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Nicholas Johnson served as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman from 1966 to 1973. The FCC regulates U.S. interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. Appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson, Nicholas Johnson was referred to as the “hippie” commissioner, primarily because he was considered a McLuhanist. It’s hard to imagine someone in the stodgy, bureaucratic role of FCC chairman being a McLuhan enthusiast. In Radical Software (1970), without mentioning McLuhan directly, it is quite clear to whom he is referring: "Only by treating technology as ecology can we cure the split between ourselves and our extensions." Johnson later shortened the statement to “the separation of content and conduit,” which focused the function of the FCC on the delivery of content with minimal involvement in the content itself. He was a forward thinker like McLuhan, and his attitude is echoed in Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This section includes the “26 words that saved the Internet.” Section 230 is often referred to as “the 26 words that saved the Internet.”
Actor Mark Ruffalo has been instrumental in getting people to finally care about media consolidation in the age of dipshit authoritarianism.
Let's be clear about something.
Large media consolidation is always harmful. There is no real debate. There's 50 years of indisputable evidence that massive U.S. media mergers always result in mass layoffs, higher consumer prices, and shittier overall product as freshly-fused companies force workers and customers to pay off deal debt.
That's been particularly true of Time Warner and Warner Brothers, which has been bought and sold numerous times over the last quarter century, with every deal more pointless and harmful than the last. AT&T's acquisition of the company was a particularly-turdish master class in dysfunction, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs and no shortage of bad blood and cancelled projects.
Silicon Valley is increasingly embracing the narrative that the US is in an existential battle for technological dominance with China. The story is a convenient shield against efforts to rein in the tech industry’s power.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is open to coming to the negotiating table as early as this week, but only if Paramount Skydance agrees to “stop leaking and stop misrepresenting through their leaks” to the press, he said in an exclusive interview with TheWrap on Monday. Bonta spoke to TheWrap’s Lucas Manfredi and Sharon Waxman after abruptly canceling his scheduled mediation session with Paramount. When asked if talks could restart this week, he said: “It’s up to them.” He went on: “They’ve got to figure out where the leaks are and shut them down. And once they figure that out, we’ll be happy to talk with them. I don’t know how long it’ll take them to figure it out and to fix it, but when they do, we’re ready.” While he remains open to “good faith” discussions, Bonta said that specific timing around rescheduled talks depends on Ellison and Paramount. The California AG tells TheWrap he's open to a carve out of a "significant portion" of the combined company's 50 basic channels. In an exclusive interview with TheWrap's @Lmanfredi7, and @sharonwaxman, Bonta explains why he canceled Monday’s mediation session and what it would take to get back to the negotiating table.
There was an announcement on SpaceX’s first-ever earnings call that got the attention of the wireless industry. SpaceX said on the call that StarLink would enter the terrestrial cellular business by building a large number of cell sites provisioned with satellite backhaul. The company would leverage the power of its next-generation V3 satellites along with an increasingly larger fleet of satellites to provide the backhaul to feed cell sites. It’s impossible to know if the company is serious about this. Elon Musk has always made exaggerated claims of what he will be doing in the future, and many of his claims never came to fruition. On the same call, Elon also said that the company plans to build factories on the moon. There are a number of obstacles that stand in the way of SpaceX pulling this off.
MPR reports… A proposal to turn the defunct Minnesota Star Tribune printing plant, one of the few remaining industrial sites in downtown Minneapolis, into a data center has become a contentious and defining issue in the neighborhood. The Minnesota Design Center and the North Loop Neighborhood Association on Saturday reviewed three sessions of community input collected at a series of workshops last week from more than a thousand Minneapolis residents. And the first public presentation about the developer’s plans for the site met strong public opposition Wednesday night. Hundreds of residents spilled out the doors of the North Loop Neighborhood Association’s meeting room, across the street from the plant.
On 14 August 2026, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a broadband report indicating that it will abandon the gigabit‑speed goal that had been set during the previous administration. The goal, set in 2024, had aimed for nationwide gigabit (1000 Mbps) download and half‑gigabit (500 Mbps) upload speeds. In the report, the FCC explained that ‘At present, it is impossible to predict long‑term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences.’ The commission argued that this uncertainty makes a long‑term national speed target untenable.
A recent court ruling holds good news for digital skills advocates, signaling that $1.25 billion in Digital Equity Act funding is back on the table. NSC Senior Government Affairs Manager Caroline Treschitta and Senior Fellow Amanda Bergson-Shilcock explain what happened, and what it means for skills advocates.
I've spent the better part of a lifetime studying and writing about the way corrupted lawmakers and U.S. telecom giants work hand in hand to erode U.S. broadband standards and mapping so they can obscure the way corruption and monopoly result in limited broadband competition -- resulting in shitty, expensive, spotty, and slow U.S. internet access (check out my Techdirt/Copia paper about it). The Trump administration has certainly been no exception. After some modest improvements in broadband mapping and standards made possible by the 2021 infrastructure bill, the Trump administration has been working overtime to revert things right back to the status quo (read: shitty and broken).
The National League of Cities has launched an interactive resource to boost transparency around how local governments are responding to data center development. It will be updated regularly. The Data Center Local Action Tracker, launched Wednesday, is an interactive resource displaying local government actions related to data center development, from zoning ordinances to community benefits agreements.
As data center expansion continues, so do public concerns about energy demand and water consumption. Residents are looking to local governments to ensure these large developments benefit their communities, and governments can require developers to deliver. Some governments have gone so far as to enact moratoriums on new data center developments; New York established a statewide pause in July.
The rules that built Silicon Valley weren’t written to build Silicon Valley. The Pentagon wanted a guidance computer, a federal judge wanted to settle a case against a telephone monopoly, and a California legislature in 1872 had farmers and railroads in mind. Together they produced the conditions for an industry, and this is the account of how, running from the land grant the railroad magnate, Leland Stanford, signed in 1885 to the two governments that now write the rules for the companies training frontier models. SAN FRANCISCO, August 20, 2026 — Silicon Valley, a metonym for the behemoth technology industry of the San Francisco Bay Area, is usually explained by its people: the garages, the dropouts, and the founders. What does not get mentioned are the statutes, the court rulings, and the agencies that first created it. The legal mechanisms, in themselves, weren’t destined to produce what would follow; they set the conditions. Innovation and investment has compounded ever since, from missile guidance to the Internet to the AI boom. The most recent of them, artificial intelligence, took in $211 billion of venture capital in 2025, about three-fifths of every venture dollar invested worldwide. The valley’s tech industry began, of all things, with a real estate problem at Stanford University and a procurement problem at the Pentagon. Stanford had 8,800 acres it could not sell, and the Pentagon wanted wartime electronics no company had built yet. Neither problem was targeted at building an industry.
Over the past few weeks, I have been doing some soul-searching regarding telecom network automation. If you have read my recent LinkedIn posts, you know I am constantly looking for the line between actual operational reality and the endless stream of industry marketing. The market is flooded with promises of “zero-touch operations” and fully autonomous networks. Yet, anyone who has worked with real-world telecom infrastructure knows that dropping an AI model on top of a fragmented legacy stack does not suddenly make the network autonomous. Recently, my former Google colleague Gabriele Di Piazza, who leads Product Management, Alliances and Architectures at Blue Planet, shared some deep technical blueprints and operational data from their field deployments. Reviewing those materials gave me a chance to step back, compile my key learnings, and synthesize what actually works versus where the industry is fooling itself. When you go into the rabbit hole of automating a multi-vendor, multi-domain network, it is clear to me that most operators are doing network automation wrong.
- The FCC is taking comments on the E-Rate program
- Early commenters are afraid the FCC will reduce funding to the program
- Concurrent with the FCC’s review of E-Rate, a non-profit group is challenging the program in court
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has opened a comment period related to the E-Rate program, which provides funding for internet access at eligible schools and libraries, with subsidy levels tied to poverty rates. Advocates of E-Rate are concerned because FCC Chairman Brendan Carr seems inclined toward revisions to the program. School and library leaders from across the country are really concerned the FCC will cut E-Rate funding, which they say is absolutely critical.
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The $111 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery could cause thousands of workers to lose their jobs, according to new research.
August 24, 2026 - The proposed intervenors support Disney’s challenge but argue the company’s corporate interests may not always align with the interests of viewers.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott once courted tech companies to build data centers in his state, but now he’s pivoting as the backlash comes for Republicans. Pat Garofalo joins The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi to discuss why data centers have become bad policy and bad politics.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta canceled his office's Monday settlement meeting with Paramount, accusing the studio of leaking details and acting in bad faith. “My office was scheduled to meet with Paramount on Monday, Aug. 24. I have pulled down this meeting. As I’ve said before, generally for all cases, I prefer to resolve disputes in the boardroom, not the courtroom,” Bonta said in a statement to TheWrap. “As I’ve also said, if the opposing party in litigation wants to meet in good faith to make a sincere effort to resolve the case, we’ll meet.” “My office had a meeting with Paramount on Friday. Paramount did not maintain the confidentiality of that meeting. Not only did Paramount leak the alleged substance of settlement discussions, but they misrepresented these discussions, demonstrating a lack of good faith,” he continued. “As soon as Paramount stops playing games and engages sincerely, my office is happy to meet again.”
This week the backlash against data centers, especially hyperscalers to power frontier AI models, intensified. Things are so bad that the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and left-leaning New York Times both are devoting front page coverage to the issue. And the backlash against data is bipartisan. People on both the right and the left are organizing to voice their opposition to data centers in their communities. WSJ reads:
Podcast: Powering Politics: A Conversation with Astra Taylor, Robinson Meyer, and Nicholas Rabb Publisher: Boston Review Date: August 17, 2026 Speakers: Robinson Meyer — founding executive editor, Heatmap News, and contributing opinion writer, The New York Times; Nicholas Rabb — organizer, No Data Center Monterey Park, and postdoctoral researcher, Eco-STEM Project, California State University, Los Angeles; Astra Taylor — writer, activist, and documentarian Moderator: Lily Hu — Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Yale University, and contributing editor, Boston Review This Boston Review panel examined the rapidly growing movement against hyperscale AI data centers, its unusual ideological breadth, and its political implications ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The discussion connected local concerns about electricity, water, pollution, noise, secrecy, and land use with broader opposition to AI, corporate power, surveillance, and the loss of democratic control. The panelists agreed that the backlash creates a significant organizing opportunity, but cautioned that it will not automatically produce a coherent progressive movement.
In past decades, voice communication was the primary way people connected across distances. Over that time, communications policy in the United States centered on ensuring that voice service was available, affordable and reliable for every American. NTCA members got their start in this era – answering the call to provide voice service to the most rural and remote corners of the country when Ma Bell decided the business case didn’t justify investment or operations there. But times have changed. Broadband now enables the majority of communications, carrying massive amounts of data of all kinds nearly instantaneously. NTCA members have stayed on top of this evolution as well, transforming radically from the telephone companies of the last century into some of the most innovative internet service providers of the 21st century. Despite serving areas where the average density is fewer than seven locations per mile – roughly the average density of Montana – nearly 90% of their customers on average are connected by fiber, and 80% have access to Gigabit-level connections.
Authors: Alex Karras & Michael Santorelli - Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute, New York Law School Published: August 18, 2026 Source: Broadband Expanded Overview Alex Karras and Michael Santorelli examine how the cost and promised reach of two New York broadband initiatives have changed since their projects were first announced: the Municipal Infrastructure Program (MIP) and the Affordable Housing Connectivity Program (AHCP). Between them, the two programs have committed more than $300 million in federal Capital Projects Fund (CPF) money and state funds to broadband construction and to connections in affordable housing. The Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) catalogued 34 projects — 22 MIP and 12 AHCP awards — from July 2024 through July 2026. Three movements recur across the portfolio, the authors find: grant amounts adjusted upward, promised coverage adjusted downward, and a climbing price for each connection delivered. Ten projects across the two programs have had their grant revised up by at least 5% since first announced, against seven revised down. Those upward revisions add roughly $38 million to what the programs will cost in combination. Promised reach over the same period dropped by about 34,000 locations and households.
This week in “What’s New in Digital Equity” — our weekly look at government digital equity and broadband news — we have a number of interesting items, which you can jump to with the links below: .
Traditional telecommunications spent a century burying glass and steel underground. SpaceX is routing the entire planet through the vacuum of space and the legacy giants are dangerously unprepared. For nearly a century, the telecommunications industry enjoyed what Warren Buffett calls an impenetrable economic moat. If you wanted to build a national telecom network, you didn’t just need capital. You needed bureaucratic leverage, thousands of municipal permits, armies of trench-diggers, and billions of dollars in CAPEX (capital expenditure) to lay down fiber-optic cables and erect steel cell towers. Once those cables were buried beneath asphalt and farmland, the incumbent operators — the AT&Ts, Verizons, Vodafones, and Deutsche Telekoms of the world — sat comfortably behind their physical moats, printing cash. They operated like regional fiefdoms. If a rural town of 2,000 people was ten miles away from the main fiber trunk, the math was brutal: It is economically unviable to connect you. Deal with dial-up. Legacy telcos assumed this equation was permanent. They calculated that the cost of physical infrastructure per subscriber would always protect them from any sudden, radical disruption.
New York quietly widened the price tag on its two flagship broadband grant programs by roughly $38 million over the past two years — while cutting the number of homes and businesses those same programs promise to connect by about 34,000, according to an analysis published August 18 by the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School.
ConnectALL, the state broadband office overseeing the money, did not announce any of the revisions. ACLP says it found them buried in Empire State Development board meeting packets. New York has committed more than $300 million in federal Capital Projects Fund money and state funds to two programs: the Municipal Infrastructure Program (MIP), which funds open-access municipal fiber networks, and the Affordable Housing Connectivity Program (AHCP), which funds connectivity in affordable housing developments. ACLP director Michael Santorelli and researcher Alex Karras tracked all 34 awards issued under the two programs — 22 MIP, 12 AHCP — from July 2024 through July 2026, cross-referencing every dollar figure and location count against its original announcement.
Nine PBS is afraid that it will lose over 70 years of archival materials and programming after its contracted cloud storage vendor has apparently gone out of business. According to Current, the channel used Open Source Storage, or OSS, for storing over 50TB of data — but it suddenly lost access to its data earlier this year. Nine PBS has been working with OSS and its predecessor since 2019 and intended to renew its contract on March 6 of this year. The company never responded and abruptly cut off the station’s data access even though it still had 30 days to retrieve its data after the contract ended. The station dug a little bit deeper when it discovered that the OSS website no longer existed and was listed as delinquent under the Colorado Secretary of State. It also discovered that OSS utilized Iron Mountain’s services, so it sent a demand letter to the latter to preserve its data and to "pay any reasonable costs associated with its demand." At the time, Iron Mountain did not confirm or deny that it possessed Nine PBS’ data. At the same time, the channel also sued OSS and its leadership, which it paused after someone who claimed to be a "managing partner of the group that officially acquired" the company reached out.
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Scoop.it!
