Best of The Program | Guest: Ajit Pai | 1/25/21

This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV Insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So, if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at Progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, pet injuries, and additional coverage and subject to policy terms.

Hey, it's Monday.

Stu and I look for look for fun conspiracy theories

and invent a couple of our own.

Gee, why would they say that this show pushes conspiracy theories?

That's crazy.

Sounds crazy.

Sounds crazy.

Also, we have Ajit Paion.

You may not know who he is.

Yeah, but he's the chairman of the FCC, big part of the Trump administration,

one of our favorite Trump administration officials, and that he's done a great job.

And one of the things he's done is protect the internet.

When the left was trying to take it over, he stood up against that and clearly won the battle.

And he's got some concerns and some exciting things to talk about on today's broadcast.

Also on the podcast, we talk about the real meaning behind the impeachment and the 14th Amendment, what they're really trying to do.

Don't want to miss a second of today's podcast.

Here we go.

You're listening to

the best of the Benenbeck program.

Welcome to the program, Mr.

Pat Gray from Pat Gray Unleash, the podcast you can hear on Blaze TV as he records it live before this broadcast.

Or you can check it out wherever you get your podcast.

Hello, Pat.

Yeah.

Hello, Glenn.

How are you?

Oh,

perfect.

Just, I mean...

So perfect.

You know, I'm so glad the media said over the weekend,

CNN was talking about how Joe Biden, what he's doing, is just boring.

I mean, he's just not doing anything.

He's just not doing anything that's exciting or, you know, controversial.

Right.

Like, there are just 19 boring executive orders.

Exactly.

And they're all like,

hey, maybe you should order more paperclips.

Yeah.

You know, exactly.

And who cares about paperclips?

Except for the fact that none of them are about paperclips.

They're about things like the border.

Right.

Jeez.

Right.

Well, just release all,

all people that ICE has in custody.

Yeah.

All of them.

No big deal.

Yeah.

Just all of them.

Yeah.

It's not everybody.

It's not like he's releasing.

Well, he is releasing all of them.

Yes, he is.

But he's not releasing more than all of them.

No.

That would be controversial.

Yes, but this isn't.

This isn't.

Nope.

He's also inspired caravans again.

So we got.

Yes.

We have that going on.

We had one of 8,000 last week that was broken up a little bit.

We have another one of 3,000 that launched again, like yesterday.

That's great.

That's only

11,000 people that are headed.

I think it's wonderful.

Hey, by the way,

did you hear that Jeff Bezos and Amazon, little upset?

Yeah, I did hear.

Yeah, little upset.

They're trying to unionize Amazon, and he doesn't like that.

I mean, when you got a corporation like Amazon that's working well,

why not throw a little bit of the postal service in there with it?

You know what I mean?

Let's get a couple of really good unions in there.

So

Amazon

has just filed with the National Labor Relations Board because the unions said what we're going to do, because it's so huge, instead of having a meeting where everybody votes, what we'll do is we'll have mail-in ballots.

And

Bezos doesn't like that because

he says mail-in voting, there's too much of a risk of fraud by the labor unions.

Yeah, the only way it can be valid and fair is to have an in-person voting system.

Right.

Well, not only that, not only that.

He said

the concerns about election security run particularly high because we don't have a reliable electronic signature platform.

Hmm.

Hmm.

So Amazon doesn't have that.

That's interesting.

Sorry to throw that in.

I mean, again, some of this stuff gets out of with the election was, you know, crazy.

But the one they keep saying, like, will we check the signatures?

It's like I buy things every day and they supposedly check the signatures.

Like, they don't even look at my signature when I sign a credit card receipt for thousands of dollars.

They don't even care.

Like they check the signatures.

I mean, I'm not saying they don't go through a check, but like how reliable is that check?

I have literally signed it, Mickey Mouse, at times.

I really have.

Yeah.

I signed one Jesus at one point.

Just to see.

Just to see.

Nope.

I just, I actually signed it Jesus McCool.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I sent my kid up there the other day to buy lunch with my credit card and they gave it to him.

Like he's not, he didn't get the credit card he's nine

like they don't care no wonder he's on his cell phone american express i know i know i've i written i wrote the check i don't know why it's not there for last month's payment i just need lunch today

um

tim matheson

for for for some reason now tim matheson is the guy remember do you know who he is yeah he's the guy from national lampoons animal house animal house yeah right he was otter in that right

and

and what he's been doing since is oh it's terrific stuff

right whatever it is so it

so anyway i've seen all of his film yeah oh so um so he he tweeted out so wonderful to have a first lady with class

and heart

and can speak english

oh

yeah uh melania trump What a dummy.

She only speaks five languages.

Only two.

Yeah, but only five.

She's only fluent in five.

And no class.

You see her out sitting on the washer and dryer that she put on the back porch of the White House, sitting there with a crop top.

And she's sitting there just drinking a Budweiser.

And I thought, could we get some class?

Wouldn't it be nice?

Wouldn't it?

But no.

No, no.

You had a supermodel in the White House and they hated her guts for four years for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Is there any first lady that had more class than Melania Trump?

Not that I can think of.

She was always class.

Yeah, I think Jackie O would be the only one that I could think of that was

was in her category.

Yeah.

Jackie O had real class.

But, you know, I was at the White House and I'm in the Rose Garden.

Remember when she redid the Rose Garden?

Yeah.

And what did they say?

They said she ruined it, that it was ridiculous.

It was terrible.

Do you know what she did?

Because I was standing in the rose garden.

It is beautiful.

You know what she did?

No, not exactly.

Yeah, she

restored it to the exact plan of Jackie O.

They had changed it since.

So all she did was like, I think Jackie O had the right plan.

And they restored it to the Jackie O plan.

And that was classless.

Unbelievable.

I mean it's just unbelievable.

I just

but the class of Dr.

Joe Biden.

Wow now that yeah I

yeah it's amazing.

San Francisco hotels are being used to house homeless people

and there's a new executive order that has just been signed by Joe Biden.

It's so boring I

should even read it to you.

Under the order, certain kinds of emergency housing for the homeless are eligible to be fully reimbursed through September.

Now,

not sure

if this executive order,

if this emergency will

fit this executive order, but I'm guessing it does.

So now we are going to be

paying

for the hotel rooms of the homeless in San Francisco.

I have to ask you, do you have a line anywhere?

Do you have a line on taxes where it's just like, okay, okay, no.

Because I almost feel like that's taxation without representation because I'm paying for programs in California.

I don't get any representation in California.

Why am I paying for policies that I vehemently disagree with in California?

California should have to pay their own bill.

I don't live in California for a reason.

I live in Texas for a reason.

You know, Texas brought home all of its own gold.

We have our own gold reserve now.

We finally got it out of the Federal Reserve.

It took us five years, but we got it.

And now we have all of our own gold reserves.

I did that for a reason.

Because Texas knew this ain't going to last.

Is Texas, why does Texas have to pay for the nonsense in California

is it just me because I feel this way about why am I if those if they're using federal funds then no that's I mean that's completely wrong these ideas this is why you know Madison did not want this to be the outcome right where we just send a bunch of money to the federal government and it distributes it all over the

country correct the opposite of the model right and it's it and they're doing it in California they're going to do it with, and if it's executive order,

do I really have representation there?

Because they're spending money through executive order.

It's supposed to go through Congress.

But even if it does go through Congress,

I don't have any representation in California.

Who's the one going to hold the budget for us?

Who's going to be the one that holds the feet to the fire?

Who's going to make sure that California has some austerity instead of just continuing to spend money

i mean i i just think we are setting ourselves up for massive problems because when new york fails which it will when illinois fails which it will

i have no problem helping a neighbor but not the neighbors who have been living it up Not the neighbors who are like, you guys are so stupid.

Party.

Woo!

Why would I I help them?

I think New York will probably be fine because I just imagine the sales of the poster that Andrew Cuomo made celebrating what a good job he did on coronavirus.

Those are probably selling so much that he can just pay off all the budget problems with that.

And or his book.

Just

the book about what a great job he did with the coronavirus.

That was released just as they went to the highest peak they've had since the beginning of the year.

By the way, speaking of more problems, 7,000 National Guardsmen are going to remain in Washington through mid-March now.

7,000.

So D.C.

is essentially an occupied city then.

I guess.

I guess

that's what they said Trump wanted to do to Portland, make it an occupied city.

Now we have 7,000 National Guardsmen and DeSantis is calling them back.

He's like, you're not keeping any of my National Guard.

Mid-March.

I mean, I understand that maybe the next day they don't leave because that would be kind of an obvious cue to everyone if there was going to be a problem.

But mid-March, I mean,

what's the limiting argument here?

Why would you send them home in mid-March?

Then the people are going to come in April.

There's no limiting principle here to stop this.

So DeSantis is pulling the troops back.

So is Texas.

Yeah, they're going to lose.

All the red states are going to be like, no, we're not going to.

We're not an everlasting occupying force in Washington, Washington, D.C.

And they're making them sleep in parking garages now.

They moved them out of the marbled floors of the Capitol building and put them in a parking garage.

Well, they said that the National Guard asked for that.

A bold crap.

I'd say that's bold.

No, they said that they wanted the

girls.

We want to sleep in a parking garage.

It's more comfortable for them.

We'd hate to be in a hotel.

Put us in a parking garage.

I mean,

please, we don't want to go to a hotel.

That's for the homeless.

Right.

We'd rather rather sleep in the garage.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

It's an honor to have Ajit Pai on with us again, former FCC chairman.

Ajit, how are you?

My gosh, they've silenced him already.

Hey, Glenn, how are you?

There you are.

Thank you you for having me on.

You bet.

How are you, sir?

Pretty good.

Pretty good.

Hope you're doing well also on this Monday morning.

So you were the chairman of the FCC.

Before that, you were the commissioner at the FCC.

You were appointed then by Barack Obama

and approved unanimously by the Senate.

So everybody agreed that you were a good guy that could get the job done.

You've done some amazing things.

I believe that you and

when you were at the FCC, those involved with you, saved the Internet from net neutrality.

Tell me about the health of the Internet and where we are today because of those challenges before we look to the future.

Well, the Internet, in terms of its infrastructure, is stronger than ever.

And this is remarkable when you consider that when we made our decision to repeal these heavy-handed net neutrality regulations back in 2017, the left was caterwalling about how this was the death of the Internet as we know it.

That was according to Bernie Sanders.

Others said the Internet would slow down to one word per time.

Others said that you'd have to pay $15 per month just to be able to tweet.

All of these things have fallen by the wayside.

Speeds are now twice as fast as they were back in 2017.

Internet infrastructure has been built out so that millions more Americans have access.

Obviously, it's a much different environment than those hyperbolic predictions would have suggested.

And to me, at least, the proof in the pudding has been during the pandemic, we've had our internet infrastructure has held up despite the increase in traffic.

Whereas in Europe, which still has these net neutrality regulations, they had to go hand in hand to companies like Netflix and YouTube and beg them to throttle content because they don't have the infrastructure that's necessary to sustain these loads.

So we made the right decision, and I'm glad we did.

So are you still hearing the voices?

Were those forces still out there for net neutrality and to bring some of these regulations back?

And if so, why?

You know, I'd say we still hear them all the time.

Whenever I'm on social media, I see it.

And it's incredible.

I think it's more of a religious issue with some folks on the left.

What does that mean?

What do you mean by that?

Because what I mean by religious issue is there is literally no set of evidence you can ever provide to these people to persuade them that there's not a problem.

Look at the last three years without these net neutrality regulations.

We haven't seen any kind of market failure.

We haven't seen broadband providers throttling or blocking content.

Nonetheless, they say that these rules are absolutely vital and the internet's about to die.

Meanwhile, these very same advocates are going to the tech giants and telling them, we want you to censor content that we don't like.

And so the hypocrisy of these advocates is just stunning.

It's just, as I said, there's literally no evidence we could provide.

in terms of faster speeds, more infrastructure,

open internet, all that kind of stuff that would persuade them.

And so it's not a reasoned policy debate anymore,

at least in some quarters at least.

It's much more of an issue of religion.

Do you believe or do you not?

And that's unfortunate because after all, we're making policy here.

We're not putting our finger in the wind.

The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

But as you mentioned, there's no evidence you can present.

But the evidence is there, right?

Like the speeds have gone up dramatically since they promised they would slow down to a trickle.

Yeah, and that's the incredible thing.

I mean, the speed is the most objective one.

There's a group called OOCLA, O-O-K-L-A.

It's an independent company.

They do their own assessments of speeds.

They were the ones who were saying, hey, the speeds are tracking upward and upward.

And I kept pointing this out to some of our critics, and they would say, well, the speeds were going up anyway.

And so you didn't have any responsibility for that.

And I said no, no,

if you look at the February, on February 28th, I think it is, 2018, the entire Senate Democratic caucus put this out on Twitter.

If we lose net neutrality, you'll get the Internet one word at a time.

And so I said, look, that is objectively false.

I said, there's no debate about this.

This Internet did not slow down.

And nonetheless, there's still some folks who say, no, it's still at risk.

Broadband providers are going to start censoring content any day now.

And it's always the sort of boogeyman that's right around the corner that we have to regulate against, as opposed to the concrete problems that we can see on the Internet, which is not any type of stuff like this.

It's more that people in rural areas don't have access, or people in urban areas can't afford access.

And those are the types of problems we need to be addressing, not this phantom of net neutrality, which to me at least is a solution that won't work and to address a problem that simply doesn't exist.

It is 5G has been described to me as 4G being the size of a garden hose

and 5G being the size of a chunnel for

all of the information.

I know my wife just,

I don't remember where she was, but she used real 5G.

And

she never comments on speed unless it's really, really slow.

And she said to me, oh my gosh, Glenn, you can't imagine how fast it was.

It was just like load,

load, load, load.

It was just there every time.

It's, yeah.

Go ahead.

Can you describe 5G and what it will mean and how far we are away from that really being everywhere?

I'm really excited about 5G, this next generation of wireless connectivity.

And unlike some of the predecessor transitions we've had, you had 1G to 2G, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 5G is going to be a leap, partly because of the speeds.

You mentioned that, 100 times faster speeds than 4G, a much more responsive network, so when you click on the link, it'll come up almost immediately.

But it's more the fact that this technology will underlie all kinds of different industries.

Healthcare, for example, if you want to do a telehealth visit with your doctor, much higher resolution video, much lower latency, as they call it, so you can immediately see what the doctor is looking at and all that kind of thing.

It's going to be tremendous.

5G with doctors means because the latency goes from

what, 100 milliseconds to down under 10, which means

in some cases you might be able to actually do surgery on the other side of the world with 5G.

Exactly right.

That is a future that's within grasp.

And if you think about all these low-latency applications from telehealth to gaming to you name it, that's a really big deal.

So I'm really excited about the work that the FCC did over the last four years to help that potential become a reality here in the United States.

So I just bought a refrigerator the other day, and it said Bluetooth enabled.

And I'm like,

I don't.

want my refrigerator to be Bluetooth enabled.

The amount of information that is is going to be going out of our homes now with 5G, because

5G allows everything to be smart, a smart item.

Are you concerned at all about privacy and

just the use of all of this information on the American people?

Absolutely.

And this is why many years ago, I called on Congress to come up with legislation on the federal level to establish rules of the road for privacy in the digital world.

We don't have that right now, and so what you see is some states like California taking the lead and essentially regulating on their own within that state, or you see Europe implementing very strong privacy regulations, and essentially multinational companies like Google and Facebook abide by those same restrictions in the U.S.

just as they would in Europe, because you can't have different privacy protections across

across the world.

So I think right now it would be great for Congress to sit down and put on the page some of those basic privacy protections.

But the other issue related to privacy is security, Glenn.

I mean as you know, as everything gets connected, the network is only going to be strong as its most vulnerable point.

And when we're talking about 5G and security, there are companies like Huawei and ZTE, other companies in this space that could look to compromise some of our networks for their own gain.

Now, whether it's economic espionage or inserting malware, or even more insidiously, the Chinese Communist Party looking to compromise security of networks to gain insights on where our national security is vulnerable.

Well, people would say that blockchain is going to be really important for our security, but when we're at, you know,

what is it, 56 qubit

quantum computing, even blockchain is vulnerable, isn't it?

I mean, now that we're getting into quantum computer computing so fast, how are we going to be able to keep things secure?

That's a really good question.

And that's part of the reason why, a few months ago, before I left, I asked the FCC to organize a forum around quantum computing to understand what this future looks like.

And I don't pretend to have the answer to your question, but I do think it's important for the U.S.

government to start thinking about quantum and AI and machine learning and some of these blockchain, these next generation technologies.

It might seem futuristic, but

the future can become the present a lot quicker than people think.

One more question on privacy before we move on.

Has anyone suggested that all of my information belongs to me?

It's mine.

And if I decide to sell it, then I will make that decision.

And I'd make my decision on what parts of it I'd be willing to sell.

This would not only throttle these giant companies that are truly getting rich off off of the backs of all of us through metadata and now

really amazingly detailed data on each of us, but it would also

return our privacy.

It would punish

the Googles of the world financially by taking that incentive away from them, but they could buy it from us, which would also be something that the American people could make money on.

Is anybody suggesting that?

I have seen that suggestion in some quarters.

In fact, I think there might be some legislative proposals floating around Congress along those lines.

So I think that's one of the things that people instinctively get is that the property right they might have, so to speak, in their own data is something that should be vindicated.

Now, on the other hand, there are some who have raised some questions about that.

For example, if you're walking along a road

and you have a smart network, transportation network that is monitoring how traffic is going so that they can avoid hitting pedestrians and the like.

Is that your data?

Does it also involve some public safety issues?

I mean, there's some sort of gray areas there, but I do think there's a lot to sort out in this.

What is your data?

Who owns it?

How should it be used?

These are the kinds of things that Congress needs to speak to.

We don't have a framework right now for understanding that, and we need one desperately.

I look at the bottom of my Alexa, and I see that it has an FCC license

on it.

And

I wonder if, in some ways, this isn't, and I know this sounds ridiculous, but hear me out, a violation of the Third Amendment, which is the government can't quarter soldiers in your home.

I feel as though the government isn't, but if they start to collude more and more with these companies, they kind of are.

Aren't they quartering people?

Not the government, but these companies, aren't they kind of quartering people in our home if they are constantly going and listening to us and gathering information?

I haven't thought about that, Engel.

I will say though, just so you know, the SEC logo you see on the bottom, we're not licensing them.

All we do is essentially authorize their equipment to say any device in the United States that emits or receives radio frequency or RF, we have a responsibility to okay it.

So we actually don't license those particular devices directly.

But I do think it's interesting that a lot of us rely on these devices that you pick up a lot of our conversations and they deliver a lot of value.

But I think some people also have the concern:

are they listening into everything?

And so

that's one of the things, too, that it's just a new world.

This didn't exist when I was a kid, needless to say,

when you were inside the confines of your home, that was sort of this impregnable fortress, so to speak,

your own thoughts and data.

So it's a much more complicated world now because of technology.

We're talking to Ajit Pai.

He's the former FCC chairman.

He was appointed by Barack Obama and

served under under Trump as well.

I think he's the best chairman that the FCC has ever had.

And he also is somebody who I think really,

because of his passion, has saved the Internet from net neutrality.

And we've seen how good the Internet has become.

You spoke earlier about when you were talking about hypocrisy, about the kind of controversy about big tech companies censoring conservative voices generally.

And obviously, we have a right for free speech.

We We don't necessarily have a right to an audience on someone's private website.

As someone who's a conservative and is very scared of a federal intrusion on the internet,

I am worried about this sort of new idea from the right where there's a big debate going on whether the government should step in and do something to these big tech companies.

Where do you stand on that?

Well, where I stand is what I've said for many years, which is that these tech giants increasingly are running social platforms that have become the new public square.

And to the extent that some are either obstructed or prevented from speaking in that square, I think it's important for people to understand how are these decisions being made,

who is making these decisions and why.

And I think the past couple of months have only illustrated the fact that we don't have any insight here.

And for me, at least as a consumer, I don't care whether it's a network operator like your internet service provider or a content company like a tech 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 want to understand the rules of the road, and I think that kind of lack of transparency is what's frustrating a lot of people.

Nobody knows what's inside the black spot.

So, here's the deal: I've done broadcasts for 45 years.

I know what the rules are, I know what the FCC says, I know what's acceptable and not because the rules are very, very clear, always have been.

When we get blocked or we get dinged by some of these high-tech companies, we usually usually don't know why.

So

I can't make sure that we're in compliance if I don't know what it means to be in compliance.

Exactly right.

And that's why some of the decisions seem to be made as they go along.

I pointed this out last summer when I asked on Twitter, why is the supreme leader of Iran allowed to tweet out threats, especially

urging the destruction of the, as he called it, the Zionist state and all of this nonsense, Whereas other people are not allowed to say things which are clearly not as far as that, don't go as far as that.

And I think it just goes back to, you know, like I said, in November 2017, I gave a speech where I said, if you are really concerned about a free and open internet, what you need to be worried about is not net neutrality.

It's the question of how these tech platforms operate.

free from any transparency requirements whatsoever.

And I think people on the left and the right now, I would think, agree with that.

This is the best of the the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

We have Jeep Pai, the former FCC chairman and commissioner, former commissioner as well of the FCC.

He was appointed by Barack Obama.

He served under

Donald Trump, and

I think he is phenomenal on freedom of speech and regulation being minimal.

Let the free market work things out.

Thank you, first of all, for everything that you've done, Ajit, to keep the internet free and to keep our voices intact.

I want to talk to you about something that is really disturbing.

Now, this is from

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

So she's on the left.

She said this weekend, it is so dangerous.

This is an issue that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, libertarians, should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don't have to guess about where this goes or how it ends.

When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he has spoken with or heard from employees or nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for types of movements similar to the insurgencies they've seen overseas, that in his words

make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots.

He lists a few others, and at the end, even libertarians.

It's dangerous because of our civil liberties.

It will mean that

who could be scooped up tomorrow, we don't know.

I am very concerned about the freedom of speech on broadcast radio and the freedom of speech for those of us, not just the average man, but also those of us who they're talking about deprogramming or licensing to be able to

have a podcast.

It's an unfortunate time for those of us who cherish free speech and the First Amendment.

And that's part of the reason why I've been so steadfast in my defense of it, because I do think a defining feature of our democracy is that any faction that happens to be in power should not have the ability to define who is allowed into the public square and who is not.

And I think that's a basic tenet of American democracy over the decades.

I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.

I think that understanding has become frayed.

And I think the First Amendment is even more important when we have a tribalistic political culture like we have now, because we don't want your ability to speak to depend on

whether or not you are in favor with those in power.

So I don't know what particular information Mr.

Brennan was relying on when he made those assessments, but I'll just simply say as a general matter, the First Amendment is important for all of us, even when we disagree with the message that we might be hearing over the airwaves.

Are you concerned

that the next FCC

commissioner and chairman will erode some of these freedoms for radio?

Are we in radio in a safe zone or

not?

I certainly hope so.

I mean, I did everything I could over the last four years, last eight, since I served at the FCC, to make sure that radio had the ability to thrive into the next century.

It's the oldest communications medium addressing the mass market that we've got.

It's older than the FCC itself.

And to me, at least, I think it is one of the important forums for discussion of these types of issues.

So I hope that the next FCC will embrace that.

I'm a little more worried about what people will think on the digital side of things, you know, over the Internet and the like, where, as I said, you have net neutrality advocates demanding certain types of regulations, but then on the other hand, demanding censorship on the internet, which seems inconsistent with that.

But hopefully radio can continue to be one of the places where we do still embrace that First Amendment value that all of us cherish.

Do you know anything about the people that are coming in behind you?

Yes, I serve with all the four of the current commissioners who are there, including the acting chair.

So, you know, I do think they have a shared commitment to public service, to the public interest.

You know, they I think they believe in the First Amendment just as much as I do.

So hopefully they will stick by that.

You know, that's been a bipartisan tradition at the FCC.

And I think the most dangerous thing would be for us to get back into the game of approving licenses or doling out favors based on whether we agree with the political views of the would-be license holder.

And that's just not what the FCC should be doing.

It should be a market-based, objective decision, not trying to look through into a crowd and pick out your friends.

I want to read a story to you and just ask you your opinion on this.

And I warn you that I find what this man did and said to be disgusting and despicable.

But

there's a sentence that had just been handed down that I cannot believe is

constitutional.

A federal judge has ordered a Kentucky man who allegedly stormed the U.S.

Capitol earlier this month not to make any comments about the breach or the U.S.

government online.

Damon Michael Beckley, who was arrested by the FBI in Cubrun last week, was released on conditional bond, which barred him from using the internet to post about the rally, the Capitol riot rally, or matters related to the U.S.

government.

He was also prohibited from attending any rallies, protests, or demonstrations, and he must be now monitored by GPS.

He said things online, like Vice President Pence, my name is Damon Michael Beckley.

I don't appreciate this one bit, the situation you caused here, sir.

We're not putting up with this tyrannical rule.

If we've got to come back here and start a revolution and take all these traders out, which should be done, then we will.

I don't agree with that.

I think that's abhorrent speech.

But isn't this, as a federal judge, telling him he can't speak about the government or voice his opinion uh about the government online

isn't that a violation of the constitution and isn't there any protection for him

well i certainly share your assessment of the comments themselves uh this is an area of the law that's pretty well developed and one that i'm unfortunately not as knowledgeable about about whether or not judges can restrain uh the speech in this way so i probably had to defer until i had a chance to actually you know read the brief study up on that area of the law a little better i know that this is something that has occurred in a number of cases, and I'd want to express more informed opinion after reading all that stuff.

Tell me, before we let you go, tell me

the thing that keeps you up at night, and tell me the thing that you see over the horizon that really excites you.

Well, in terms of what keeps me up at night, it is the security of our networks.

I spent a lot of time over the last four years here domestically making sure the FCC did everything we could to secure our networks against national security threats from the outside.

In particular, I've been very outspoken about the Chinese Communist Party's determination to dominate the world through technology and in particular to lead in 5G.

And that's something I think

we should all be worried about.

Hang on just a second.

People don't believe me when I say there is a building, I think it's in Beijing, dedicated.

All it is is the Communist Party.

It's their platform of hackers, and they are hacking in and trying to hack into our Pentagon.

I can't remember.

It's some ungodly number of like 70,000 attempts a day or something like that.

I mean,

they have groups of people that this is their job to hack into our infrastructure.

True or not?

We've heard similar reports, and I think that's part of the concern.

And not only that, I mean, they've demonstrated that they are willing to export their anti-democratic values when it comes to things like the NBA or Taiwanese flag emojis or the like.

Imagine what they would be willing to do if they had access to our telecom networks.

That is a serious threat indeed.

So

explain that for people who don't understand that.

Well, so imagine if we had all of these 5G networks built in the United States.

Everyone was using them on everything from smartphones to connected refrigerators to your cars to military installations.

And let's say some of that equipment was built by the companies like Huawei and ZTE, which are themselves subject to Chinese Communist Party rule.

So what if the Chinese Communist Party said, you know what, we just want to see exactly how American consumers are using broadband.

Let's see how broadband around military installations is being deployed and whether we can get insights into things like troop movements or missile placements.

I mean, all these kinds of things would be simply one request away from the Chinese government to Huawei and ZTE, and we would have no way of ever knowing that those requests had been made and that our networks had been compromised.

And I think that is the risk.

And that's why I've been so outspoken about the fact that I'm very bullish on 5G's potential.

But we also need to think about security as a forethought as opposed to an afterthought.

Once we've installed these networks, it's too late.

You just can't put that genie back in the bottle.

So we need to be very careful about this threat and

not have a rosy-eyed view of the reality of the situation.

Final question for you.

Wait, wait, wait.

Well, you asked a final question, then I want to hear his optimistic thing.

Oh, okay.

Well, I was just going to ask, my passwords are all set to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Should I change any of them?

Yeah, I would definitely urge you to change that, Nia.

Don't change it to password either.

That's the one that I think is

probably not as well advised.

Mine's password 0.

12345.

Anyway, tell me what you're excited about.

Tell me what's on the horizon that you say people don't understand how game-changing in a positive way this could be.

I think what I'm really excited about is just the new influx of broadband-based technologies.

You know, when I got into this business, broadband essentially meant telephone lines being souped up with TSL to deliver relatively slow service.

Now, at the end of my tenure at the FCC, we've authorized low-Earth orbit satellites, companies like SpaceX, to deploy broadband from space at a really high speed.

We've also encouraged electric utilities to get into this business since they have a deep footprint across rural America.

We've encouraged, we've had a huge influx of spectrum thanks to our decisions that allow fixed wireless companies to enter the space.

I I guess all of which, what I'm trying to say is, all of these different technologies are finally being unleashed through the power of the market to deliver connectivity to American citizens.

And to me, at least, broadband is more important than ever.

And I'm really excited to see how all these companies using all these technologies are able to innovate for the benefit of consumers.

It's going to be a really exciting decade to come in that regard.

Are you at all concerned?

I mean, I was going to ask you what's next for you, but you were appointed by Obama, but you actually

served served also under Donald Trump, and they're going after anybody that served with Donald Trump.

You concerned about your future and what's next for you?

No, we had the privilege of being an independent agency, and I led in that spirit.

I kept all the political nonsense in Washington at arm's length to the extent I could and did the best I could.

And I think

a lot of the issues, they didn't have a partisan chain at all.

For example, establishing 988 as a three-digit number for suicide prevention and mental health, making sure people with with disabilities had access to technology.

I mean, the bulk of our work was pretty nonpartisan.

So, as for what the next adventure is, I'll have to wait and see.

But one of the things I've found in my career is that it's just such an amazing country that you just work hard and you try to be in the right place at the right time, and something will present itself to you.

So, I'm so grateful for the privilege of having the chance to serve and look forward to the next adventure being just as intellectually stimulating and rewarding.

Jeet, I would love to do a long-form

interview with you on our podcast.

I've got a lot of

questions on security and

technology that is coming.

I would love to pick your brain.

So if you have time at some point, I'd love to have you as a podcast guest.

Well, sounds good.

I'd love to talk about it.

Let's figure out what won't work.

And again, thank you for your service.

You've been great at the FCC.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, I can't say enough how much I appreciate the kind words, Glenn.

I really appreciate the support from everybody out there in the country.

Thank you.

God bless.

Ajit Pai, who is now leaving the FCC as the FCC chairperson.