the same time. Under this law, Apple would not be allowed to both run the App Store and sell its own apps on it, for example.
• Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT): Called for the breakup of big tech companies such as Facebook and Amazon. Like Sen Warren, also said that he will have the Federal Trade Commission review all mergers that have taken place during the Trump administration. His broad plan to reshape corporate America would also mandate all large companies be owned partly by their workers.
• Pete Buttigieg: Became Facebook’s 287th user shortly after it was launched in 2004 at Harvard University, where he was a student. Has been more reluctant to slam the tech giants than some other candidates. Though he has said that the breakup of big tech companies “should be on the table,” the former South Bend (IN) mayor does not think it is a politician’s place to designate which companies should be broken up.
• Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): Has made oversight of big technology companies one of her major issues in Congress and argued for data privacy laws and net neutrality safeguards as priorities at her campaign launch in Feb. Has not endorsed Sen Warren’s plan for their breakup, saying that she would first want investigations. Her plan for her first 100 days in office includes an “aggressive retrospective review of mergers,” which she said she would pay for with an extra merger fee on “megamergers.”
• Michael Bloomberg: In Jan said that breaking up big tech companies “just to be nasty is not an answer” and that he does not think Sens Warren and Sanders “know what they’re talking about” on the issue. He said he was open to more limited antitrust enforcement.
• Andrew Yang: Although Yang has said “we would be well served” if big tech companies were to break themselves up, he has argued that competition is not the answer to key problems with big tech. Yang has focused on the negative effects of tech on mental health and said he would create a Department of Attention Economy to look at how to responsibly design and use apps and devices.
• Tom Steyer: Says that monopolies either have to be dismantled or regulated, but that to win against Trump, Democrats will have to “show the American people that we don’t just know how to tax and have programs to break up companies.” Steyer’s campaign has been noted for its massive ad spending, which helped push him to the debate stage, including more than $17 million in Facebook ads.

On Nov 19, 2019, Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Ranking Member Tom Udall (D-NM) and Sens Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to give voice to the concerns raised by Tribal communities surrounding the implementation of the Tribal priority window to open up access to Educational Broadband Service (EBS) spectrum on Tribal lands. 

On Jan 14, 2020, Chairman Pai responded by saying following discussions he personally had with representatives of Tribal and Native Hawaiian organizations, "I share your view that Tribes will need sufficient time to prepare and participate in the Tribal priority window." Therefore, Chairman Pai has sent letters to Tribal and Native Hawaiian leaders, and the FCC also issued a Public Notice, stating that the Tribal priority window will open on Feb 3, 2020 and close on Aug 34, 2020. "This extended 182-day window is the result of the hard work of agency staff and takes into account the National Congress of America Indians' recent resolution on this issue." 

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a legal challenge from Public Knowledge, The Greenlining Institute and other groups to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s 2017 rollback of certain Obama-era requirements for phone companies angling to transition off of legacy copper networks. “This is a victory for American consumers, who will benefit from faster fiber deployment and the increased availability of next-generation services,” Chairman Pai said. He has touted the deregulation as critical for allowing the transition to more advanced, IP-based networks. The court ruled that the petitioners lacked standing to challenge Pai’s actions, prompting disappointment from these advocates. “As the California wildfires demonstrated, the deregulation of our telephone network can have devastating consequences,” said Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld. “We will confer with our co-petitioners and consider what other avenues to pursue to ensure that all Americans have affordable, reliable access to critical communications infrastructure.”

A new Pew Research Center report finds that Republicans and Democrats place their trust in two nearly inverse news media environments. Overall, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view many heavily relied on sources across a range of platforms as untrustworthy. At the same time, Democrats and independents who lean Democratic see most of those sources as credible and rely on them to a far greater degree. Evidence suggests that partisan polarization in the use and trust of media sources has widened in the past five years.

Greater portions of Republicans express distrust than express trust of 20 of the 30 sources asked about. Only seven outlets generate more trust than distrust among Republicans – including Fox News and the talk radio programs of hosts Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. For Democrats, the numbers are almost reversed. Greater portions of Democrats express trust than express distrust in 22 of the 30 sources asked about. Only eight generate more distrust than trust – including Fox News, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Another way to look at the diverging partisan views of media credibility: Almost half of the sources included in this report (13) are trusted by at least 33% of Democrats, but only two are trusted by at least 33% of Republicans.