Restoring the Federal Communications Commission’s Legal Authority to Oversee the Broadband Market
Summary
The next leadership team of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must prioritize restoring the agency’s authority to protect consumers and competition in the broadband market. Under the next administration, FCC leadership should quickly commence a proceeding proposing to reclassify broadband as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This reclassification puts the FCC on the firmest legal ground to
- Restore or strengthen the 2015 network neutrality rules that prohibit providers of broadband Internet access from blocking, throttling, or otherwise discriminating against certain Internet traffic
- Fund broadband through the FCC’s four universal service programs
- Protect consumers from fraud and privacy violations
- Promote broadband competition, and
- Protect public safety.
FCC leadership should simultaneously work with Congress to develop legislation to codify this authority as law, thereby protecting against potential future reversals.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.
The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.
The federal government is responsible for ensuring the safety and privacy of the processing of personally identifiable information within commercially available information used for the development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems