Politico

One of the nice things about covering the frontier of technology — large language models, quantum, virtual worlds — is that they’re decidedly less partisan than most policy issues. That might be changing.

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are deep in discussions over which agency can probe OpenAI, including the ChatGPT creators’ involvement with Microsoft, on antitrust grounds. The FTC initiated talks with the DOJ months ago to figure out which one can review the matter, but neither agency is ready to relinquish jurisdiction, which must be resolved before the government can formally intervene in one of the most high-profile and controversial tech partnerships in recent years. Microsoft has put billions of dollars into OpenAI over the last several years.

Washington is battling over whether to keep the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) going — potentially cutting off more than 22 million households from a subsidy they’ve come to rely on. The ACP launched with bipartisan support in 2020, but is now trapped in a partisan war between Democrats who want to renew it, and Republicans worried it will let President Joe Biden take too much of a victory lap during a campaign year. If Congress can’t find a way to fund the program by spring, the federal government will have to quickly unwind it.