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In the first episode of the new year, Chris is joined once again by Blair Levin to unpack what 2025 delivered and what 2026 may hold for broadband, media, and technology policy. The two revisit last year’s predictions on tariffs, deportations, BEAD implementation delays, and federal broadband investment, assessing where expectations aligned with reality — and where they didn’t. The discussion closes with reflections on what it will take to rebuild trust, competition, and accountability in an era where policy, power, and technology are more intertwined than ever.
The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) has released a comprehensive and detailed Three-Year Statewide Broadband Plan that unveils the agency’s ambitious goals, strategic priorities and initiatives planned for 2026-2028. The plan is the result of feedback from the members of the Connect New Mexico Council and stakeholders around the state. At present, 90 percent of New Mexico has high-speed internet, and the Three-Year Plan will serve as the roadmap to getting the state 100 percent connected.
Washington, D.C. — Good Jobs First alerted Virginia taxpayers that the Commonwealth now officially reports that it lost $1.6 billion in sales and use tax revenues in FY 2025 to data centers. That is an increase of 118% from the previous year’s disclosure. The revelation, in the state’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR), is pasted at the end of this press release. It was disclosed pursuant to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement No. 77 on Tax Abatement Disclosures, the landmark sunshine reform for which Good Jobs First led a national comment campaign in 2014-2015. “Like 35 other states, Virginia is losing control of its spending by enacting virtually automatic sales and use tax exemptions, and sometimes other subsidies, for data center building materials and equipment,” said Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy. “That’s not to mention local property tax abatements.”
In a historic and somber development, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has announced that its Board of Directors has voted to formally dissolve the organization after more than five decades of service. The decision marks the closure of the private, nonprofit entity established by Congress in 1967 to oversee and distribute federal funding for […]
Sexualized deepfakes have led to some of the most trenchant criticism of generative AI after affecting everyone from Taylor Swift to high school students. Grok, the AI chatbot and image generator launched by Elon Musk, has effectively turned this disturbing phenomenon into a meme over the past week. Trollish provocateurs kicked off the trend after a December update made it easier to use Grok to remove clothing from images. Users have directed the chatbot to digitally undress people in innumerable images, which Grok then posts to X. Those affected have primarily been women, and there have also been cases of sexualized AI images of children being distributed on the platform. Governments around the world are scrutinizing X, from France to Malaysia to India. But should it be X that’s on the hook, or its users?
It’s the time of the year for New Year’s resolutions, and I asked some of my ISP clients if they are carrying unfinished tasks into the new year. Some of my clients laughed and told me that some of these tasks have been on their list for years. Some of the wish list ‘resolutions’ I…
If AI ruins our civilization, it will be because we asked it to. For years, AI safety researchers have wrung their hands—and rung alarm bells—over the impending “existential risk” or even “extinction threat” posed by artificial superintelligence. Meanwhile, labor market analysts warn of an impending deluge of joblessness as bots take over everything from filing lawsuits to waiting tables. Thus far, such worries can seem like shrill sci-fi fantasies when, for many, ChatGPT is used mostly for homework help or writing break-up letters. But what if this is the real existential risk—not a Terminator-style robot coup but a slow-motion cultural death by a thousand cuts?
- Elon Musk’s xAI faced backlash for recent Grok chatbot posts of artificial intelligence-generated sexualized images of children on X.
- The company responded to a request for comment with an autoreply: “Legacy Media Lies.”
- The proliferation of AI image-generating platforms since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 has raised concerns over content manipulation and online safety.
Elon Musk’s xAI saw user backlash after its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok generated sexualized pictures of children in response to user prompts. A Grok reply to one user on X on Friday stated that it was “urgently fixing” the issue and called child sexual abuse material “illegal and prohibited.” In replies to users, the bot also posted that a company could face criminal or civil penalties if it knowingly facilitates or fails to prevent this type of content after being alerted.
KFGO reports... Starlink will begin a reconfiguration of its satellite constellation by lowering all of its satellites orbiting at around 550 km (342 miles) to 480 km over the course of 2026, Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering, said on Thursday. The company is looking to increase space safety by lowering the satellites’…
While the internet has become an essential part of many Americans’ daily lives, some people in rural and underserved communities still lack access to high-speed broadband and the digital skills necessary to use it. Historic investments such as the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program present opportunities for states to move closer to universal connectivity. But uncertainty around federal changes to these programs and challenges such as infrastructure regulation can be barriers to deployment. This year, state legislatures continued efforts to close the digital divide, which the Pew Research Center defines as the gap between the 78% of households that have access to broadband service in their homes and the remainder that do not. NCSL tracked more than 600 broadband bills from 51 states and territories in 2025, with 45 states and territories enacting 139 bills and resolutions on the topic. NCSL saw trends in four key sectors of broadband policy: infrastructure regulation, critical infrastructure protections, state broadband funding, and assistance for rural and low-income communities.
The massive energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers became a major political controversy in 2025, and new reporting suggests that it will grow even further in 2026. CNBC reported on Thursday that data center projects have become political lightning rods among politicians ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the left to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the right. However, objections to data centers aren’t just coming from politicians but from ordinary citizens who are worried about the impact such projects will have on their local environment and their utility bills.
A friend of mine, Frederick Pilot, recently asked me an interesting question. Is digital literacy that comes from using a smartphone the same as digital literacy from using a computer? It’s a great question, because the majority of Internet users in the world only have broadband access through a smartphone. In developing nations, 90% of broadband users only have access to a smartphone. In the U.S., 16% of adults only use a smartphone to reach the Internet.
Despite all the hype, overall global nuclear capacity shrunk in 2025 as retirements outstripped additions. Still, the sector could rebound in the coming years. For press releases, policy changes, and promises to build new nuclear power, 2025 was a gangbusters year. For actually adding new reactors to the grid, not so much. In fact, around the world, more gigawatts’ worth of nuclear reactors were retired than turned on this year, according to new data from the consultancy BloombergNEF.
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HARRISBURG — It’s been a year of sweeping and controversial changes for a huge federal broadband initiative. The $42.45 billion program was created in 2021 with bipartisan support and an ambitious goal: bring high-speed internet access to every home and business in the U.S., no matter how remote. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose agency oversees the program, said in January that under the Biden administration the program had become bogged down in red tape and “woke mandates.” He promised changes, pending a “rigorous review.”
The N.C. Department of Information Technology’s (NCDIT) Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity today announced the launch of the $86 million Stop-Gap Solutions program to accelerate the expansion of high-speed internet infrastructure to eligible unserved and underserved rural households, businesses, community anchor institutions and state facilities in each county.
There is still some glimmer of hope that states will see some of the BEAD non-deployment funds. I call it a glimmer of hope because the issue is far from settled. In a December 21 online post, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was still taking credit for having saved taxpayers about $21 billion through changes in…
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which helped fund NPR, PBS and many local radio and TV stations — is officially shutting down, months after Congress passed spending cuts that stripped the organization of more than $1 billion in funding.
SpaceX's Starlink is offering free broadband internet service to the people of Venezuela through Feb. 3, amid the fallout of a U.S. military operation in the country. The satellite internet provider said in a release on Sunday that service credits were being added to both active and inactive accounts as it monitored evolving conditions.
The West Central Tribune reports... The Willmar City Council on Monday, Jan. 5, is expected to consider awarding the bid for the construction of phase one of the Willmar Connect initiative to construct a city-owned, open-access broadband network. At the Dec. 15 City Council meeting, Bob Enos was joined by approximately 10 people to speak against the initiative. Enos…
Stock bears are turning up the heat on Trump Media as short sellers crowd into the trade after a sharp rally tied to a merger announcement, according to data from S3 Partners. The surge in bearish bets shows traders are bracing for losses after a fast jump in the stock that followed a $6 billion deal tied to energy and artificial intelligence. Shares of Trump Media climbed more than 30% after December 18, when the company said it would merge with Google-backed TAE Technologies in an all-stock transaction. The stock ran even harder right after the news, jumping as much as 63% over two trading days. Since Cryptopolitan reported the announcement, short interest has jumped 31% to nearly 16 million shares, close to the highest level seen since October. After the stock rose another 4% on Friday to $13.77, those short positions were worth about $218 million in bets that the price would fall, according to data from Yahoo Finance.
Finnish authorities have arrested two people as they continue to investigate damage to an undersea telecommunications cable in the Gulf of Finland. The two were part of the crew aboard the cargo vessel, Fitburg, which is suspected of damaging a cable linking Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia. Authorities placed two other crew members under travel bans as part of the ongoing investigation and had begun questioning all crew members.
Starlink owner SpaceX has called on South Africans interested in its satellite broadband services to email ICASA to voice their support. Starlink owner SpaceX says claims that it will receive special treatment or workarounds to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) laws are misleading. In an email sent to people in South Africa who expressed interest in buying Starlink services, SpaceX said that it was one step closer to becoming available in the country. “South Africa is closer than ever to a transformative digital breakthrough,” SpaceX stated in its letter, sent on Friday, 2 January 2026.
There was a time when most Americans had little to no knowledge about their local data center. Long the invisible but critical backbone of the internet, server farms have rarely been a point of interest for folks outside of the tech industry, let alone an issue of particularly captivating political resonance. Well, as of 2025, it would appear those days are officially over. Over the past 12 months, data centers have inspired protests in dozens of states, as regional activists have sought to combat America’s ever-increasing compute buildup. Data Center Watch, an organization tracking anti-data center activism, writes that there are currently 142 different activist groups across 24 states that are organizing against data center developments. Activists have a variety of concerns: the environmental and potential health impacts of these projects, the controversial ways in which AI is being used, and, most importantly, the fact that so many new additions to America’s power grid may be driving up local electricity bills.
As we head into 2026, the Trump Mobile T1 phone is still vaporware. Preorders for the phone opened in June ahead of a promised ship date of August or September. That timeline first got pushed to October and then to November or December. It's now been delayed once again and won't launch in 2025, the Financial Times reports. Trump Mobile's customer service team blamed the latest delay on the US government shutdown, which lasted from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12. Another customer service rep told Fortune the same thing, adding that the shutdown meant Trump Mobile "had to pause everything on the FCC side of things." They estimated a launch of mid to late January.
Construction will be paused for 90 days as Trump's "Department of War" and Interior Department coordinate to evaluate supposed "national security" risks. The Interior Department announced Monday it is pausing leases for all five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in America, citing unspecified issues of national security. Canary Media obtained a copy of a letter notifying one of the affected wind farm developers, providing new details about the move — the Trump administration’s most sweeping attempt yet to halt offshore wind construction.
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