Best of The Program | Guest: Ajit Pai | 1⧸25⧸21
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Summary
On today's show, we have a special interview with the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Payan. We talk about his views on the FCC, the immigration crisis, and much more! Don't miss the second episode of the Glenn Beck Program!
Transcript
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hey it's monday stew and i look for look for fun conspiracy theories uh uh and invent a couple of
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our own uh gee why would they say that this show pushes conspiracy theories that's crazy sounds
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crazy sounds crazy uh also we have uh ajit payan you may not know who he is yeah but he's the uh
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head chairman of the fcc big part of the trump administration uh one of our favorite trump
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administration officials and that he's done a great job and one of the things he's done is
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protect the internet uh when the left was trying to take it over he stood up against that
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and clearly won the battle and he's got some concerns and uh some exciting things to talk
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about on today's uh broadcast also on the podcast we talk about the real meaning behind the impeachment
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and the 14th amendment what they're really trying to do don't want to miss the second of today's
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podcast here we go you're listening to the best of the glenn beck program
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welcome to the program mr pat gray from pat gray unleashed the podcast you can hear on blaze tv as
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he records it live before this broadcast uh or you can uh check it out wherever you get your podcast
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hello pat yeah hello glenn how are you oh perfect just i mean so perfect you know i'm so glad the
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media said uh over the weekend uh cnn was talking about how joe biden what he's doing is just boring
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there's i mean he's just not doing anything he's just not doing anything that's exciting or you know
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controversial right like they're just 19 boring executive orders exactly and they're all like
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hey maybe you should order more paper clips yeah you know exactly and who cares about paper clips
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except for the fact that none of them are about paper clips they're about things like the border
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right right well just release all all people that ice has in custody yeah all of them no big deal
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yeah just all of them yeah it's not everybody it's not like he's releasing
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well he is releasing all of them yes he is uh but he's not releasing more than all of them
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no that would be controversial yes but this isn't uh this isn't nope he's also inspired uh caravans
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again so we got uh yes we have that going on we had one of 8 000 last week that was broken up a
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little bit uh we have another one of 3 000 that launched uh again like yesterday that's great
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that's only that's great you know 11 000 people that are headed i think it's wonderful states of
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america hey by the way uh did you did you hear that jeff bezos and amazon little upset yeah i did hear
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yeah little upset there's a they're trying to unionize amazon and he doesn't like that i mean
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when you got a corporation like amazon that's working well why not throw a little bit of the
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postal service in there with it you know what i mean let's get a couple of really good unions in there
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so um amazon has just filed with the national labor relations board because the unions said what
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we're going to do because it's so huge instead of having a meeting where everybody votes uh what
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we'll do is we'll have mail-in ballots and uh and uh bezos doesn't like that because he
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he says mail-in voting there's too much of a risk of fraud by the labor unions yeah the only way it
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can be valid and fair uh-huh is to have an in-person voting system right well not only that not only that
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he said um the concerns about election security run uh particularly high because we don't have
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a reliable electronic signature platform hmm hmm so amazon doesn't have that yeah hmm that's interesting
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that's uh so i throw that in i mean again some of the stuff gets out of where the election was you know
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crazy but the one they keep saying like will we check the signatures it's like i buy things every
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day and they supposedly check the signatures like they they don't even look at my signature when i
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sign a credit card receipt for thousands of dollars they don't even care like they check the signatures
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i mean i'm not saying they don't go through a check but like how reliable is that check i have
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literally signed at mickey mouse at times i really have yeah i signed one jesus at one point
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just to see just to see nope i just i actually signed it jesus mccool nothing nothing i i sent my
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kid up there the other day to buy lunch with my credit card and they gave it to him like i he's not
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he didn't get the credit card he's nine they don't care he's on his cell phone american express i know
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i know i've i wrote i wrote the check i don't know why it's not there for last month's payment
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i just need lunch today um tim matheson for for for some reason now tim matheson is the guy remember
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do you know who he is yeah he's the guy from national lampoon's animal house animal house yeah
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right he was otter in that right and and what he's been doing since is oh it's terrific stuff
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right whatever it is so so anyway i've seen all of his film yeah oh so um so he he tweeted out
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so wonderful to have a first lady with class and heart and can speak english oh yeah
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melania trump what a dummy she only speaks five languages only five she's only fluent in five
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and no class did you see her you see her out sitting on the washer and dryer that she put
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on the back porch of the white house sitting there with a crop top and she's sitting there just
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drinking a budweiser and i thought could we get some class wouldn't it be nice wouldn't it but no
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no no you got a supermodel in the white house and they hated her guts for four years for no
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apparent reason whatsoever is there any first lady that had more class than melania trump
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not that i can think of she was always classy i think jackie o would be the only one that i could
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think of that was was in her category yeah jackie o had real class but you know i was at the white
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house and i'm in the rose garden remember when she redid the rose garden yeah yeah and what did
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they say they said she ruined it that it was ridiculous it was terrible do you know what she
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did because i was standing in the rose garden it is beautiful you know what she did no not exactly
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yeah she uh uh restored it to the exact plan of jackie o they had changed it since so all she did was
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like i think jackie o had the right plan and they restored it to the jackie o plan and that was
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classless unbelievable i mean it's just unbelievable i i just but the class of dr jill biden wow now
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that yeah i yeah that's amazing um san francisco hotels are being used to house homeless people
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and there's a new executive order that has just been signed by joe biden it's so boring i i shouldn't
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even read it to you um under the order certain kinds of emergency housing for the homeless are eligible
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to be fully reimbursed through september now uh not sure if this executive order uh if if this
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emergency will will fit this executive order but i'm guessing it does uh so now we are going to be
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paying for the hotel rooms of the homeless in san francisco
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i have to ask you do you have a line anywhere do you have a line on on taxes where it's just like okay
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okay no because i almost feel like that's taxation without representation because i'm paying for
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programs in california i don't get any representation in california why am i paying for policies that i
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vehemently disagree with in california california should have to pay their own bill i don't live in
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california for a reason i live in texas for a reason you know texas brought home all of its own gold
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we have our own gold reserve now we finally got it out of the federal reserve it took us five years
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but we got it and now we have all of our own gold reserves i did that for a reason because texas knew
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this ain't gonna last is texas why does texas have to pay for the nonsense in california
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is it just me because i feel this way about why am i if those if they're using federal funds
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then no that's i mean that's completely wrong these ideas this is why you know madison did not want this
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to be the outcome right where we just send a bunch of money to the federal government and it distributes
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it all over the correct all over the country correct the opposite of the model right and it's it and
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they're doing it in california they're going to do it with and if it's executive order do i really
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have representation there because they're spending money through executive order it's supposed to go
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through congress but even if it does go through congress um i don't have any representation in
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california who's who's the one going to hold the budget for us who's going to be the one that holds
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the feet to the fire who's going to make sure that california has some austerity instead of just
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continuing to spend money i mean i just think we are setting ourselves up for massive problems because
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when new york fails which it will when illinois fails which it will i have no problem helping a neighbor
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but not the neighbors who have been living it up not the neighbors who are like you guys there's
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so stupid party why would i help them i i think new york will probably be fine because
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i just imagine the sales of the poster that andrew cuomo made celebrating how good what a good job he
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did on coronavirus those are probably selling so much that he can just pay off all the budget
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problems with that right and or his book yeah just just either one the book about what a great job he
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did with the coronavirus that was released just as they went to the highest peak they've had
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since the beginning of the by the way speaking of more problems 7 000 national guardsmen are going
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to remain in washington through mid-march now 7 000 so dc's essentially an occupied city then
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i guess i guess that's what i guess it's great that's what they said trump wanted to do to portland
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make it an occupied city now we have 7 000 national guardsmen and desantis is calling them back he's
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like you're not you're not keeping any of my national guarded march i mean i i understand that
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like maybe the next day they don't leave because that would be kind of an obvious cue to everyone if
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there was going to be a problem but mid-march i mean what what's the limiting what's the limiting
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argument here like at some how why would you send them home in mid-march then the people are going to
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come in april right like there's no limiting principle here to stop this so desantis is pulling
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the troops back uh so is uh so is texas yeah they're gonna lose yeah all the red states are
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gonna be like no we're not gonna we're not gonna we're not an uh an everlasting occupying force in
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this in washington dc yeah and they're making them sleep in parking garages now they moved them out of
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the marbled floors of the of the capitol building and put them in a parking garage they said that they
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national guard asked for that not bull crap i'd say that's bull no they said that they they wanted
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to be we want to sleep in a parking garage it's more comfortable for them we'd we'd hate to be in
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a hotel put us in a parking garage i mean please those are comfortable please we don't want to go to
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a hotel though that's for the homeless right we'd rather sleep in the garage
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it's an honor to have ajit pai on with us again former fcc chairman uh ajit how are you
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my gosh they've silenced him already hey glenn how are you there you are having me on you bet how
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are you sir pretty good pretty good hope you're doing well also on this monday morning um so you
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were the uh chairman of the fcc before that you were the commissioner at the fcc you were appointed
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then by barack obama um and approved unanimously by the uh senate so everybody agreed that you were a
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a good guy that could get the job done um you've done some amazing things i believe that you and
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and when you were at the fcc those involved with you save the internet uh from net neutrality tell
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me about the health of the internet and where we are today because of those challenges before we look
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to the future well the internet in terms of its infrastructure is stronger than ever and this is
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remarkable when you consider that when we made our decision to repeal these heavy-handed net neutrality
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regulations back in 2017 the left was caterwauling about how this was the death of the internet as we
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know it that was according to bernie sanders others said the internet would slow down to one word per
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time the others said that you'd have to pay 15 per month just to be able to tweet all these things
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have fallen by the wayside speeds are now twice as fast as they were back in 2017 internet infrastructure
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has been built out so that millions more americans have access uh obviously it's a much different
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environment than those uh hyperbolic predictions would have suggested and to me at least the proof
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in the pudding has been during the pandemic we've had our internet infrastructure has held up despite
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the increase in traffic whereas in europe which still has these net neutrality regulations they had
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to go hat in hand to companies like netflix and youtube and beg them to throttle content because they
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don't have the infrastructure that's necessary to sustain these loads so we made the right decision
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and i'm glad we did so are you still hearing the voices where those forces still out there for
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net neutrality and to bring some of these regulations back and if so why you know i'd say we still hear them
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all the time whenever i'm on social media i see it uh and it's incredible i think it's more of a
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religious issue with some folks on the left and what does that mean what do you mean by that
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because what i mean by religious issue is there is literally no set of evidence you can ever provide
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to these people to persuade them that there's not a problem you look at the last three years without
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these net neutrality regulations we haven't seen any kind of market failure we haven't seen broadband
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providers broadling or blocking content nonetheless they say that these rules are absolutely vital and
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the internet's about to die meanwhile these very same advocates are going to the tech giants and
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telling them we want you to censor content that we don't like and so the hypocrisy of these advocates
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is just stunning it's just as i said there's literally no evidence we could provide in terms of
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faster speeds more infrastructure you have open internet all that kind of stuff that would persuade
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them and so it's not a reason policy debate anymore and at least on some quarters at least it's much
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more of a issue of religion do you believe or do you not and uh that's unfortunate because we're
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after all we're making policy here we're not putting our finger in the wind the hypocrisy is overwhelming
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but as you mentioned there's no evidence you can present but the evidence is there right like the
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speeds have gone up dramatically since they promised they would slow down to a trickle yeah and that's
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the incredible thing and the speed is the most objective one there's a group called ukla o-o-k-l-a
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the independent company they do their own assessments of speeds they were the ones who
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were saying hey the speeds are tracking upward and upward and i kept pointing this out to you to some of
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our critics and they would say well the speeds were going up anyway and so you didn't have the
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responsibility for that i said no no you if you look at the february 28th i think it is 2018
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the entire senate democratic caucus put this out on twitter if we lose net neutrality you'll get the
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internet one word at a time and so i said look that is objectively false like there's no debate about
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this this this internet did not slow down and nonetheless there's still some folks who say no
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it's still at risk your broadband providers are going to start censoring content any day now and
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it's always the sort of boogeyman that's right around the corner that we have to regulate against
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as opposed to the concrete problems that we can see on the internet which is not any type of stuff
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like this it's more that people in rural areas don't have access or people in urban areas can't
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afford access and those are the types of problems we need to be addressing not this phantom of net
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neutrality which to me at least is a solution that won't work and to address a problem that simply
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doesn't exist um it is 5g has been described to me as 4g being the size of a garden hose
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and 5g being the size of a channel for all of the all of the information i know uh my wife just uh
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i don't remember where she was but she used real 5g and she she was i mean she never comments on speed
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unless it's really really slow and she said to me oh my gosh glenn you can't imagine how fast it was it
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was just like load load load load it was just there every time um it's yeah go ahead can you
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describe 5g and what it will mean and how far we are away from that really being everywhere
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i'm really excited about 5g this next generation of wireless connectivity and unlike some of the
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predecessor transitions we've had yet 1g to 2g 2 to 3 3 to 4 the 5g is going to be a leap partly
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because of the speeds you mentioned that uh you know 100 times faster speeds than 4g a much more
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responsive network so when you click on the link it'll come up almost immediately but it's more
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the fact that this technology will underlie all kinds of different industries uh health care for
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example if you want to do a telehealth visit with your doctor much higher uh resolution video
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much lower latency as they call it so you can immediately see uh what the doctor is looking at
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and all that kind of thing it's going to be tremendous if 5g with doctors means because the
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latency goes from uh what 100 milliseconds to down under 10 which means in some cases you might be able
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to actually do surgery on the other side of the world with 5g exactly right i mean that is the future
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that's within grasp and if you think about all these low latency applications from telehealth to gaming
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to you name it that's a really big deal so i'm really excited about the work that the fcc did over
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the last four years to help that potential become a reality here in the united states so i just bought a
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refrigerator the other day and it said bluetooth enabled and i'm like i don't want my refrigerator
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to be bluetooth enabled the amount of information that is going to be going out of our homes now
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with 5g because it allows it allows 5g allows everything to be smart a smart item um are you
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concerned at all about privacy and uh and and just the use of all of this information on the american
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people absolutely and this is why many years ago i called on congress to come up with legislation on the
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federal level to establish rules of the road for privacy in the digital world we don't have that
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right now and so what you see is some states like california taking the lead and essentially regulating
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on their own within that state or you see europe implementing very strong privacy regulations and
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essentially multinational companies like google and facebook uh abide by those same restrictions in the
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u.s just as they would in europe because you can't have different uh privacy protections across uh
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you know across the world so i think right now it'd be great for congress to sit down and put on the
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page some of those basic privacy protections but the other issue related to privacy is security glenn
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i mean as you know as everything gets connected the network is only going to be strong as its most
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vulnerable point and we're talking about 5g and security there are companies like huawei and zte
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other companies in this space that could look to compromise some of our networks for their own gain now
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whether it's economic espionage or inserting malware or even more insidiously the chinese
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communist party looking to compromise security of networks to gain insights on where our national
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security is vulnerable well people would say that blockchain is going to be really important for
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our security but when we're at you know uh what is it 56 qubit uh quantum computing even blockchain
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is vulnerable isn't it i mean now that we're getting into quantum computer computing so fast
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how are we going to be able to keep things secure that's a really good question and that's part of
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the reason why a few months ago before i left i asked the fcc to organize a forum around quantum
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computing to understand what this future looks like and i don't pretend to have the answer to your
00:22:43.520
particular question but i do think it's important for the u.s government to start thinking about
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quantum and ai and machine learning and some of these blockchain these next generation technologies
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it might seem futuristic but oh it's here the future can become the present a lot quicker than people
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think one more question on privacy um before we move on the um um
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um has anyone suggested that all of my information belongs to me it is it's mine and if i decide to sell it
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then i will make that decision and i'd make my decision on what parts of it i'd be willing to sell
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this would not only throttle these uh giant companies that are truly getting rich off of the backs of of all
00:23:32.040
of us uh through metadata and now really amazingly uh detailed data on each of us but it would also
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return our privacy it would punish the the googles of the world uh financially by taking that incentive
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away from them but they could buy it from us which would also be something that the american people
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could make money on is anybody suggesting that i i have seen that suggestion in some quarters in fact
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i think there might be some legislative proposals floating around congress along those lines uh so i think
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that's one of the things that people instinctively get is that uh the property right they might have
00:24:14.920
so to speak in their own data is something that should be vindicated now on the other hand there's
00:24:19.780
some who've raised some questions about that for example if you're walking along a road um and you
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have a smart network transportation network that is monitoring you know how traffic is going so that
00:24:30.960
they can avoid hitting pedestrians and the like is that your data does it also involve some public
00:24:36.080
safety issues and there's some sort of gray areas there but i do think there's a lot to sort out in
00:24:40.520
this you know what is your data who owns it how should it be used these are the kinds of things that
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congress needs to speak to we don't have a framework right now for understanding that and
00:24:49.540
we need one desperately i look at the bottom of my alexa and i see that it has an fcc license
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uh on it and uh i wonder if in some ways this isn't and i know this sounds ridiculous but hear me out
00:25:03.960
a violation of the third amendment which is the government can't you know quarter soldiers in
00:25:09.080
your home um i feel as though the government isn't but if they start to collude more and more with
00:25:16.460
these companies they kind of are um aren't they quartering people not the government but these
00:25:22.020
companies aren't they kind of quartering people in our home if they are constantly going and listening
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to us and gathering information i haven't thought about that angle um but what i will say though
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the just you know the fcc logo you see on the bottom we're not licensing them all we do is
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essentially authorize their equipment to say any device in the united states that emits or receives
00:25:44.920
radio frequency or rf we have a responsibility to okay it so we actually don't license those particular
00:25:50.860
devices directly but i do think it's interesting that a lot of us rely on these devices that
00:25:56.380
you pick up a lot of our conversations uh and they deliver a lot of value but i think some people
00:26:01.900
also have the concern you know what are they looking into everything and so i hear that that's
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one of the things too that it's just a new world this didn't exist when i was a kid needless to say
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when you when you were inside the confines of your home that was sort of this impregnable fortress
00:26:16.140
so right right your own thoughts and data so it's a much more complicated world now because of
00:26:21.820
technology we're talking to ajit pai he's the former fcc chairman he was appointed
00:26:26.360
by barack obama and um and uh served under trump as well i think he's the best chairman uh that the
00:26:34.240
fcc has ever had and he also is uh somebody who i think really because of his passion has saved the
00:26:41.880
internet uh from net neutrality and we've seen how good the internet has become uh you spoke earlier
00:26:49.560
about when you're talking about hypocrisy about the kind of controversy about big tech companies
00:26:54.540
censoring uh conservative voices generally um and obviously we have a right for free speech we don't
00:27:00.580
necessarily have a right to an audience on someone's private website as someone who's a conservative and
00:27:05.460
is very scared of of a federal intrusion on the internet um i am worried about this sort of new
00:27:13.440
idea from the right where there's a big debate going on whether the government should step in and do
00:27:18.360
something to these big tech companies where do you stand on that well where i stand is what i've said
00:27:23.900
for many years which is that these tech giants increasingly are running social platforms that
00:27:29.140
have become the new public square and to the extent that some are either obstructed or prevented from
00:27:35.860
speaking that square i think it's important for people to understand how are these decisions being
00:27:40.460
made who are who is making these decisions and why and i think the past couple of months have only
00:27:46.320
illustrated the fact we don't have any insight here and for me at least as a consumer i don't care
00:27:52.480
whether it's a network operator like you're in a service provider or a content company like a tech
00:27:57.280
platform i just want to know am i able to speak or not am i able to read what i want or not and if i
00:28:04.600
want to understand the rules of the road and i think that kind of lack of transparency is what's
00:28:08.620
frustrating a lot of people nobody knows what's inside the black box so here's the here's the deal i've done
00:28:13.660
broadcast for 45 years i know what the rules are i know what the fcc says i know it's acceptable and
00:28:19.740
not because the rules are very very clear always have been when we get blocked or we get dinged by
00:28:28.380
some of these high tech companies we usually don't know why and so i can't i can't make sure that we're
00:28:36.160
in compliance if i don't know what it means to be in compliance exactly right and that's why some of
00:28:44.080
the decisions seem to be made as they go along as a i pointed this out last summer when i asked on
00:28:49.900
twitter why is the supreme leader of iran allowed to tweet out threats especially author urging the
00:28:56.460
destruction of the as he called it the zionist state and all of this nonsense uh whereas other people
00:29:02.020
are not allowed to say things which are clearly not as far as that don't go as far as that and
00:29:07.080
i think it just goes back to you know like i said in november 2017 i gave a speech where i said if you
00:29:11.460
are really concerned about a free and open internet what you need to be worried about is not net neutrality
00:29:15.820
it's the question of how these tech platforms operate free from any transparency requirements
00:29:21.520
whatsoever and i think people on the left and the right now i would think agree with that
00:29:25.820
this is the best of the glenn beck program and we really want to thank you for listening
00:29:33.220
we have uh jeep pi the former fcc uh chairman and commissioner former commissioner as well
00:29:46.960
of the fcc he was appointed by barack obama he served under uh uh under donald trump and um and i think
00:29:55.060
he is phenomenal on freedom of speech and regulation uh being minimal let the free market work things
00:30:02.180
out um thank you first of all for everything that you've you've done a jeep to keep the internet free
00:30:09.200
and to keep our voices uh intact i want to i want to talk to you about something that is really disturbing
00:30:16.340
now this is from uh congresswoman tulsi gabbard so she's on the left she said this weekend it is so
00:30:24.600
dangerous uh this is an issue that democrats republicans and independents libertarians should
00:30:30.240
be extremely concerned about especially because we don't have to guess about where this goes
00:30:35.080
or how it ends when you have people like former cia director john brennan openly talking about how he
00:30:42.060
has spoken with or heard from employees or nominees in the biden administration who are already starting
00:30:47.720
to look across our country for types of movements similar to the insurgencies they've seen overseas
00:30:54.260
that in his words uh make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists racist bigots he lists a few
00:31:03.700
others and at the end even libertarians um it's dangerous because of our civil civil liberties it will
00:31:13.480
mean that who could be scooped up uh tomorrow we don't know i am very concerned about the freedom
00:31:22.500
of speech on broadcast radio and the freedom of speech for those of us not just the average man but also
00:31:31.200
those of us who they're talking about deprogramming or uh licensing to be able to have a podcast
00:31:40.060
it's an unfortunate time for those of us who cherish free speech in the first amendment and
00:31:47.660
that's part of the reason why i've been so steadfast in my defense of it because i do think a defining
00:31:52.960
feature of our democracy is that any faction that happens to be in power should not have the ability
00:31:59.500
to define who is allowed into the public square and who is not and i think that's a basic
00:32:06.140
of american democracy over the decades i may disagree with what you say but i will fight to
00:32:11.980
the death for your right to say it i think that understanding has become frayed and i think the
00:32:16.640
first amendment is even more important when we have a tribalistic political culture like we have now
00:32:21.040
because we don't want your ability to speak to depend on whether or not you are in favor with those
00:32:27.780
in power so i don't know what particular information mr brendan was uh relying on when he made those
00:32:32.700
assessments but i'll just simply say as a general matter the first amendment is important for all of
00:32:37.120
us even when we disagree with the message that we might be hearing over the airwaves are you concerned
00:32:43.780
um that the next fcc uh commissioner and chair chairman uh will erode some of these freedoms for radio
00:32:55.460
are we in radio in a safe zone or not i certainly hope so i mean i did everything i could over the
00:33:05.280
last four years last eight since i served at the fcc to make sure that radio had the ability to thrive
00:33:11.120
into the next century it's the oldest communications medium of addressing the mass market that we've got
00:33:16.020
it's older than the fcc itself and to me at least i think it is one of the important forums for
00:33:21.960
discussion of these types of issues so i hope that the next fcc will embrace that i'm a little more
00:33:27.220
worried about what people will think on the digital side of things uh you know over the internet and
00:33:31.840
the like where as i said you have net neutrality advocates demanding certain types of regulations
00:33:36.460
but then on the other hand demanding censorship on the internet which seems inconsistent with that but
00:33:40.820
hopefully radio can continue to be one of the places where we do still embrace that first
00:33:45.960
amendment value that all of us cherish do you know anything about the people that are coming in behind you
00:33:51.340
yes i served with all the four of the current commissioners who are there including the acting
00:33:56.380
chair so you know i do think they have a shared commitment to a public service to the public
00:34:01.380
interest uh you know they i think they believe in the first amendment just as much as i do so
00:34:06.060
hopefully they will stick by that yeah that's been a bipartisan tradition at the fcc and i think the
00:34:11.960
most dangerous thing would be for us to get back into the game of approving licenses or doling out
00:34:17.220
favors based on whether we agree with the political views of the would-be license holder and that's
00:34:21.940
just not what the fcc should be doing it should be a market-based objective decision not trying to
00:34:27.540
look through into a crowd and pick out your friends um i want to read a story to you and and just ask you
00:34:34.360
your opinion on this and and i warn you that i i find what this man did and said to be disgusting and
00:34:41.360
despicable but there's there's a sentence that had just been handed down that i cannot believe
00:34:49.220
is um is constitutional a federal judge has ordered a kentucky man who allegedly stormed the u.s capitol
00:34:57.060
earlier this month not to make any comments about the breach uh or the u.s government online damon michael
00:35:05.380
beckley who was arrested by the fbi in cub run last week was released on conditional bond which
00:35:12.620
barred him from using the internet to post about the rally that the capital riot rally or matters
00:35:19.380
related to the u.s government uh he was also prohibited from attending any rallies protests or demonstrations
00:35:26.520
and he must be now monitored by gps he said things online like vice president pence my name is damon
00:35:34.040
michael beckley i don't appreciate this one bit the situation you caused here sir we're not putting
00:35:39.720
up with this tyrannical rule if we've got to come back here and start a revolution and take all these
00:35:44.620
traitors out which is should be done then we will i don't agree with that i think that's abhorrent speech
00:35:51.380
but isn't this as a federal judge telling him he can't speak about the government or
00:35:59.060
voice his opinion about the government online isn't that a violation of the constitution and
00:36:06.180
isn't there any protection for him well i certainly share your assessment of the comments themselves
00:36:12.140
this is an area of the law that's pretty well developed and one that i'm unfortunately
00:36:16.300
not as knowledgeable about about whether or not judges can restrain uh the speech in this way so i
00:36:22.920
probably had to defer until i had a chance to you know read the brief study up on that area of the
00:36:27.320
law a little better i know that this is something that has occurred in a number of cases and uh
00:36:31.440
yeah i'd want to express uh more informed opinion after reading all that stuff um tell me before we
00:36:37.220
let you go tell me the the thing that keeps you up at night and tell me the thing that you see over
00:36:44.740
the horizon that really excites you well in terms of what keeps me up at night it is the security of
00:36:51.040
our networks i spent a lot of time over the last four years here domestically making sure the
00:36:55.660
sec did everything we could to secure our networks against uh national security threats from the
00:37:01.520
outside in particular i've been very outspoken about the chinese communist party's determination
00:37:05.440
to dominate the world through technology and in particular to lead in 5g and that's something i
00:37:11.400
think the we should all be worried about hang on just a second people don't believe me when i say
00:37:16.900
there is a a building i think it's in beijing dedicated all it is is the communist party
00:37:23.380
it's their platform of hackers and they are hacking in and trying to hack into our pentagon
00:37:30.680
i can't remember it's some ungodly number of like 70 000 attempts a day or something like that i mean
00:37:36.680
they they have groups of people that this is their job to hack into our infrastructure true or not
00:37:46.060
that we've heard similar reports and i think that's part of the concern and not only that i mean they've
00:37:52.280
demonstrated that they are willing to export their anti-democratic values when it comes to things like
00:37:56.760
the nba or taiwanese flag emojis or the like imagine what they would be willing to do if they
00:38:03.660
had access to our telecom networks that is a serious threat indeed so explain that for people who don't
00:38:10.880
understand that well so imagine if we had all these 5g networks built in the united states everyone
00:38:16.320
was using them on everything from smartphones to connected refrigerators to your cars
00:38:20.360
to military installations and let's say some of that equipment was built by the companies like
00:38:26.600
huawei and zte which are themselves subject to chinese communist party rule so what if the chinese
00:38:32.600
communist party said you know what we just want to see exactly how american consumers are using
00:38:36.540
broadband let's see how broadband around military installations uh is being deployed and whether we
00:38:41.860
can get insights into things like troop movements or missile placements i mean all these kinds of
00:38:46.260
things would be simply one request away from the chinese government to huawei and zte and we would
00:38:52.240
have no way of ever knowing that those requests have been made and that our networks have been
00:38:56.140
compromised and i think that is the risk and that's why i've been so outspoken about the fact that i'm
00:39:00.620
very bullish on 5g's potential but we also need to think about security as a forethought as opposed to
00:39:06.540
an afterthought you once we've installed these networks it's too late you just can't put that genie back
00:39:11.520
in the bottle so we need to be very careful about this threat and not not have a rosy-eyed view of
00:39:18.420
the reality of the situation final question for you uh wait wait didn't you give the well you ask
00:39:23.360
a final question then i want to hear his optimistic thing okay well i was just going to ask my passwords
00:39:27.860
are all set to one two three four five should i change any of them yeah i would definitely urge you
00:39:34.540
to change that and you don't don't change it to password either that's the one that i think is
00:39:37.900
probably not as well advice mine's password zero one two three four five oh that's really uh
00:39:44.180
anyway um tell me what you're excited about tell me tell me what's on the horizon that you say people
00:39:51.300
don't understand how game changing in a positive way this could be i think what i'm really excited
00:39:59.140
about is just the new influx of broadband-based technologies you know when i got into this business
00:40:03.780
broadband essentially meant telephone lines being souped up with tsl to deliver relatively slow
00:40:09.220
service now at the end of my tenure at the fcc we've authorized low earth orbit satellites companies
00:40:14.440
like spacex to deploy broadband from space at a really high speed we've also encouraged electric
00:40:19.940
utilities to get into this business since they have a deep footprint across rural america we've
00:40:24.560
encouraged we've had a huge influx of spectrum thanks to our decisions that allow fixed wireless
00:40:29.020
companies to enter the space i guess all which is what i'm trying to say is all of these different
00:40:32.960
technologies are finally being unleashed through the power of the market to deliver connectivity to
00:40:38.340
american citizens and to me at least broadband is more important than ever and i'm really excited to
00:40:43.060
see how all these companies using all these technologies are able to innovate for the benefit
00:40:47.880
of consumers it's going to be a really exciting decade to come in that regard are you at all concerned
00:40:53.420
i mean i was going to ask you what's next for you but you were appointed by obama but you
00:40:58.480
actually uh served also under donald trump and they're going after anybody that served with
00:41:04.140
donald trump you concerned about your future and what's next for you i don't know i we had the
00:41:10.380
privilege of being an independent agency and i led in that spirit i kept all the political nonsense
00:41:16.140
in washington at arm's length to the extent i could and uh did the best i could and i think
00:41:21.160
you know a lot of the issues uh they didn't have a partisan sheen at all for example establishing
00:41:25.680
988 is a three-digit number for suicide prevention and mental health and making sure people's
00:41:30.460
disabilities had access to technology i mean the all the bulk of our work was pretty non-partisan
00:41:34.700
so as for what the next adventure is i'll have to wait and see but one of the things i found in my
00:41:39.000
career is that it's just such an amazing country that you just work hard and you try to be in the
00:41:44.640
right place at the right time and something will present itself to you so i'm so grateful for the
00:41:49.240
privilege of having the chance to serve and look forward to the next adventure being just as
00:41:53.240
intellectually stimulating and rewarding jeet i would love to do a long-form uh um interview with
00:42:00.120
you on our podcast i've i've got a lot of uh questions on security and uh and uh technology
00:42:07.380
that is coming i would love to pick your brain so if you have time some point i'd love to have you as a
00:42:11.860
podcast guest well sounds good let's let's let's love to talk about it let's figure out what work
00:42:17.160
work and uh and again thank you for your service you've been great at the fcc thank you thank you
00:42:24.360
thank you well i can't say enough how much i appreciate the kind words glenn uh i really
00:42:28.660
appreciate the support from everybody out there in the country thank you god bless ajit pai he was