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IF AMERICA’S stockmarket crashes, it will be one of the most predicted financial implosions in history. Everyone from bank bosses to the IMF has warned about the stratospheric valuations of America’s tech companies. Central bankers are bracing for financial trouble; investors who made their names betting against subprime mortgage bonds in 2007-09 have resurfaced for another “big short”. At any sign of a wobble, such as a recent slight weekly fall in the NASDAQ index of tech stocks, speculation mounts that the market is on the precipice. And no wonder. The cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 index of stocks, propelled by the “magnificent seven” tech giants, has reached levels last seen during the dotcom boom. Investors are betting that the vast spending on artificial intelligence (ai) will pay off. Yet the numbers are daunting.
We have several sets of broadband priorities at odds with each other in the country. The federal government is on a big push to move all transactions with the government to digital. The example that got a lot of press was when FEMA said it would only communicate with disaster victims through emails and its…
More than 80 law enforcement agencies across the United States have used language perpetuating harmful stereotypes against Romani people when searching the nationwide Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) network, according to audit logs obtained and analyzed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
OpenAI loves attention, but the company exceeded even its own appetite for headlines last week when CFO Sarah Friar — speaking at a Wall Street Journal conference — floated the idea of the U.S. government acting as a “backstop” to guarantee the enormous loans that AI companies are taking out to buy chips. The AI industry has learned to count on nearly unfettered support from Washington. But this was a bridge too far for even the Trump White House. After Friar’s comments began circulating, critics pounced, and White House AI czar David Sacks quickly slapped back with a post on X: “There will be no federal bailout for AI. The U.S. has at least 5 major frontier model companies. If one fails, others will take its place.” The message was clear: no company is too big, or too special, to fail.
A German court ruled that OpenAI’s ChatGPT violated the nation’s copyright laws by training its language models on licensed musical work without permission.
If there’s any question about whether data centers are driving the global economy, a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) should dispel any doubts. In a shift, the world will spend $40 billion more on new data centers this year than it will on finding new sources of oil. “This point of comparison provides a telling marker of the changing nature of modern, highly digitalized economies,” the agency said in the report.
Now with a total investment of $150 million poured into Lake County, Florida, Wire 3 has announced a new expansion in the county.
There is no question that this has turned into one of the oddest years for broadband during my career. We’ve seen Digital Equity grants killed. We’re seeing the spending for BEAD being cut in half. And maybe oddest of all, we’re seeing States make sizeable BEAD grant awards to Kuiper, although the company isn’t close…
Nov. 9, 2025 (AP) – Voter anger over the cost of living is hurtling forward into next year's midterm elections, when pivotal contests will be decided by communities that are home to fast-rising electric bills or fights over who's footing the bill to power Big Tech's energy-hungry data centers.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2025 – A Democratic state lawmaker in Wisconsin wants his state to retain control over its full allocation under the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, including the $363 million not tapped for expanding infrastructure. State Rep. Randy Udell, D-47th District, said the state’s broadband office would like to use that portion of its $1 billion allocation on “tasks such as pole attachments, workforce development, and cellular infrastructure.”
OpenAI is trending for all the wrong reasons. Nvidia pours $100 billion into OpenAI. OpenAI buys hardware from Nvidia. Nvidia gets its money back, stock prices soar, and CEOs smile all the way to the bank. Welcome to the perverse circular economy of AI. It’s a snowball, not a sustainable business model. The hype is enormous; the actual products? Mostly flashy language models that guess and imitate. They don’t think, don’t innovate, and certainly don’t generate value on par with the money swirling around them. Hardware is aging faster than the hype cycle, energy consumption is astronomical, and investors are chasing illusions. History has shown this before: Telecom bubble, IBM Watson, and countless tech fads. The insiders make their profits, the hype collapses, and the public is left sorting the wreckage. Meanwhile, the narrative of “AI intelligence” is wildly overstated. What these models do is automate repetitive, low-value tasks – nothing revolutionary. They are sophisticated parrots, not innovators. Let’s be blunt: if this bubble bursts, it’s not a tragedy. It’s a correction. Hopefully sooner rather than later, so resources, talent, and energy can return to actual innovation and honest work.
Europe is hurtling toward digital vassalage. Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, EU laws to tackle tech giants have been either not applied or delayed, for fear of offending Donald Trump. Now leaked documents reveal that the European Commission plans to gut a central part of Europe’s digital rulebook. This will hurt Europe’s innovators and hand the future of Europe’s tech sovereignty to US firms. Once Europe’s most hyped law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now on the chopping block. Powerful forces within the European Commission, supported by the German government, hope that deregulation will boost Europe’s tech sector, particularly AI. This is a grave mistake. China’s DeepSeek, which has stunned the AI world over the past year, emerged under a legal regime far stricter than Europe’s. China’s rigorous pre-deployment rules appear to have done its world-beating AI innovation no harm. Europe’s problem is not that it has too many rules for AI, but that it hypes those rules and then neglects to enforce them. This is why Google, Meta, Microsoft et al dominate Europe’s market.
The AI Boom: A Double-Edged Sword Artificial Intelligence has been marketed as our shiny new superhero. It writes essays in seconds, spots cancer cells better than doctors, and even predicts weather disasters before they happen. It’s dazzling, almost magical. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: every time we marvel at AI’s genius, somewhere in the background, a server farm hums, a smokestack churns, and a river runs a little drier. The AI revolution isn’t just code and algorithms — it’s concrete, steel, electricity, and water. And like any great invention, it comes with a bill. One we’ve barely started to read.
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From the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)... The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today that it is working on reforms across its Tribal broadband programs to reduce red tape for Tribal governments, promote flexibility, and align NTIA’s grant opportunities to better serve Tribal connectivity. Specifically, these reforms will streamline…
When Congress eventually reopens, the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) will be moving toward a vote. This gives us a chance to see the priorities of the Secretary of Defense and his Congressional allies when it comes to the military—and one of those priorities is buyin
Many biometric privacy laws across the country are clear: Companies need your affirmative consent before running face recognition on you.
Update 11/12/2025 3:45 p.m. ET: After this story's publication, NTIA announced it's working to reform its tribal broadband programs and launch a new Notice of Funding Opportunity in 2026. NTIA added it's not rescinding any obligated awards. The original story follows. - Senators are asking NTIA what’s going on with tribal broadband funding
- The funding hold-up has been “frustrating,” said Tribal Ready CEO Joe Valandra
- Many tribes are still waiting on gov’t approval to begin deployment, he added
Tribal broadband access – or lack thereof – is still a relevant point of discussion, as U.S. senators urge NTIA to explain what happened to funding for the $3 billion Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP). Roughly $980 million in Round 2 funding remains unobligated despite applications closing in March 2024, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) noted in a letter last week. Another $294 million in grants announced last December have not been distributed.
As part of an effort to retire the old Twitter.com domain, X is requiring passkey and security key users to re-enroll — but are getting stuck in endless loops and unable to finish.
UK altnets are buoyant, Proactive International PR's CEO says, despite predictions from some that a consolidation doomsday would arrive.
Construction on the initial zones of IdeaTek's $3 million fiber network project in Goodland, Kansas is nearly finished, according to IdeaTek.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2025 — The Public Safety Broadband Technology Association on Monday called on Congress to extend the First Responder Network Authority, which manages the nation’s public-safety broadband network, citing near-unanimous support in a new bipartisan survey.
ARLINGTON, Va. Oct. 30, 2025 — Congress’s new 800-megahertz auction mandate drew warnings that Wi-Fi networks in schools, libraries and tribal areas could lose critical spectrum to commercial carriers. The discussion took place at the AnchorNets 2025 Conference, hosted by the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition, and highlighted how Congress’s push for new commercial spectrum could disrupt Wi-Fi and community networks. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act required federal agencies to identify 800 megahertz of spectrum for auction within ten years, an unprecedented target that sparked concerns over the fate of unlicensed and shared bands.
The rapacious energy needs of data centers finally seem to have taken a political toll. In last week’s elections, candidates in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere ran — and won — on voters’ frustration with rising utility bills caused partly by America’s enormous AI buildout. This could have consequences for tech companies expanding in the U.S., which still need to build giant centers for their AI ambitions, but now find themselves on the wrong end of a political issue. But it also impacts America on the global stage. A nation where tech infrastructure is suddenly a bogeyman could find itself at a disadvantage — especially as global rivals race to fill the infrastructural gaps and expand their own AI economies. Data centers are going to suck up power no matter where they’re built. But certain other countries have an advantage in rapidly developing the energy systems needed to power them, according to Nidhi Kalra, a senior information scientist at RAND.
“Victorious warriors win first, then go to war.” – Sun Tzu As we prepare to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, we must confront a sobering reality: the critical infrastructure connecting and powering our nation contains a not-so-secret vulnerability that, if exploited, would send us back into the d
In the heart of Silicon Valley, two freshly built data centers designed for the world’s most power-hungry computing workloads are standing empty.
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