Government & Communications

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.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) doesn’t appear to have made major changes to states’ award recommendations in the Benefit of the Bargain round in the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program—at least not based on analysis of NTIA award approvals for several states. NTIA made relatively small changes to the award recommendations that Louisiana and Maine submitted in the Benefit of the Bargain round. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is not making any changes to awardee lists that have been approved by NTIA.

Whether nations permit AI systems to learn from publicly available information will shape global leadership in artificial intelligence. Restrictive rules on the use of public web data risk shifting AI development to more permissive jurisdictions, undermining a country’s ability to build, deploy, and benefit from next-generation AI systems. A more effective approach emphasizes technical opt-outs, transparency, and safeguards that prevent harmful outputs.

After President Trump expressed disagreement with media reports regarding damage to planes in Saudi Arabia, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr followed up with renewed promises to take regulatory actions against broadcasters based on the content they air.

A broad and multipartisan coalition of civil-society groups, leading First Amendment and media policy scholars and litigators called on FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to stop using the “public interest” standard and “news distortion” rules as political weapons to silence viewpoints that President Donald Trump doesn't like.

Inspectors general have long touted their independence from partisan politics, maintaining a strict firewall between themselves and the White House appointees whose activities they are supposed to check. But now, over a year into the new Trump administration, political figures and the White House have sought greater influence over government watchdogs than ever before, leading to concerns about the independence of the oversight community.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is threatening broadcasters over slanted coverage of the war in Iran. He’s firing the wrong missile at the wrong target. He might want to tell President Trump that TikTok is a real national-security risk and a bigger source of fake news. Few Americans today get their news from the public airwaves. Social media now ranks as the top news source for most Americans, and it is a leading medium for adversaries to spread anti-American propaganda.

When he was growing up, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr says, his chief ambition was to land a comfy job at a big law firm and spend his career bringing in new business. But instead, he says, a series of “Gump-like experiences and opportunities” had propelled him up the ranks at the FCC. By the time he reached the top of the institution he’d come to cherish, a particularly tumultuous, anti-institutional fervor was sweeping through the federal government led by President Trump and Elon Musk, a technology billionaire wielding a chainsaw.

If you were going to single out the most dangerous functionary in President Trump’s little circle of Hell, you’d have plenty of candidates from which to choose. But don’t sleep on Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. His legacy of awfulness may prove more durable. His rhetoric is all about ensuring a “diversity of viewpoints.” He holds himself out as an honest broker in search of a more balanced media.

Within my lifetime, the Internet has impacted nearly every aspect of the world and our daily lives—especially how we communicate. It was only a short time ago that speech and newsworthiness was controlled by a handful of TV networks and newspaper publishers. And if you held a position they didn’t want to print or wasn’t consistent with their political views, it didn’t get said. The Internet changed that, allowing anyone to bypass these gatekeepers and shape public opinion with their own views.