We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit FDR LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the
premium version of our website as well. Today we're joined by to repeat guests.
First, Brendan Carr is the Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. You
can follow him on Twitter at Brendan Carr FCC. We're joined by Nathan Lemur
as well. He's the CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies. His Twitter account,
I guess I should say X account is at Nathan Leimur DC. Welcome to
both of you. Yeah, so good to be with you. Thanks for
having me back. Thanks again. I gotta say, usually the bearer of
bad news when you have an FCC commissioner on, that means something in the
tech world is going south very fast, and that is the case today.
But good hay with you. Nonetheless, I was going to say, exactly
so, the FCC, including yourself, Commissioner Car, is set to vote
once again on net neutrality and that's going to happen at the end of the
month. The date for that is April twenty fifth, right, Yeah,
that's okay, So April twenty fifth coming up quickly, and I think probably
it would benefit all of us. And I'll start with you, commercider car
to get a refresher on what the heck net neutrality is. I think a
lot of people remember going through the hullabaloo learning about the super wonky policy,
as there was this massive panic over it, and then, you know,
if listeners are like me, just kind of went out the other side of
my head and now I need a little bit of a refresher. So what
on earth is net neutrality? Well, I gotta start by handing it to
the progressive left. As a matter of branding, net neutralities probably one of
the greatest branding mechanisms, if not Orwellian mechanisms that we have come across.
And that's what's interesting about is that net neutrality every three or four years turns
into something entirely different, and we need net neutrality for entirely new reasons.
And as you pointed out, so the FCC where I work has five commissioners,
three year democrats, right now to our Republicans. I'm in the minority.
But back in twenty seventeen, when Chairman Pie was the chairman of the
FCC and Nathan was working for him, we repealed the Obama administration's just two
year experiment with these Title two net neutrality rules, and if everybody remembers,
it was probably the greatest regulatory hoax we've ever lived through. When we repealed
Title two, CNN ran a bolded banner headline declaring the end of the Internet
as we know it. But your question, there's really two different things going
on here. Net neutrality is the idea that your ISP shouldn't be blocking or
throttling your content makes a lot of sense. It's actually a very bipartisan idea.
The challenge, though, is that when people say net neutrality on the
left, what they really mean is Title iiO of the Communications Act, and
that's a sweeping set of authorities that allows the government to micromanage anything that is
subject to Title to regulation. So it started out at the telephone way back
in the mob Bell telephone monopoly of the nineteen thirties, when there's really no
distinguishing point between the government and the private sector. So people talk a lot
about net neutrality, but they don't tell you the truth, which is what
the FC's really voting on on April twenty five, is to take the Internet
and stick it under Title iiO of the Communications Act, which comes with all
sorts of heavy handed controls that lets bureaucrats in DC micro manage how the Internet
itself operates. And just that little refresher alone reminded me of actually how fascinating
this dust up was in the course of the Trump administration. But as you
mentioned, this goes back the policy of net neutrality, specifically itself to the
Obama administration. So could you guys also give us a little refresher on the
way net neutrality, so called net neutrality has kind of seesawed back and forth
at the FCC. And maybe, Nathan, I see you nodding, you
might want to start with that because under the Trump administration you were working there
at the time, right, Nathan, Yeah, it was, and it
shows back to the idea of that neutrality comes back to two thousand and three.
It was a phrase coin by Tim Wu, pretty well known progressive activists
on the left who used to actually used to work at the Biden administration,
and it proliferated mainly because former President Obama used it as a campaign slogan.
It was actually the first way to galvanize what we now know is net roots
like online progressive activists, to really call us around this concept. And in
fact, many of his organizations still exists today and are running a whole bunch
of fundraising efforts on this latest effort at the fc SEE because it's been a
really great cash cow for them to bring in donor support for the past you
know, fifteen twenty years. And you know, I think, you know,
there are conversations about, you know, the principles of net neutrality.
Again, the idea of companies not blocking and throttling is a good concept.
It's something that a lot of people agree with. In fact, there are
no real hype, there's no real fear, there's no examples is actually ever
happening. There are a lot of hypothetical, tangible predictions, but they never
came true. And so when when President Biden's and President Obama's SEC chairman Tom
Wheeler established the Open Internet Order, which basically established these rules of net neutrality
under title to you know, over two years, we saw within a couple
of years, a lack of investment, actually a decrease in investment to build
out this broadman access and decrease of innovation that could allow more people to have
Internet access. And then that's what we saw in twenty twenty seventeen when Mile
Voss, a GPI and Brendan Carr voted the right way to kind of restore
Internet freedom and kind of repeal those rules, we saw actually a jumping investment.
We've seen actually, you know, a further further growth of proliferation of
new technology, whether it's five G or whether it's LEO satellites like Starlink or
Project Hyper you know in the US kind of proliferate. You know, this
going back to this kind of a Title two regime will actually make it harder
for some of those entities to actually deliver their next generation activity. So it's
in this like back and forth seesaw that's happened over the past twenty five years.
But all the while, the progressive activists who pushed it twenty years ago
are still pushing it today. Well, and you know, COMMI strock Card.
This is what it was. That's so interesting because what you have there
are you have a failed experiment by objective metrics and a successful experiment by objective
metrics, side by side, and from your vantage point on the FCC right
now, why is there still this interest after, you know, seeing the
hoax really go up in flames and seeing what the reality looks like after trying
both. Why are people still clinging to FCC? Why will your to net
neutrality? Why will your fellow commissioners on the FCC probably vote to bring it
back? Yeah, this has become a matter of civic religion among some quarters
on the progressive left. And you're right, if facts in reason we're driving
this debate, then the SEC would not be voting this month to bring back
these heavy handed Title two rules. I mean again, there's no clearer example
of predictions not coming true. And this really was the Y two K moment
for an entire generation. I mean center Bernie Sanders tweeted at the time of
our repeal in twenty seventeen, this is the end of the Internet as we
know it. Senator Markey similarly tweeted, if we don't save net neutrality,
a JEEPI will turn the Internet into a digital oligarchy. The Internet will never
be the same, not like we can fix this with a vote down the
road, it will never be the same. And what's so interesting is we
had the greatest experiment when it comes to global tech policy in COVID nineteen.
So as COVID nineteen hit virtually overnight, we took a year's worth of internet
traffic growth and stacked it onto the internet overnight, as people started working from
home, working remotely, schooling their kids. What we saw was really telling.
In Europe, which has an approach to Internet regulation that's much more similar
to Title two, much more heavy handed regulation, Europe's networks struggled. In
fact, their top regulator pulled up Netflix and asked them to degrade the quality
of Netflix's signal because they were worried that all those bits being transmitted downstream,
we're going to break the continent's network. We didn't have that problem here because
without those heavy handed Title to rules, ISPs in America were investing heavily in
their networks, more than two times as much as they were investing in Europe,
and so our internet speeds maintained their performance with that unprecedented COVID nineteen surge.
So really, among other things, COVID nineteen should have ended the debate
altogether about Title iiO and net neutrality. Of course it didn't. And again
to the point that Nathan was making, look at your own experience. You
know, since twenty seventeen, mobile internet speeds are up six fold, millions
of Americans have been brought across the digital divide. You now have more competition
for your broadband dollars than you ever had before, including new players. Right,
so Starling didn't even exist, wasn't even up in the air in twenty
fifteen and twenty seventeen, and yet it is now. So whatever basis that
there was for Title two and heavy handed regulation of scarcity back in the day,
it certainly does not apply to today's modern Internet. And in fact,
if you step back and say, what I care about is the free flow
of information on the Internet, Well, that line of thinking does not take
you to the mom and pop isp It takes you to a very different point
in the Internet ecosystem. People's own experiences of the last couple of years shows
them that we're the discrimination. Where the lack of neutral treatment is taking place
in the Internet is at the edge. It's Google, it's Apple, it's
Facebook, And what's so troubling but also deeply ironic. Is As Nathan pointed
out, this entire idea germinated in the early two thousands and was pushed by
big tech companies like Google precisely because it created a regulatory mode around their business
model and kept competitors out. So at a point in time when so many
people are finally waking up to the discrimination taking place by big tech, the
censorship, the conduct that Apple is taking to beat back competitors, and in
fact, some components of the Biden administration are bringing legal actions right now to
bring big tech accountable. The FCC is entirely out of step, and we're
going to go down the path of giving new protections to big tech despite what
our own eyes and experiences have gone through over the last couple of years.
So it's a backwards looking approach. It's one fascinating Yeah, here, Nathan,
I was going to toss to you, Actually, let me just set
it up. That's a fascinating dynamic where you have the protect well the big
tech companies that for example, Lena Khan in one part of the Biden administration
is targeting in some really serious ways, and on the other hand, you
have this amazing dynamic where the net roots. To borrow that phrase, progressives
are now on the side of protecting these tech companies that they so bitterly at
least claim to be in opposition to. There's a great article actually posted on
Truth on the Market actually just a couple of days ago, that looks at
the compliance costs and the process, the burdens and process for these providers.
Now we usually think of the like large internet providers, the ones that do
you know, commercials on the Super Bowl, but you know, there's actually
a recent report that shows over twenty twenty one BROADMAI entities. These are small
providers that you've never heard of. These are emerging technologies that are that are
servicing different communities and they all have to abide by the same rules. So
you have these small providers that are more regional, more local, who are
now going have to go by the same process this mother may I approach to
be even built out broadband. But also this could apply even the Starlink for
example, or other LEO satellites even before every time they launch. Every time
you try to put out new satellites, you're going to have to get you
know, permission now by the FCC to even like service your customers, to
take this to the next level, and it's just kind of showing this,
how this, how this is having this downstream effect on all the providers in
concern about the hypothetical fears that maybe a few might provide that that honestly,
you know, never came true. But also you're also seeing a changing narrative.
So you point out that this has been going on for so many years,
but the reasoning has changed. It's no longer about competition because we have
over two thousand providers. It's not about free speech because if we talk about
free speech, that's actually happening at the app level, at the platform level,
the Googles and the Apples of the world. Now the reasoning is we
need net neutrality because for national security. Now we've talked about national security before.
A Commissioner Car knows quite a bit about national security what we're doing.
Commissioner Car has been leading away on efforts to ban Huawei and ZT and other
you know, really really nefarious entities in the Internet stack. But a lot
of people who were going missing in that conversation entirely are now saying we need
net neutrality to go after our national security vulnerabilities. Debt it keeps you tossing
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Reuter's article in which Commissioner Car is quoted as well, I was really excited
to ask about this actually because it's just incredible. They now say, let
me pull it up here. Yes, the reclassification we could would give the
FCC important new national security tools agency set it's initial proposal that rules could give
it quote more robust authority to require more entities to remove and replace equipment and
services from Chinese companies like Huawei and Zte. Commissioner Car, can you break
that down? And maybe also a little bit of the tech side too,
like, what on earth are they talking about there? Yeah? You know,
look, there is no gap in national security that Title iiO is necessary
to fill. You know, we have had Title I regulation of the Internet
since twenty seventeen. And to somehow suggest to people that for the past six
or seven years we've been staring at some latent, but you know, very
serious national security threat in our Internet networks but have been unable as a federal
government to do something about it is just not believable. There are plenty of
actions that the FCC Contank, but more importantly, can take in conjunction with
the federal agencies that actually are empowered in this space. So DHS has a
lot of authority here, has a lot of authority here. The Federal Trade
Commission has a lot of authority here. So the FCC, if you read
the order, it actually backs away a little bit and it says, well,
it'd be nice if we had additional authorities in an additional seat at the
table. So all the headline suggests that this is necessary for national security,
the item itself is actually very weak on that point, and to some I
got to give it credit because it is not a credible point to suggest that
Title iiO is necessary for national security. But it's part of what we've been
talking about, which is this etcha sketch basis of regulation, which is every
time we go through this, we're told we need this for this reason,
and then when this doesn't end up happening, they say, okay, forget
about that. But it's this entirely different reason, and so the goalposts keep
moving, but the goal is exactly the same, which is just to continue
to get more and more control over the Internet. It wasn't that long ago,
a couple months ago, that the FCC adopted this new order called Digital
Equity for the Internet, which gives the agents see basically the same type of
title to authorities over the Internet in the absence of Title two. And so
what the order tries to suggest the draft decision at the FCC is that there
is some massive absence of regulation when it comes to the Internet. And that's
not the case at all, whether it's Digital Equity, Federal Trade Commission,
or all these other agencies. There's nothing there. And to Nathan's point,
the item also says that you know this will help the SEC promote free speech.
I mean, you got to be kidding me. Right now, the
Bidy administration is in the Supreme Court in this case Murphy versus Missouri, defending
its right to jawbone and pressure social media companies into censoring speech. So you're
telling me that the FCC is going to get new powers, new authority over
ISP and they're going to use it in the exact opposite way to actually encourage
free speech. I don't think it's going to happen. And look, in
addition to the legal elements of this, there's a cultural issue in this country
right now when it comes to censorship and free speech. You know, we
have moved moved away from this very liberal embrace of diversity opinions. And I
think it's accelerated obviously during COVID nineteen. Because free speech is anethetical to government
control. It's the check on government control. So whenever you go through a
period of time in which there is a great expansion of government authority and a
retraction of individual liberty, you're going to see free speech having to go by
the wayside. And it's troubling to me. And in fact, you know
one story that puts some bookends on this. Right around the twenty twelve election,
President Obama went to Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley and he gave a speech
and he talked about the free flow of information on the Internet being key to
what he said was a healthy democracy twenty twelve, and then flash forward about
ten years short time as a matter of politics, to the twenty twenty two
midterms, and a couple miles down the road to Stanford, President Obama went
back there and he talked about this, you know, reflow of information on
the internet, unfettered flow of information, being a threat to democracy. So
we bookended from twenty twelve healthy to democracy to free speech on the Internet being
a threat to democracy. What happened in between, I think, well,
one it was the election President Trump, but also I think it was just
the rise of social media and bending towards greater and greater censorship. And you
know, as a country, it's troubling. I think a lot of this
actually, in my view, is downstream from extreme versions of DEI, because
once you divide the world into the oppressed and the oppressor, you don't need
free speech. You know, right and wrong is given to you. But
we have to make a move in this country back towards this embrace of diversity
of opinions. But that's why, you know, until we do that,
you know, absolutely do not trust the FCC's claim they're going to use this
newfound power over the Internet to somehow protect free speech. It's incredibly well said.
And also you can look at the tech leaders themselves, Jack dor C,
Mark Zuckerberg, and the sort of former pirates of the tech world who
have completely done one eighties on that question, alongside people like President Obama.
Nathan I saw you nodding Darius a vigorously during Commissioner Cars and the answer there,
what do you want to add, Well, I just wanted to flya
like we see concerns about censorship across the board, and whether it's you know,
the ability of Americans to donate to the candidates that they like, whether
it's you know, the freedom of of candidates to send emails without being censored
by large tech platforms. We see you know, conversations throughout the scope.
If you have a YouTube channel in twenty twenty one, you mentioned that you
believe the lab leak has some you know, potential truth to it instead of
the narrative that was pushed by Anthony Fauci. What happened to all those individuals.
Those individuals were being honestly persecuted and discriminated against by the same journalists and
progressive activists who want that neutrality. Now, those same people thought that their
Internet should be taken away if you perpetuated any sort of wrong speak. The
same people who want net neutrality wanted you to not have access. How many
people were talking about, oh, we should bottle their access if you were
on parlor, we don't want you on parlor anymore. Like this whole concept
of you know, the gatekeepers being able to say who should have online access
and who should not, you know, it is really worrisome and having the
FCC have more power and your outlet the federalistet of phenomenal op edge just a
couple of days ago that gets at this like, this is like enabling new
levels of censorship in government interference that you know, we should be really concerned
about because again, the same people fuishing for net neutrality are the same people
who didn't want us to think freely for ourselves on a whole host of issues
because it went contrary to their own ideas. Yeah, and that really helpfully
answers the question of why you can have objective metrics, you know, rebutting
the arguments in favor of net neutrality plain as day. And it gets to
that makes their motivations a whole lot more obvious. And that's the next question
I wanted to toss to both of you. I don't know who wants to
take it first, but basically, can you give us kind of a breakdown
of where the special interests are on this question? I imagine that there's a
lot of outside pressure on commissioners and on the Biden administration even to just take
the step, although it seems like they probably wanted to do it on their
own anyway. Where are special interests kind of aligned on the question of net
neutrality. Yeah, well, look for in terms of pro net neutrality,
it's very squarely in the Google, camp Netflix. It's the edge providers as
we talk about, at the application layer again, because they view it as
some sort of protection for them, and it really is, you know,
a distraction from the efforts that the government should be taking to hold those very
same entities accountable. And it's very ironic that you've had you know, Google
and other deep pocketed interests pushing for years for net neutrality while at the same
time acting in a very non neutral manner when it comes to their own conduct.
Yeah. I'd also point out some of those same entities are now of
building out their own broadband services and so now they're realizing, oh, I
hear it caught up in this, So how does this you know, affect
them? And so that's also a part of the conversation that I think is
a little nuanced, if you will. It's almost like, you know,
they're they're they're now on the receiving end of the regulation and now they realize,
oh, this is actually super problematic, and honestly, ironically, their
arguments sound very similar to the same as the Internet providers five years ago or
ten years ago. And again you can't you can't disassociate the fact that there
was this was a promise by the Biden administration to a number of progressive activists
in people who who they needed to show up on on on election day to
say that we're going to fulfill this this effort. And so you know that
that that the politics is definitely still part of that. I know that's not
what the Commission's job is to be determining or to comment on, but like
as someone on the outside, I can tell you, like that's a real
interest. And what's fascinating is you're not seeing John Oliver do videos. You're
not seeing the same sort of enthusiasm for this. You know, again,
like we receive death threats five years ago. You know, I even me
as a low level junior staffer. I wasn't a junior staffer. I'm will
exaggerated, but like as a status yeah, exactly. Think think humility.
I had for Federal Protective Services escort me around for several days because of the
threat that we were receiving. Former chairman and GEP Pie had like attacks on
him and his family and we had a bomb threat at the at the FCC.
I mean, this was like insane, the type of overreaction we had
five years ago. Now, honestly, it's a it's an eight it's a
page eight story. It is on the back page of the conversation in DC,
because rightfully, most Americans realized there's so much more going on. But
again, you know the sometimes you still got to pay those favors, political
favors from five six years ago. And my understanding is that some states have
actually gone with their own versions of net neutrality Commissioner and Carl'll start with you
on this one. What's happening at this sort of federal versus the state level.
The states are stepping into what they see as a void, and so
there's kind of a Patrick right now. Yeah, there were a handful of
states after the twenty seventeen repeal, although a number of years after the twenty
seventeen repeal that stepped in with their own versions of net neutrality laws, including
California. And what's interesting about that is two things. One, the draft
order that we're going to vote on at the FCC leans in heavily and says
we need a uniform national standard to address net neutrality, and yet of course
they exclude from preemption the California law, which you know, in my view
has a lot to do with politics at the end of the day. But
what's also interesting about that California law is when they were first bringing online around
twenty twenty one, there was a very real concern that their version of net
neutrality was going to pinch veterans that were getting sort of free telehealth services because
their telehealth service from their provider was excluded from their data caps, and that's
something that strict net neutrality doesn't allow, and so that was a problem that
they tried to sort of sweep under the rug. But the other thing that's
interesting about these state laws is some people say, well, we need this
national approach, and then you say, well, why didn't the Internet end
in twenty seventeen, Oh, because these states stepped in. But you can't
have it both ways. If you know one or two states having inny trally
laws is the thin line between us and the end of the Internet, then
we should stay where we are without going forward with these heavy handed federal regimes.
So the state laws are interesting, and again the ones that are most
politically salient like California are somehow going to be excluded from these national standards.
Anything to add on that, Nathan, other than like you know, the
fact that like you know, the Telemellet telehealth example is a cirta really salient
example where like you had providers stepping in to provide free services or veterans,
and the fact is that the regulatory regime could actually hinder their ability to prove
that innovative service because it didn't follow the strict uh uh adhering you know,
strict theology of net neutrality and so the doctrine if you will, and so
you know, I think that's something that we should be thinking about long term,
is whether at the state level or even looking what happened in Europe as
as Commissioner A car mentioned, like when they had to throttle Netflix because they
can't handle you know, COVID pandemic demand. You know this is these are
the type of ramifications that we're going to have across the Internet ecosystem. You're
going to have slower potential services for you know, next generation technologies like satellites.
You're going to have the inability of next generation and Wi Fi to do
what it needs to do to truly service our customers. It could actually how
does that affect AI? What's it look like for? You know? This
these these the network management to deal with the nuances of artificial intelligence? You
know, how is that gonna deal with quantum quantum computing, et cetera.
And I just don't think these questions have been fully answered, and it just
show that whether the state level or international, we're just going to have further
ramifications of this heavy handed approach. Yeah, basically to this, OK,
go ahead, ye sorry, This point goes to sort of the unintended consequences
are perhaps intended. You know, as we talked about, there's this service
called zero rating, which means if you want to use a particular application,
your carrier will let you do so without having account against your data cap.
Zero rating. The application in the SEC order puts those zero rating so free
data for customers precisely in the crosshairs. Same with data caps. So let's
say you have a data capped mobile wireless plan that you pay thirty bucks for
forty bucks for a month, and you prefer that to a sixty or seventy
dollars unlimited data plan. Well, the FC order says that data caps themselves
may be a violation of net neutrality, and we're going to look at it
on a case by case basis. So it could effectively compel everyone to go
to an all you can eat buffet and expensive all you can eat buffet every
single day. And it's just the government, you know, stepping in micromanaging
even those types of data plans. And I think fundamentally, again, when
you step back, this isn't an isolated pinprick. It's part of this broader
effort towards government control. And it's frankly, it's a rejection on the left
from what used to be a bipartisan consensus that if the market is functioning,
let's rely on those market forces to continue to deliver a good for consumers.
Instead, you see some on the far left there are the view that effectively,
if the government doesn't have a seat on the board of directors at a
company and isn't able to stop every single thing that goes wrong ahead of time,
then we simply aren't protected. And you look at this throughout the FC's
order, there's no evidence of a concrete, actual harm that requires a government
solution. It's all conjecture and Rube Goldberg theory about well down the road,
something could happen and something would go wrong if we don't sort of stop that
right now, who's to protect consumers? But again, there's good things that
happen in the market, and it can be bad things. But if you
have these heavy handed regulation on the front end, you lose all of that
innovation to come. Look at look at Jonathan yeah, look at Jonathan Heights's
new book, you know, uh, you know, looking at the the
it was that the anxious generation, which is like this concept that like too
many kids have access to smartphones, and honestly, it's harder and harder for
parents to crack down and limit their kids access, you know, when it's
feasible for them. So now on the other end, we're going to have
you know, through net neutravelity to too, it's going to be harder and
harder for potential news services to develop that could as as as Commissioner car mentioned,
make it easier for these parents to actually do their job and limit access
through two apps like TikTok and and other things that actually are making their kids
more anxious, Like we should be allowing you know, innovative services to address
the concerns that parents have because again, guess what happens when you have a
smartphone? If you're all everyone has to be smartphone and above and you can't
have data caps, you can have these data limits. Well, now all
these kids are now customers to the big tech companies who are, oh,
by the way, lobbying for net neutrality on the other hand, and so
it's like, you know, what can we do to allow consumers to actually
take to make the choices that they need and want to better protect their interests.
And you know, parents like you know, me and our kid and
my wife we're thinking about we are our daughter age eleven and twelve, Like,
hey, I'd rather have innovative services that limit her access to things that
she should not see, and we should not make making it harder for her
to be able to do that. That's a really interesting point. Hello,
thank you for listening to The Federalist. This is columnist and podcaster Sarah Carter,
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times. Since we've been talking about market interference and speech and national security,
I'd be remiss if I didn't get both of you, I think two of
the most useful voices about the or on the broader problems with TikTok and byte
edance to weigh in on what you expect to see potentially from the Senate in
the days and weeks ahead when it comes to TikTok. So let's start with
you, Nathan. You run the show a few weeks back, and we've
sort of hosted both perspectives on TikTok on this show, and you're very much
in favor of the builds of Bannet with a lot of nuance of course.
But what are you hearing, if anything, about how Senate Republicans may be
even said Democrats will handle this legislation now that it's kind of the ball is
quite literally in their court. Well, first off, I had to commend
you and your team for hosting really good debates and discussions on the paid front
page of Federalist dot com to just even the podcast and on social you know,
a lot of differing opinions, and you guys have fostered that again,
that's an important idea of conservative thought, is that we can foster free speech,
be a free speech and debate and discussion. And so, you know,
I appreciate the opportunity to first come on two weeks ago and then now
to talk further about it. So I'm still I'm still convinced in my approach
that the bill is actually doing the right thing, and I hope that we
can talk more about some of our positions on the language and how we see
this asn't overreach in the right approach. But I would also point out that
I'm hearing positive things in the Senate. It looks like Senator Cantwell and the
Commerce Committee is looking to move on this legislation and her committee and what I've
seen from potential language of the conversation is it's positive. It seems like there's
gonna be an interest in moving forward sets cent A majority leader Schumer has said
that he looks to make progress on this piece of legislation, and so you
know, I'm kind of encouraged to see what the discussion goes from here.
And I'm also encouraged by the discussion and debate. I think that it's important
to discuss this and think about concerns and potential hypothetical concerns and wrestle with it
kind of going forward. In Commissioner car what do you think you haven't been
on since the legislation obviously ended up on the Senate side, So maybe just
a little bit from your position on the legislation itself, and then maybe what
you're hearing as well. Yeah, I agree, I think things looking good
in the Senate. You know, if you step back. Senator Schumer was
on a letter with Senator Cotton back in twenty nineteen expressing serious national security concerns
about TikTok, and so I think it's only amount of time at this point
before the House bill gets signed into law. I think it's a good thing.
The House Bill takes a very smart, targeted approach. It requires TikTok
simply to divest, to break ties with the CCP. In that world,
they can continue to do business in this country like before, and all the
one hundred and seventy million TikTokers out there, I'm not one of them,
but they can continue to use the platform and the House bill includes very very
important protections that go far beyond actually the protections that are in place in current
law today. And so the law does not give the government any sort of
authority to go after individual users. It only applies to websites and applications that
are controlled by one of four foreign adversaries Iran, North Korea, Russian,
Russia, and the list goes on from there, and it also includes real
process protections on the back end as well. Now, some people have looked
at the language direction or control, and they've suggested that if the government simply
says that what you're saying aligns with a talking point from a foreign adversary,
that that's enough under the bill for you to go after And that is absolutely
the case. In fact, the reason why the legislation uses those precise terms
direction or control is because those are terms that are concretely defined in the law.
In fact, there was a very well respected conservative law firm that walked
through all of this and show that there is an exceptionally high bar under the
law to show that you are controlled. If you're just saying something that's consistent
with Russia or China, that is not at all enough to clear that direction
or control language. So the bill has a lot of protections in place.
It takes a smart, targeted approach to the threat that TikTok presents, And
fundamentally, TikTok's threat is one of data flows. For years, TikTok officials
represented that no or effectively no US data gets back to China where members of
the CCP could access it, and about a year and a half ago that
was exposed to be nothing more than gaslighting. Internal TikTok communications showed that quote,
every thing is seen in China, and that's search and browsing history,
keystroke patterns, biometrics, location information, and we know they're using it for
nefarious purposes. TikTok has even had to admit that they were using the information
to avail the locations of specific journalists that we're writing negative stories. And TikTok
has tried to wall off US user data time and time again, and they
keep failing. And they don't fail necessarily because the TikTok people are bad people.
They're failing because they are ultimately working for an entity that is controlled and
beholden to the CCP. So this is the situation where only a structural remedy,
A remedy that breaks that link back to the CCP is going to work.
And if we do that, then the app gets to continue to do
business here and people get to continue to use it. I was going to
jump in, yeah, sorry for you, jump in one more thing.
I'd also point out that like pulling on this has been super fascinating. I
think a lot of us assumed that if you took you know, the app
away from one hundred and seventy million Americans or because consideration about divestment, that
you would have like overwhelming like negativity in an election year and surprising, I
think, not surprising to Commissioner car and I have, but rising I think
a lot of general observers is that actually six and ten Americans actually support the
divestment or potential ban. Public Opinion Strategies put out a poll that had this
several weeks ago that showed I think like seventy plus percent of conservatives and even
like fifty sixty fifty five percent of Democrats and even independence were very much in
favor of this divestment, this physicular legislation. And then Wall Street Journal last
week posted another poll that said similar results that you know the public as they
learned more about this, became more and more concerned. And I think what's
fascinating about that is it's it's it's following conservative ideas. It's been you know,
Representative Mike Allagher and House Republicans who'd been pushing the idea of holding China
accountable and looking at this techtonk legislation. We've seen you know, the President,
president and the Democrats actually following along our lead on this issue. And
so it's encouraging to me that, you know, an issue that Republicans have
been talking about and sertives been talking about for several years is now turning into
something that the rest of the public is recognizing as a problem. And you
know, let's some putic opponents or even recognizing, hey, maybe they're onto
something here. Yeah. I was hoping both of you would get into some
of these threats because both of you are very clear voices on this and have
such great detail of exactly what we've already seen happen with the Forbes journalists and
Punject Texas and all of that. My last question we have both of you
here. My only hang up with the bills honestly that it's not specifically targeted
just exclusively at TikTok, and I wanted to give both of you an opportunity
to just explain, you know, what you think about that. Is it
a threat that it's not from your perspective, targeted just a TikTok kind of
leaves the door open to other countries qualifying under the law. What do both
of you think of that? Yeah, I think the bill actually is really
well done and very narrow. So it does talk about TikTok, and then
you're right, there's a very narrow provision that you know, read in context,
is really only about a situation in which you have something that is the
equivalent of TikTok. Again, so whether TikTok you know, takes all of
the US user data and reruns it under a different name, given the exact
language in the in the bill again, the direction or control when those terms
have been interpret throughout the years by courts, it's an exceptionally high bar that.
Frankly, I can't even think at this point what other application could possibly
meet that standard unless it is, you know, TikTok, or TikTok simply
stands up another shell company. So I think it's a smart approach, and
it helps to strengthen the bill of a tainder argument as well, to make
sure that it's you know, TikTok or anything that is sort of TikTok like.
But again, when you look at the record of TikTok acting at the
behest in control of the CCP, that's the standard that you would have to
meet to get any other application. So it's very narrow. Yeah, I
would support that too, and also point out that, you know, to
ever extend to the concept of foreign adversarial entities has to involve Congress, and
so there's there's congressional control to make sure that it's not extended between before beyond
those four countries. And there's obviously other ramifications for you know, extending that
definition to other countries, just countries you don't like obviously the effects trade and
and and diplomatic relations and all these other other variables to consider. And so
I think the fact that it's limited and it involves the administration and Congress working
honestly in concert together is actually super helpful for why this bill can can hinder
you know, not here, but enable proper oversight and proper balance of power.
Mister Brendan Karr and Nathan Lemur. Thank you both so much for your
time and your work in the space. Good to be with you, Thanks
so much. Thanks again. Of course you've been listening to another edition of
The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski, culture editor here at The Federalist.
Will be back soon with more. Then, be lovers of freedom and
anxious for the Fray. You got me right well, you know