Technology Policy Institute
The “Particular Dangers” of Slaughter’s Impact on the FCC
I recently co-authored a Harvard Business Review note about the impact of Trump vs Slaughter—the case in which the Court allowed the President to fire independent regulators without cause—on businesses generally.
The FCC's Best USF Reform is the One that Already Happened
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has called for a “top-to-bottom” review of the Universal Service Fund. His best defensive move is to preserve a rare USF success that happened 15 years ago and has quietly reduced the real burden of High Cost support. His more ambitious task is to confront the political economy that blocks structural reform and leaves rural customers dependent on permanently subsidized providers.
The FCC’s Industrial Policy Turn
Like many, I’ve had frustrating experiences with offshore call centers, repeating my account number to someone reading from a script who cannot solve my problem.
The FCC Got the Router Ban Wrong. It Knew Better.
On March 23, the Federal Communications Commission effectively banned all new foreign-made routers from the U.S. commercial market by adding them to its so-called “covered list.” The action followed a White House-convened interagency National Security Determination issued just three days earlier. The FCC took this action with no notice-and-comment proceeding, no published cost-benefit analysis, and without providing a broad transition process for the affected industry.
The Administration is Already Governing AI Development. It Just Doesn't Have a Strategy
The National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence is silent on whether and how to govern the trajectory of AI development itself. It says nothing about frontier model safety evaluation, responsible scaling, international coordination on development risks, or verification mechanisms.
Building the Analytical Infrastructure for Governing Frontier AI Development
Artificial intelligence presents genuinely novel governance challenges. Its combination of rapid capability growth, omni-use applications, and nearly free proliferation is inconsistent with templates designed for other technologies that may have dangerous applications. Recent attempts to govern AI development have had mixed results, with many proposals vetoed, revoked, weakened, or still searching for enforcement mechanisms. The deeper problem is not political will. It is that the analytical foundations for thinking rigorously about AI governance do not yet exist.
TPI Fireside Chat with NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth Recap
In conversation with Technology Policy Institute's Scott Wallsten, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Arielle Roth admitted that the spectrum implementation puzzle is harder than the legislation suggested. Assistant Secretary Roth said that as a Senate staffer drafting the spectrum provisions, she had “more of an impatient approach to spectrum identification.” On the implementation side, she’s discovered that some federal systems slated for relocation don’t yet have specifications for their replacement equipment, that agencies face competing cost and timeline
The Voluntary IP Service Transition Auction
The Internet protocol (IP) interconnection transition generates unavoidable costs for intercarrier compensation (ICC)-dependent rural carriers, and deferring those costs to “future proceedings” predictably leads to pressure for permanent new Universal Service Fund (USF) support. The Technology Policy Institute proposes a Voluntary IP Service Transition Auction (VISTA) that converts those implicit future liabilities into explicit, time-limited transition payments.
BEAD’s Bidding for Broadband: Why Williamson’s 1976 Analysis Still Matters
A problem inherent to the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and any similar infrastructure subsidy program: Winners’ incentive to come back to the government later to ask for more subsidies and the inability to credibly claim they won’t. The post-award incentive to return to the trough does not have an easy solution.