WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2026 – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick touted the Trump administration’s success in halving the $42 billion price tag for broadband deployment under the BEAD program, and confirmed that the government has no intention of keeping states from receiving all allocated funds–non-deployment as well as deployment.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2026 – U.S. mobile carriers posted divergent results across two major network performance reports covering the second half of 2025, with rankings shifting depending on whether data came from millions of consumer speed tests or from structured, on-the-ground measurements conducted by professional testers.

Ookla’s Speedtest Connectivity Report for July through December 2025 draws on millions of user-initiated tests collected through its Speedtest app, reflecting real-world experiences across devices, locations, and service plans.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2026 –  Rep. April McClain Delaney, D-Maryland, is preparing a bill on standards surrounding quantum technology that she plans to release in about a month, she said at the State of the Net Conference here on Monday. 

While she acknowledged that this bill may not see “the light of day being in the minority,” McClain Delaney affirmed that Democrats are continuing work on legislation. 

President Trump blessed the proposed Tegna-Nexstar transaction over the weekend, arguing it will 'help knock out the Fake News.'

Last week, a federal judge in Minnesota included a list of “96 court orders that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has violated in 74 cases” in an order concerning an individual that had been detained. "This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law,” the judge wrote. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence."

Yet even as ICE is defying judicial authority and engaging in violence, it is also acquiring sophisticated surveillance tools powered by artificial intelligence technologies and rapidly deploying them in American cities. The latest Department of Homeland Security AI inventory, released on January 28, reveals more than 200 AI use cases that are deployed or in development at DHS and its component agencies—an almost 40% increase since the last disclosure in July 2025. ICE drives much of this growth, adding 24 new AI applications including tools to process tips, review social media and mobile device data, and deploy facial recognition to confirm identities. Among these additions are products from Palantir, the surveillance contractor whose technologies are powering ICE's targeting operations.

Last week, ProPublica reported that the United States Department of Transportation is planning to use Google Gemini, a large language model, to draft federal transportation regulations. Writing a federal regulation is frequently a long and intensive process. Agency officials apparently believe they can outsource “80% to 90%” of that work, usually done by legal and policy experts, to artificial intelligence, “revolutioniz[ing] the way we draft rulemakings.” As the agency’s general counsel put it, “it shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes to get a draft rule out of Gemini.” DOT plans to be the “point of the spear” of a broader federal effort to use LLMs to speed rulemaking. That is consistent with reporting last summer that the erstwhile US DOGE Service hoped to use AI to facilitate the rescission of half of all federal regulations in a matter of months.

Clearly, the Trump administration is all-in on regulation-by-AI. Others are not so sure: although AI has the potential to greatly aid the work of federal regulators, agencies that over-rely on LLMs to do their work for them open themselves to legal and policy risk. What’s most remarkable about the DOT’s plans is that agency leaders seem to have little interest in mitigating or avoiding those risks.

A wave of lawsuits in the Unites States is targeting tech firms for their product design decisions. Lawyer Carrie Goldberg has played a role in establishing the product liability theory that underlies them.

As the founder of C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, in 2017, her firm brought a lawsuit that sought to apply product liability theory to a tech platform — Herrick v. Grindr — arguing that a dangerous app design, not just user behavior, was the source of harm.

Juries will soon hear arguments in a case against Meta and Google that could reshape social media protections for kids.

The meetings and stories we share each week matter because they shape real lives and real decisions. Neighbors speak about housing. Local leaders plan for public safety. Artists share work that reflects their community. These moments matter whether they are shared widely or not.

What makes them stronger is openness. When people can see what is happening, understand it, and know how to take part, trust grows. Openness helps people learn how decisions are made and reminds us that community life is something we build together.

WASHINGTON, Feb 7, 2026 – A panel of industry experts representing nuclear power, transmission and data center infrastructure providers argued for community engagement, financial incentives, and AI implementation as some of the best ideas on resolving bottlenecks during a panel at the INCOMPAS Policy Summit on Thursday.

The Public Advocates Office, which is part of the California Public Service Commission, undertook a a deep analysis of broadband pricing in the state, correlated with the level of competition.

The study was conducted from August through October of 2025. The study looked at four large markets in the state: San Mateo, Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Diego. By choosing these markets, the study encompasses the four largest ISPs in the state – AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Cox. 

A 30-second ad from Ring stood out among Sunday’s glut of Super Bowl commercials shilling myriad forms of artificial intelligence, serving as a frightening reminder of how ubiquitous surveillance cameras have become amid our diminishing privacy.

After all, if the “Search Party” function built into the doorbell camera’s app can be used to find a lost dog, as Sunday night’s ad emphasized, there’s little to stop it from being used to track people. The doorbell camera’s feature is especially worrisome now as the government encroaches on our civil liberties.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9,  2026 – Changes to the way electricity is being transmitted on the grid was much on the mind of the two hyperscalers, Amazon and Google, participating in the last panel of the day at the INCOMPAS Policy Summit on Thursday.

Ray Fakhoury, policy manager for Amazon Web Services, noted that companies investing in AI infrastructure seek “clarity and reliability” of power, while taking into account the local communities they operate in.

Today, Meta went to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation on its apps, including Facebook and Instagram.

The state claims that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act by implementing design features and algorithms that created dangerous conditions for users. Now, more than two years after the case was filed, opening arguments have begun in Santa Fe.

We start this week with Sam and Emanuel’s article about the latest Epstein dump, and how it’s really a disaster in a lot of ways. We actually published another story about the DOJ redacting the Mona Lisa too. After the break, Matthew runs us through Moltbot and its terrible security. After the break, Emanuel breaks down his two recent stories about a fundamental issue exposing a bunch of very sensitive data.

In January 2026, Iranian authorities shut down landline and mobile telecommunications infrastructure in the country to clamp down on coordinated protests. Starlink terminals, which were discreetly mounted on rooftops, helped Iranian protesters bypass this internet blackout. The role played by Starlink in the recent Iranian protests challenges the notion of digital sovereignty and promotes corporate entities to controversial arbiters in international political conflicts.

The Iranian government’s internet shutdown was unprecedented in terms of scale and sophistication. Though, since 2022, thousands of Starlink terminals had been smuggled through border routes or aboard clandestine vessels traveling through the Gulf. These terminals constructed an ad hoc network which became the only reliable way of streaming video and photographic documentation of the unrest. While authorities in any state can cut cable internet, Starlink has no such infrastructure tethered to it and as such, it served as a lifeline for protesters to disseminate information and coordinate collective action.

In response, international technical analysts reported military grade jamming and GPS spoofing by Iranian authorities that degraded Starlink service in specific localities. 

Can the Trump administration preempt state consumer protection laws governing AI? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will soon try, but the agency’s authority to preempt state laws is limited.

Last December, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence.” The EO directs the Chairman of the FTC to issue a policy statement “explain[ing] the circumstances under which State laws that require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models are preempted by the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on engaging in deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce.” Pursuant to the order, the agency has until March 11 to issue the statement.

This Tech Litigation Roundup gathers and briefly analyzes notable lawsuits and court decisions across a variety of tech-and-law issues.

Jury selection began on January 27 for the first “bellwether” trial of a blockbuster proceeding, involving thousands of cases going back to 2021. The suits allege that social media platforms’ negligent design causes depression, anxiety, and other mental health harms for young people. The trial marks the first time that social media companies will have to defend themselves before a jury against claims that they harmed children.

In the same week, a major hearing in a separate but related high-profile multi-district litigation suggested a federal judge may allow lawsuits filed by school districts alleging injuries from social media addiction to proceed to trial later this year.

The FCC reports…

The Federal Communications Commission announced that certain Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) census block groups (CBG) are now eligible for other funding programs.  Specifically, Savage Communications (Savage) has notified the FCC of its decision to withdraw from the RDOF support program in the CBGs covered by its remaining authorized winning bids in Minnesota (study…