Brendan Carr wrote Project 2025's chapter on the FCC. Here’s what he says he’ll do as the agency’s chairman.

The Republican commissioner says his top priority is to bring down the “censorship cartel." What will his plan mean for the future of the internet?

Kelcee Griffis, reporter covering the telecom industry for Bloomberg News.

Sara Collins, director of Government Affairs at Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy organization working at the intersection of copyright, telecommunications and the Internet.

Part I

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Brendan Carr to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr is already an FCC commissioner, which is why a great deal of attention has been paid to the fact that he wrote the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 chapter on the FCC.

Now, he'll be in a position to lead the agency to fulfill his goals.

BRENDAN CARR: Combating tech censorship is going to be one of the top priorities for me. We need to restore Americans' right to free speech. And you mentioned Facebook and other companies, they've been part of a censorship cartel that have worked with advertisers, they've worked with government officials to censor the free speech rights of everyday Americans.

That's got to end. Because censorship isn't just about stopping words, it's about stopping ideas.

CHAKRABARTI: Carr brings with him seven years of experience as a commissioner on the FCC, and nearly two decades in telecommunications law. The FCC itself has taken a pro-deregulation stance over the past several decades, so some of Carr's goals align neatly with the FCC's current hands-off approach.

Other goals, such as telling social media companies how to run their algorithms, which is essentially what Carr is saying, with his tech censorship concerns. That is decidedly hands-on and pro-regulation. It's a different approach to the world's largest digital media companies. So today, we're going to learn about who Brendan Carr is and what his plans are as future chair of the FCC. And specifically, what those plans might mean for big tech, but much more importantly for you and your use and experience of the internet.

We're going to start with Kelcee Griffis. She's a reporter covering the telecom industry for Bloomberg News. Kelcee, welcome to En Pointe.

KELCEE GRIFFIS: Hi, Meghna. Thanks so much for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: First of all, give us a little bit of background on Brendan Carr. What do we know about his work in telecom, even FCC commissioner?

GRIFFIS: Absolutely. Just a little bit of background about how I come into this. I started covering Brendan Carr in 2017 when I first started covering the telecom industry. I've watched him grow into his current role, as I've grown into my role. So that's been really interesting to watch it unfold.

Brendan Carr, before he came to the FCC, has a legal background. He's a lawyer. He went to Catholic University for law school, which has a pretty big telecom program there. He worked at Wiley Rein, a big telecom law firm here in D.C., for several years. And he ended up returning to his roots by going to the FCC.

He had a law school internship at the agency. And that was a part of his exposure to the work that he's now doing. So he worked at the FCC as an advisor to previous Trump FCC chairman, Ajit Pai. And then he went on to be general counsel of the agency for a while before he stepped into his current role.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. You know what's so interesting about Carr, is that in my estimation, it's nearly impossible to pigeonhole him in terms of what his views are on various aspects of telecommunications. It makes him a really interesting person to talk about. So what would you say were his priorities over the past seven years as FCC commissioner?

GRIFFIS: Yeah, I think you raised such a good point. He is a fascinating individual to cover as a government official and as someone who has expressed this kind of array of views that maybe other people in his position haven't before. I would say that, when he first started out, on the commission, he was this kind of telecom lawyers' telecom lawyer.

He's very by the books. He's very analytical, and he reads the statute that the agency is tasked with interpreting very closely. When I first started following his work, he was taking these big car trips. He actually posted about them on then Twitter under the hashtag #Carrtrip using his last name.

And he just spent a lot of time on taking a tour of America. He met tower installation crews. He met crews at trench fiber. He met patients in rural America that need connectivity to help them receive care. He really just embarked on this tour that I think continues to inform his work today.

And so he talked a lot about those experiences in his early days in the commission as he was on the road. He was also became, or I guess he also became known, as the 5G commissioner.

Ajit Pai tasked Carr with being the point person for getting rid of some of these regulations in the 5G space that we're seeing is holding up the deployment of this next generation communication standard, and that included things like, reducing fees and getting rid of red tape on the local level.

Sometimes utility companies or owners of preexisting infrastructure were seen as standing in the way of getting some of the 5G nodes installed. And so Carr really worked to get rid of some of that red tape.

CHAKRABARTI: So in his chapter in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 he does talk even more about 5G.

And his claim is that were it not for the first Trump administration, this 5G expansion would not have happened. If it happened under the previous chair of Ajit Pai, is that a fair assessment?

GRIFFIS: I think part of it is, it's all about timing. 5G was first coming on the scene during the first Trump administration, and that's just where the technology was at.

Now, coming into the second Trump administration, the technology is more advanced. We're at a different part of the infrastructure rollout. And on some level, we're even looking at 6G. So Carr has said that the infrastructure is still important to him. But he's also really concerned about things like making sure there's enough wireless capacity.

Making sure there is enough spectrum licenses, that the telecom companies can use and that all goes together into a cohesive strategy. You can't really have the infrastructure part without the airwaves part as well.

CHAKRABARTI: Right? So in that case, it seems to be, I take your point about the technology sort of being ready for prime time, if I can put it that way.

But then the FCC, by virtue of its job as a facilitator or regulator, can actually accelerate the installation of new infrastructure, which for 5G did apparently happen between 2017 to 2020. So there was a role for the first Trump administration there. But to be clear, we're talking about network stuff, right?

Not how companies use the network, but the existence of broadband and high-speed internet networks for Americans.

GRIFFIS: Exactly, and I will say that the rollout of broadband, it's not something that's partisan. This is something that both Democrats and Republicans want to see. I think the way you get there can be slightly different.

I think Carr and Pai before him took a little bit more of an aggressive approach to preempt some state and local laws that might stand in the way, whereas the Democratic administration has preferred to let state and local governments sort those things out on their own.

I do think there's a difference in implementation, but the overarching goals here are typically the same.

CHAKRABARTI: It's so fascinating to me because the FCC, it actually has this, as you said, pretty nonpartisan and ostensibly apolitical role in facilitating communications in this country, right?

It's in the 1934 act that created the FCC. That means everything from freeing up spectrum for companies to use.

GRIFFIS: That's right. The way I like to describe the spectrum.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I was just going to get to that, because I'm just like, I've never fully understood it.

GRIFFIS: I think that is such a fair question and it's just because it's something we don't have to think about. You turn on your cell phone, you make a call, call up Instagram on your phone and you're using 5G. You don't have to think about how these things work. You just want to know that it works, and that's the experience consumers should be having.

And that's the FCC's position. So the way I like to describe spectrum is it's the unseen airwaves that make our phones be able to communicate with each other. Unlike when you're using broadband at your house, that's typically over a wired connection that comes straight into your home via some sort of cable.

And then it comes into your router and that produces a local wireless signal. 5G uses different technology to allow your phone to be able to do that on the macro scale. And so spectrum, these unseen airwaves are really key to making sure that can happen. The problem is it's a limited resource, much like broadcast airwaves or radio waves.

So the government often auctions off these spectrum licenses to companies in order to use them. Sometimes they make the licenses available on a shared basis. So companies have to coordinate how they use the airwaves. And all of that policy is very complicated. And that's what the FCC has a hand in.

So that and things like the Universal Service Fund, which everyone pays when we use telecommunications, which goes to helping subsidize rural broadband or schools, for example. It sounds like with these major high-profile tasks for the FCC, that Carr, as chair, would continue in the public interest vein there.

Is that a decent analysis of that?

GRIFFIS: So I think you're on the right track.

CHAKRABARTI: You can always tell me I'm not.

GRIFFIS: No, Meghna, I think you're on the right track. I think there's a question mark there though, because the Universal Service Program that you just mentioned it's history, or I guess its future is in jeopardy, because we're waiting on a court ruling.

The Supreme Court has just agreed to take up this case as to whether the way the Universal Service Program is administered by the FCC is constitutional, or I guess, rather, if it is in line with what Congress, the mandate Congress has handed the FCC. That program is a little bit up in the air.

The FCC might have to change the way it administers the program. But in general, Carr has spoken about maybe changing some of the way that the subsidies are dispersed, but I don't know that he would wholesale be able to change, substantially change the way this program works, unless that came through an act of Congress.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so this is also going to be one of the sub themes for the remainder of the hour, is in terms of the, perhaps the more controversial goals that Carr has laid out in Project 2025 for the FCC. How much of it would fall within the FCC's purview, versus needing congressional approval. Things like reigning in big tech, which we'll talk about, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity and the FCC's role in that, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.

These are the things that Brendan Carr says he would bring, as the next chair of the Federal Communications Commission. So we will have a lot more to talk about in just a moment. This is On Point.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Today we are talking about Brendan Carr. He is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be the next chair of the Federal Communications Commission. He's already laid out his goals for the FCC quite clearly in the chapter that he authored in the Heritage Foundation's document, Project 2025.

So we're trying to understand what impact Carr would have as FCC chair, not just on big tech, but more importantly, on you and your experience and use of the internet. Kelcee Griffis joins us today. She's a reporter who covers the telecom industry for Bloomberg News. And by the way, Kelcee, just one quick note.

The chair of the FCC actually, it seems to me, has a great deal of power over the commission, because as far as I understand, the chair is the person who decides what matters the agency will even vote on, right? And when they'll vote on it. And organizes, coordinates the FCC's work. So this is more than just a titular leadership position.

GRIFFIS: That's exactly right. The FCC chair has historically always been the one to set the agenda. And the other commissioners, there's typically two commissioners in the minority, three commissioners in the majority, led by the chair. Those other commissioners fall in line, they're there to support the chair's agenda.

And I think that's actually why we've seen Carr becoming more outspoken during the Biden administration, he didn't have a majority chair's agenda to support. He could start to sketch out what his agenda potentially as chairman might look like. And I'm not saying that was the goal all along, but I think his activity over the last four years, and the things he's been speaking about, give us kind of an interesting clue as to what he's going to surface as chairman.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So now let's dive into his specific policy priorities. There's a list of them. And in Project 2025, in the FCC chapter, number one on that list is reigning in big tech.

And Carr writes, "The FCC has an important role to play in addressing the threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market. Nowhere is that clearer than when it comes to big tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square."

CARR: Americans have lived under an unprecedented surge in censorship over the last couple of years, and we have to work together to smash the censorship cartel.

CHAKRABARTI: So that was Carr speaking to Fox News Maria Bartiromo just last week. Sara Collins joins us now. She's Director of Government Affairs at Public Knowledge.

It's a consumer advocacy organization working at the intersection of copyright, telecom, and the internet. Sara, welcome to you.

SARA COLLINS: Thank you for having me, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so the power of big tech over our information sphere is something that's of grave concern to people on the right, the center and the left.

It would seem that having a very motivated FCC chair to do something about this would be a good thing, Sara?

COLLINS: Yeah, that statement about dominant players abusing their positions is true, and we've been incredibly supportive of the Biden administration's efforts, at dealing with Google's Ad tech monopoly and the other investigations that they've been putting forth.

And frankly, if Carr was saying the FCC was going to do a more antitrust focused, anti-competitive agenda, I think public knowledge would be behind it. But what he's really saying is that he doesn't like how these players have decided to moderate content. And if what he was proposing was we need more social media platforms, we need more places to speak.

I actually think public knowledge would be cheerleading him. But what he's actually pushing forward is they need to be moderating and moving content in a way I agree with. And that's the concern. It's not really about dismantling monopolies.

CHAKRABARTI: Because, he says, it sounds like an anti-monopolistic statement when he says, it's hard to imagine another industry in which a greater gap exists between power and accountability, but the accountability he's seeking is more political, right? Then business oriented. So this question of like, how would he define, how would the FCC define diverse political viewpoints is an interesting one.

But for background though, Sara, first of all, FCC can and does issue rules on content, right? There's things that, I wouldn't really want to say them on the air, but I also can't, right? Because of FCC rules over radio broadcasts. Ostensibly, the FCC could issue some rules over how big tech or social media companies build their algorithms.

COLLINS: I think that's overstating what they can do, because the FCC's content rules generally rely on the fact that there are a limited amount of airwaves, right? There only can be so many radio broadcasters, and we have a standard that it will be decent. Same with like television broadcasters and this sort of a push of anti-indecent content.

The internet, because anyone can enter, has never had that sort of stricture put on it, and I don't think the Supreme Court would, frankly, buy into, that there's that authority there, to curb indecency nearly as much as you can, on like limited communication capacity.

CHAKRABARTI: Just because it's never had those restrictions.

The Internet has never had those strictures put on it doesn't mean that it couldn't, right? I think that's why it's been so much focus on Section 230, right? So just for background again, Sara, can you just explain quickly what Section 230 is and why it's been such a, again, an area of focus for lawmakers in recent years?

COLLINS: Sure. Section 230 is what's known as a liability shield. So when you're in court, if someone brings a case against you, Section 230 says that even if they stated a claim under law, I have a shield here. And what that shield is that for user generated content, and that's all of the posts on Facebook or Instagram or what have you, that how a company presents it, how they curate it, how they moderate it.

Generally speaking, is covered as a business decision and that cannot, and a person cannot sue them for how they've chosen to do it. There are some exceptions, most of them having to do with child sexual abuse material, but that is not really what we're talking about here.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. And that's why these companies, social media companies in particular, always rally around Section 230, right?

Because it is the thing that lets them say, Hey, it's not our fault. But Kelcee, in Carr's chapter in Project 2025, he says he has a pretty simple solution. He says the FCC could eliminate some of the immunities within Section 230 that he says courts have given internet companies, even though his interpretation is those immunities are not actually found in the federal statute.

GRIFFIS: That's right. This is something that, as you said, Carr has been pretty outspoken about. This is actually something that started at the end of the first Trump administration. There has been some conversation about whether the FCC could interpret parts of the Communications Act, of which Section 230 is part of, to give the FCC sort of a toehold to regulate not just broadcasters, not just internet service providers, but the actual companies that ride over that infrastructure, websites, social media platforms, to impose some sort of oversight on them, as well.

I think this is a very novel proposition. This is something, if the FCC does do this, that would mark a very substantial departure from the way it has always regulated companies in the space.

CHAKRABARTI: Sara, he said, he writes here that the FCC should clarify that a new, more limited interpretation of Section 230 would apply to any platform's decision to restrict access to material provided by someone else.

In other words, Facebook, X, whatever, could not limit the, let's say the virality or the velocity of certain posts, because those were posts provided by someone else. It would just have to be open and free for all. In a sense, isn't that what already happens, though, with social media companies?

COLLINS: Yeah, so there's a lot of confusion in here. First, a misunderstanding of how this, these work. A decision to keep a post up is still a decision, right? Taking down is not the only action. Inaction is a choice. So all of these have choice architectures here, and he's just putting the thumb on the scale of what choice architecture he would prefer, which is a circa 2015-2016 free for all.

The other very strange thing is the idea that this liability shield, with the courts, in all of its decisions have always interpreted as their domain to interpret, that there's no sort of necessary clarification needed by a regulatory agency, would be a huge regulatory overstep. And we've just had the overturning of Chevron, like we have a court that is incredibly skeptical of agency action at the moment.

So I frankly, I just don't know that this would even pass muster with most courts, even a conservative court.

CHAKRABARTI: Regulations can be a double-edged sword though, right? Because unless the FCC issues a rule that says there's going to be a new interpretation of Section 230. And basically, what cannot be limited are conservative viewpoints, anything in support or celebration of President Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

You'd have to name those things to some degree, because the same language about not limiting speech provided by others, couldn't that be used for accelerating the kind of stuff that he would disagree with, as well?

COLLINS: This, we're moving on hypothetical on hypothetical. So here's what I will say, just of the general conservative movement.

What we've seen about how they talk about speech, that maybe more left leaning people are supportive of LGBT people talking about their experiences. They have categorized that as inherently harmful, especially to children. So what you might see is a bifurcation of classifying unwanted or unfavored speech as somehow harmful or outside of the public interest.

And that's where you could really see some problems. Again, this is all hypothetical. He has not proposed any like framework of how this would work. I don't know how he would do it, frankly, with the powers he has, but it is not so much that there would just be more speech. The way that conservatives have talked about this sort of censorship question is a sort of values proposition about what speech is valuable to the American public and what isn't.

CHAKRABARTI: But Kelcee, it seems as if that is something, again, just in the rudimentary example of the kinds of limitations that are put on broadcast speech, that the FCC has waded into those waters before.

GRIFFIS: That's right. But that's because the FCC issues licenses to those broadcasters, because again, like we've talked about, the airwaves are a scarce resource and that sort of comes with an obligation to use that scarce resource in the public interest.

With internet infrastructure, it's completely different. And although the FCC has regulated on some level, the way that ISPs deliver their content, it's never gotten into what that content actually is. That like a separate layer that really hasn't entered into the FCC's jurisdiction.

So like I said, this could be a pretty significant departure, but I also wanted to mention that on some level it might not matter whether Carr can get the FCC to wade into Section 230, because he's shown that he can be really effective in using the bully pulpit, using this microphone, using this stage to communicate these broad ideas and maybe motivate other people to act.

He might be able to get Congress on board. He might be able to motivate other parts of the administration. He will certainly be able to motivate people in the private sector to organize around some of these ideas. So I think the fact that he is wielding an influence that is maybe outsize to his actual authority at the agency is something very interesting.

It's something to watch.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so Sara, let me turn back to you then, because again, I'm just reading into this as he's defending a diversity of political viewpoints in this country. And given that digital media is the place where we have the most vigorous interchange of those ideas or at least expression of those ideas, what's wrong with what he's saying?

I don't see a problem, at least superficially, with saying, look, we need to create a kind of digital information world where people can say what they believe without fear of losing their Facebook account.

COLLINS: Yeah, so again, I think for us, it's a matter of tactics, right? We're taking a sort of anti-monopoly position that there has to be lots of town squares, with lots of different content moderation requirements, and basically a much more circa 2012 internet, where everything isn't dominated by four or five major digital platforms.

Our concern here is they say diversity, but under the past decade, like even before Carr has been on the FCC, we've seen huge consolidations in the news space and news broadcasting in particular. And that has winnowed down the diversity of viewpoints. So it's a little hard to take that statement that he just wants a diversity of political views in this space at face value, because a lot of the actions he has supported in other media spaces around consolidation just don't bear that out.

CHAKRABARTI: A point well taken, right? Because the FCC has absolutely smoothed the way to this hyper concentration of ownership in media. So here's another thing that, and Kelcee, I'm going to go back and forth between the two of you, but Kelcee, I'll start with you on this one. Every show that we have done, which is now many, about big tech, inevitably somebody on the show, an expert says, one of the major problems is these companies do not let out information about how their algorithms work. Or how they make their decisions on who gets to keep an account or who gets to say what, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, a total lack of transparency.

Right here, there's a major bullet point in Project 2025 chapters saying, Brendan Carr wants to impose transparency rules on big tech and let some sunlight into their black boxes. Sounds like a good idea.

GRIFFIS: I don't think I can comment on whether this is a good idea or not, but I think I would just go back to the fact that this would be a major departure from the FCC's regulatory authority.

The broadband disclosures have only applied to companies and how they deliver internet service, and at this point it's pretty established in U.S. government and policy that Internet is a necessary service for living a modern life, and that service should be deployed equally to all Americans, and I think that's where this, I don't want to say starts to break down, but I think that's where this is a departure, right?

We're now talking about services that ride over that infrastructure.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: I am loving this conversation. I just want to say, like On Point, I want to call it just like this wonderland of wonkery. Sara, let me keep pursuing something about internet transparency or big tech transparency rules that Carr says he wants to bring to the world, as FCC chair. Here's what he specifically says about what the FCC can currently do.

And I'm just reading this quote, because it harkens back to the very important distinction that Kelcee was saying before the break. He says that accurately, that under the FCC's current rules, broadband providers must provide detailed disclosures about practices that would shape internet traffic, from blocking to prioritizing or discriminating against content.

Okay, so that has to do with the network, right? But we're talking about content. So then he says, the FCC could take a similar approach to big tech, and it should look to Section 230 and the Consolidated Reporting Act as a potential source of authority. Here's my question. Even though I hear the concerns, I really do hear the concerns about the FCC, if it were to do this, under Carr, making that effective of being a massive expansion of FCC authority, and a potential overreach.

I'm into hypotheticals today. If this suggestion had come from an incoming Democratic administration or a liberal organization, or a liberal FCC chairperson, wouldn't people, wouldn't liberals be saying, Yes, finally, Congress isn't going to do anything to rein in big tech or to make big tech more transparent.

So let's have the executive through the FCC, take the first steps that the House and Senate refuse to do.

COLLINS: I take your point about Congress not acting. And that is deeply frustrating. I think on our end, we're in support of transparency requirements of what due process should look like. It's just, I don't think the FCC has the authority to do it.

So if we were confronted with a liberal commission talking about doing this, we would be concerned that they'd be wasting their time, doing work that then gets challenged in court over a period of years. Dwindles agency resources, and we are concerned about deployment of broadband, making sure it's affordable.

There is lots of work for the FCC to be doing. That it's firmly within their mandate. And so you also have to think about this as like a prioritization. So if you're going to prioritize this, you're not just prioritizing the idea that it should be done. You're prioritizing the amount of resources that you'd have to put into this.

And where does that remove resources from?

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, that's interesting because then that gets us straight to another aspect, which is further down in this Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, where it sounds like he also wants to quote-unquote, streamline the FCC or essentially cut down the size of the agency.

COLLINS: So when I read that part of the chapter, I wasn't surprised by anything I saw there. I think this kind of continues on his work that he started as a commissioner, cutting through red tape, having the FCC preempt some local and state regulations that he saw as getting in the way of 5G roll out, all of these things have been his drumbeat.

And I don't think that is really a departure, from what we've seen.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So let's get to another really interesting part. I might come back to the streamlining the agency part, in just a few minutes here. But another subhead is protecting America's national security.

And once again, he first lays some gratitude at the feet of the first Trump administration, where he says during the Trump administration, the FCC ushered in a new and appropriately strong approach to the national security threats posed by the Chinese communist party, the CCP. Okay. And here is what Carr himself has said on this, this is on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo last week.

CARR: The CCP doesn't come at the U.S. and our freedoms through any one particular vector. They come through all sorts of devices. They come through all sorts of services. That's why it's important that we be vigilant.

And I'm going to stand up a special operation at the FCC to make sure that we're looking at this soup to nuts. Any single entity. That's related to our telecom network, that has a tie back to the CCP. We're going to look very closely at that and make sure we're doing our part to promote national security.

CHAKRABARTI: So Sara Collins, once again, this seems to be a very bipartisan approach. When he talks about things that the FCC has done in the recent past, revoking or denying licenses of carriers like China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, which present risks to national security, I'm not sure I can, I find a person, either on the right or the left, saying, no, the FCC should take a hands off approach to telecom ownership in this country.

COLLINS: Yeah, definitely not. And we agree with that. I think that's a perfectly appropriate role for the FCC. The FCC is charged with protecting our communications infrastructure. That includes from national security threats. That includes hardening for disaster relief. All of that is perfectly within scope. I think the one question, and Huawei provides a really good example for this, is that saying that you can't use technology that's already been put into an infrastructure is incredibly costly, and we've been fighting about that since the Huawei decision. About who's going to be paying to rip and replace all of that tech. And I again, this is not a policy disagreement. This is an implementation question of how Carr plans to navigate those waters.

CHAKRABARTI: OK, so just again, for precision's sake, remind us about the Huawei decision, because this has to do with Chinese owned and made chips, I'm thinking.

COLLINS: Chips. It has to do more with some of the tech that goes into some 5G and other things. So it was found, the FCC and I believe the Department of Commerce as well, had found that they believed, that there was either malicious spyware or other sorts of security threats within some of the tech.

And they said, basically, they put it on a ban list, and then they told telecom operators, you have to rip that stuff out and replace it with an approved list of manufacturers. Now, almost all of those manufacturers that make similar equipment cost more. It's why Huawei was put in, and so there has been a big fight happening between different telecom operators, and Congress has weighed in on this.

The FCC has had to deal with this, of who's going to pay to replace that, because it's expensive. Again, the FCC has the authority, but now you're talking the soup to nuts. All right, who's paying for it?

CHAKRABARTI: I see. So preserving national security is a priority, but it comes at a cost and someone has to pay for it.

Understood. Okay. Kelcee, I don't know if you wanted to say anything about the national security aspect, because I also, within that, I wanted to ask you about, he puts TikTok front and center once again.

GRIFFIS: That's right. And I think TikTok is a great example of one of the first high profile issues that we saw Carr start to wade into, using that bully pulpit to talk about something that has never historically been under the purview of his agency.

This started a few years ago. He got the attention of Congress. We saw Ted Cruz talking about this. And then it turned into a ban that the Biden administration implemented. I'm not saying that Brendan Carr is the reason this happened, but he was one of those strong voices there, from the beginning, talking about this.

We haven't heard him talk about this, though, since the election. Trump has reversed course on the TikTok ban. And since then, Carr hasn't really mentioned it either. So we have to see if that priority for him is going to change, because the incoming president's priority has changed.

CHAKRABARTI: Do you know we did a show about this, and I have never heard the level of disgust from listeners as I heard in that show. When people were like, Oh, so Washington can't get its act together to do anything to help my actual life, but they can ban TikTok. It was an amazing, just paroxysm of dismay from listeners about the lack of functionality in terms of Congress's ability to make positive change in people's actual lives.

I love you guys, On Point listeners. Absolutely love you. There's another aspect of the network or networks that I wanted to ask both of you about, and it has to do with net neutrality. Because under Ajit Pai, who was the FCC chair in the first Trump administration, I think he was a big critic of net neutrality.

He basically called it the sacred cow of the left, and didn't think that it should be preserved. And we're talking about networks basically not being allowed to prioritize some company's content over the other. Sara, I'll turn this one to you first. Do we have any sense as to where Carr stands on that?

COLLINS: He voted no against the net neutrality rules. And it is unclear, but highly likely that the FCC, right now, the net neutrality rules are being challenged in court by a variety of telecom companies. The FCC is currently defending that, defending those rules. What Carr can do, and it's not unlikely, but he hasn't said he's going to do it yet, is say, remove the FCC from defending those rules and basically just say we have no opinion about this anymore.

Now there's a bunch of procedural questions that can happen. Consumer groups have intervened, and so they may be able to push those rules forward. Again, you're going to get into a very messy, fairly long court case, just like we had in 2017. But I think 2017 provides a good instruction that the FCC may just decline to enforce or to uphold these rules.

CHAKRABARTI: What is the argument that conservatives are making against net neutrality?

COLLINS: I think it's your classic government overreach. They have decided that, because what net neutrality is and how it works is the first thing you have to do is classify broadband services as a Title II service.

So it's a communication service, rather than an information service. And once something becomes a communication service, the FCC has much more authority to regulate it. They have higher standards that they can impose. They can do much more thorough investigations. It gives them a lot more power.

So net neutrality is just one aspect of this entire Title II debate here. And I think this is where you see the classic, what I'm going to call the Republican deregulatory approach, and skepticism of regulation and the consumer interest. And that's a very classic Republican talking point, and standpoint about this issue that's been happening for the past 15 years.

CHAKRABARTI: Kelcee, did you want to add your insights on the FCC and net neutrality?

GRIFFIS: Yeah, I just wanted to build on what Sara was saying here. Because I think now it's interesting that we're hearing Carr potentially echo some of these net neutrality type regulations that he would like to see put on big tech.

Obviously, he's not a fan of net neutrality, but when you classify a service as a Title II service. Like Sara was saying, it becomes a common carrier. It has these obligations to carry all internet traffic equally without discriminating. And I think those are the sort of ideas that he wants to apply to big tech.

So it's just interesting to hear these echoes of some of the net neutrality philosophy in this Republican driven next chapter at the FCC.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Again, it's one of the reasons why it makes it so interesting to try and understand more deeply Carr's views and goals within this agency that we don't actually talk about often enough. So here's one more goal that he's set out, again, and this is in the chapter in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document that Carr authored. He talks about economic prosperity and how that should be on the agenda for the FCC. And he writes, quote, That the FCC must do everything from, quote here, refilling America's spectrum pipeline to modernizing infrastructure rules, end quote.

CARR: When President Trump came in 2017. He turned things around very quickly with his chairman Ajit Pai. That's going to require permitting reform, spectrum, and the space economy. Look, right now it takes longer to move an application from one bureaucrat's desk to another. Then it does to actually build a rocket ship, so we're going to add some rocket fuel to that process.

CHAKRABARTI: Since he mentioned space there, I'll also note that it seemed, I think he's a big proponent of satellite-based broadband, which of course takes us into the world of Elon Musk and Starlink. So there's an interesting confluence, even though on the one hand Carr is opposed to big tech. He's definitely aligned with Elon Musk, who is one of the major faces, I would still say, of big tech.

But in the last few minutes that we have, I want to hear from both of you about what, how would you describe the impact that an FCC under Brendan Carr would have on what matters most, our individual usage and experience of the internet and why we should actually be paying attention to this.

And Kel, I'll start with you.

GRIFFIS: Sure. I think that the FCC does have an extraordinary ability to get regular people connected to the Internet. And as we know, having Internet access will literally change your life. You can look for jobs. You can go to school online. You can have your groceries ordered to your door.

If you have mobility issues, you're sick. These are things that we've come to rely on. But if you live in a rural area or if you are on a really tight budget, you might not have access to, or you might have, you might not have the means to purchase this technology. And so the FCC has a lot of power to make those things accessible.

I think it remains to be seen, you know, what Carr's impact will be on whether he improves access for everyday Americans.

CHAKRABARTI: It's power over a resource that's become as important as water, electricity, it's like a utility in modern life almost. But Sara, I'm going to turn that same question to you, last thought. We got about a minute left.

COLLINS: Kelcee stole it. I think the big question is whether the FCC can deliver what's going to be most important everyday Americans, which is affordable, accessible Internet.

Frankly. And all of this other stuff, I really do think this is far more for the news media and currying political favor than it is for improving everyday people's lives. People care about their bills.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay.

COLLINS: I don't think.

CHAKRABARTI: No, go ahead. Go ahead.

COLLINS: Oh sorry.

CHAKRABARTI: Please finish. Go ahead.

OCLLINS: They care about their bills.

They don't care about the latest power fight between giant companies and the government.