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[Chris Bavitz] Welcome to a very special Tuesday talk here at Pound Hall, across the street
from the Berkman Klein Center. As with a lot of our events on campus, this is being live
webcast and recorded. Please just keep that in mind if and when you ask questions, which
I hope you will toward the end. I have the privilege and the pleasure of being
able to introduce Prof. Susan Crawford and Chairman Tom Wheeler this afternoon. As I'm
sure you know, Prof. Crawford teaches here at HLS, works with us a lot in the Cyberlaw
Clinic, and works a lot on issues related to telecom as well as civic innovation, government
innovation, and helping cities think through data-smart governance and policies.
Joining Susan today, Chairman Tom Wheeler who spent three decades working in telecom
on both the business side and law and policy side. In November of 2013, he was appointed
by President Obama to the position of FCC chairman, where he was unanimously confirmed.
His tenure as FCC chair was one of the extraordinary accomplishments on a wide range of issues,
and it's particularly well-known for ushering in the FCC's final rule on net neutrality
in April 2015, which I'm sure is one of many things that Susan and Chairman Wheeler will
talk about. Without further ado, I'm going to turn things
over to Prof. Crawford and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. Thanks so much.
[Susan Crawford] Thanks so much, Chris. [Tom Wheeler] Thank you, Chris.
[Susan Crawford] It is indeed a singular pleasure and honor to have Tom Wheeler here as the
country goes through this whirlwind over the last few days. The 31st FCC chairman, a proud
graduate of the Ohio State University and a recipient ...
[Tom Wheeler] You got that right, the ... [Susan Crawford] The Ohio State University
and a recipient of its Alumni Medal, a former president and chairman of the National Archives
Foundation, a student of history, who cares about America's documents and America's future
and America's past, and the most consequential FCC chairman since a 35-year old Newt Minow
went to the Sheraton Park Hotel, to the lion's den, to the National Association of Broadcasters
in 1961, the beginning of the Kennedy Administration, and told those broadcasters that they were
supposed to be serving the public interest. [Tom Wheeler] Interesting concept �
[Susan Crawford] Isn't that something? Tom Wheeler told four companies that want to control
our destinies that they should be serving the public interest as well and was active
on a huge range of issues, as Chris mentioned. Tom, I know that someone you revered was your
grandfather. Pretend you're speaking to your grandfather right now, someone with absolute
compassion and affection for you, and tell him what you're really proud of in your tenure
at the FCC. [Tom Wheeler] Golly, Susan.
[Susan Crawford] What are you really proud of? What did you do?
[Tom Wheeler] I think we did a lot of things. [Susan Crawford] Okay. You did.
[Tom Wheeler] Let's start with the basic. Note that I said, "We did a lot of things,"
because what I'm most proud of is the team that did these things. Here's the silly thing.
You're chairman. You're the guy who ends up in the newspaper or in front of the Congress
or whatever the case may be, but you're just the band leader. I mean the people who are
making the music and playing the instruments are the people who were doing the real work.
We were just incredibly fortunate to be able to attract to the commission a team of new
senior folks, bureau chiefs, folks in the Office of the Chairman, General Council, et
cetera, to work with a really strong staff. I mean they are really dedicated, really bright,
really caring people on the staff of the FCC. What am I proudest about? I got to work with
them. I went around on the last couple of days, and I met with every bureau, and I had
one thing that I said in common to all of them, and that was that I was proud of the
fact that I was able to say I was their colleague because there's a lot to be proud of in that
agency. I think you have to put everything in perspective because it basically boils
down to it's all about people. Now, really what you're going for is ...
[Susan Crawford] How do you know? [Tom Wheeler] Let's talk about net neutrality.
Let's talk about privacy. Let's talk about �
[Susan Crawford] Actually, I wanted to put the personal angle on it, but really the human
pride here. [Tom Wheeler] It only happens because of the
people. You mentioned this small struggling educational institution called the Ohio State
University. When I was in graduate school there, I was Assistant Alumni Director, and
my job was the care and feeding of Woody Hayes. It was a fabulous experience. That's an overstatement.
My job was that I would, I traveled the state with the coaches including Woody, and so I
got to know Woody Hayes up close and personal. It was, "Son." "Yes, coach." Woody used to
say, "You win with people," and there's nothing more true than that, "You win with people,"
and so the reason why Woody really gets some things done so we had really good, really
dedicated people who busted their ass, who believed in things and busted their ass.
[Susan Crawford] Let me tick off a few things then.
[Tom Wheeler] Okay. [Susan Crawford] Bringing fiber access to
about 50% of America's schools, the ... [Tom Wheeler] More than that.
[Susan Crawford] What, more than? We're at about 50 now?
[Tom Wheeler] Here's where we are. When I came in, two-thirds of the schools in America
did not have fiber connections and the third that did did not have Wi-Fi; only half of
them had Wi-Fi to the student's desk. The latest report out of EducationSuperHighway
says that 90% of the school districts in America now have the standard, the 100 megabits per
student to the student's desk. [Susan Crawford] Terrific.
[Tom Wheeler] That's because of a team that worked together to overhaul a program that
had originally been envisioned by Al Gore but had atrophied as a narrowband program
that wasn't making sense in a broadband world. I'm very proud of that.
[Susan Crawford] Big one and revolutionizing the idea of subsidizing low cost phone service,
changing that over to high speed Internet access, that's a big deal.
[Tom Wheeler] We've always had a program where, starting with the Reagan administration, we
have had a program that subsidized low income Americans to be able to have phone service
because how are you going to dial 911, but same story. It atrophied as dial-up telephone
service, when the world had gone broadband. How do we make sure that the same kind of
concept supports subsidies for low income Americans for broadband. The champion for
that was Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. She was the person that was constantly, constantly
pushing on that, and she was my conscience on that issue.
[Susan Crawford] It's a wonderful issue. There are some things that didn't happen, before
we get to the Title II discussion, the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger.
[Tom Wheeler] That didn't happen, and T-Mobile Sprint didn't happen.
[Susan Crawford] T-Mobile Sprint, that�s the one that didn't happen.
[Tom Wheeler] We had dinner last night with former Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
Bill Baer and his deputy Renata Hesse and then my two key folks who had been involved,
Phil Verveer and Jon Sallet. We had dinner to reflect on not only the substance of the
issues we had worked on but, again, back to this people angle, I don't think there had
ever been a better working relationship between the Antitrust Division and the FCC because
we all shared a common belief, and we all liked each other and liked working together
with each other. [Susan Crawford] A lot of learning on both
sides. Everything depended on a lot of information trading around.
[Tom Wheeler] No. I mean the Comcast-Time Warner decision broke some new ground.
[Susan Crawford] Privacy? [Tom Wheeler] There's a really simple issue
that I think that we're going to have to face again because of the new administration, and
that is that privacy is a civil rights issue of the 21st century, of the connected era.
Let me give you an example of it. We had, for decades, rules that applied to telephone
companies that said that the information that was transmitted in order to set up the call
could not be used by the telephone companies. For instance, if I call Air France, Verizon
can't turn around and sell that information to some tour operator or hotel company in
Paris. That doesn't exist in the broadband world.
You had that strange situation where your smartphone, if you used it to make a voice
call, your privacy was protected. If you use that same device and the same network to go
on the web and go to the Air France website, that information was for sale. It was not
your information anymore. The very fact that you had used the network meant you were giving
that information. We said no. This is the consumers' information, and so we put a rule
in place that said that the consumer gets to make the choice as to how the network is
going to use the information. That was another one of our three to two votes.
[Susan Crawford] We'll talk about party line in a bit. I want to get there. I'm still ticking
off the great moments of Tom Wheeler. [Tom Wheeler] Do you want me to keep talking
about it? Are you interested? [Susan Crawford] The idea of labeling an Internet
service provider as a common carriage Title II entity. That was pretty big. I've always
wanted to know, what is it like to hear from 3.7 million Americans? What's that feel like?
[Tom Wheeler] They crashed our servers. [Susan Crawford] Exactly.
[Tom Wheeler] You don't always want to hear everything they say about you. I've heard
more descriptions about what could I do to myself with a pineapple than I ever want to
hear. The whole open Internet discussion debate was fascinating. You're a
part of this because you and I, we're on the phone discussing this. For me, it was kind
of a Damascus Road experience. You go back, and let's put it in perspective that twice
before the commissioner tried to do something and twice before the broadband companies,
the carriers, took it to the court and the court said, "No, you can't do that."
Let's see. I walked in in November, and then in February the court came down with a rising
decision that threw out the previous attempts at open Internet. It seemed to me that the
court was leading us in a certain direction built around Section 706 and protecting what's
the virtuous circle of, if you have good broadband that'll drive more services, which will drive
more broadband, and the job of the commission is to protect that.
Initially, my proposal was that we should follow what I thought the court was trying
to signal to us. At the same point in time, I asked in the notice proposed rule I can
ask about Title II and other areas. It became clear over the debate, the discussion, that
that wasn't going to be sufficient, 706 wasn't going to be sufficient. People like to point
to John Oliver and all that. I will show you one thing here that my daughter gave me. This
is my cell phone case. It says, "I am not a dingo."
[Susan Crawford] Dingo is inherently funny no matter what.
[Tom Wheeler] Dingo is inherently funny until you stand up and say, "You know, I've decided
I'm not a dingo." That's not funny. Do not mess with that guy who is funny for a living.
One of the things that you and Chris didn't mention in my background is that I was the
CEO of the Wireless Industry Association for a dozen years. In 1994, 1993, the Wireless
Industry went to Congress and said, "Please make us a common carrier but put us under
Title II." Because Title II was designed for a different era, with different technology,
less competition, et cetera, remove a lot of these old requirements that were in Title
II. Congress did that, and the commission followed through, and the Wireless Industry
went like this. The summer of 2014 I guess, I'm going through
options, and it's kind of, "Wait a minute. Section 332 of the Communications Act, which
is this structure that I subscribed for the wireless industry, is the perfect model for
this. Yes, you should be a common carrier with all the responsibilities that come with
a common carrier, but at the same point in time you can forbear from some of the most
ridiculous things. The statute says you got accounting rules, who's on your board, who
you can buy from, and all kinds of things, including ex-ante price regulation. We can
forbear from that. Let's take that as the model of how we implement
Title II in a broadband world, and that was the decision that we ended up making. We were
constantly working through various iterations of it. The President, of course, came out
and said he was a strong Title II supporter, and so we were able to put together three
votes and uphold it in court. [Susan Crawford] A very strong decision.
[Tom Wheeler] With a very strong decision that was crucial for that. Third time we got
it right because we did it this way, and the court strongly agreed to this.
[Susan Crawford] I got a quote from you, recent speech. You've said recently, "Those who build
and operate networks have both the incentive and the ability to use the power of the network
to benefit themselves even if doing so harms their own customers and the greater public
interest." We're hearing from the Trump Administration today that they're looking forward to getting
rid of 75% of regulations. The idea is that they inevitably dampen innovation in the investment.
What's your view of that claim, the dampening of investment by regulation?
[Tom Wheeler] Part of my experience is that I've made the same argument when I was an
advocate. [Susan Crawford] How about that?
[Tom Wheeler] Let me tell you a story. I was CEO of the Wireless Industry Association,
and I was proud of the job that I did at the Cable Association when we were taking on the
broadcast because they were trying to shut down in the early days of wireless when I
was at CTIA. The least proud moment of my public policy life was when I opposed the
commission's efforts to have local number affordability so that �
[Susan Crawford] That means for humans? [Tom Wheeler] If you decided you could take
your, if you wanted to switch your service from AT&T to T-Mobile that you could take
your number with you, it didn't used to be that way. I was imposed by regulation, and
I opposed it and you know that. Saying, "Okay. So, I mean, how are we gonna oppose this?"
You can't exactly go out and say, "Hey, you know, we think it's a really bad idea that
consumers can't, can't leave us, and they're trapped in their carrier because they can't,
they're giving everybody their telephone number." That's not an argument that's a real winner.
The argument I made was, "Ah, stalling this is gonna take money that should be spent on
infrastructure and expanding connectivity." Unfortunately, that didn't sell. Like I said,
I regret that activity, but I'm guilty of this. It is going to slow down our incentive
to invest is kind of the first line of defense of everybody and it's balderdash. I clean
that up. [Susan Crawford] That's a strong word.
[Tom Wheeler] I clean that up. The reason that you invest is to get a return. You don't
say, "Well, I'm not gonna invest because I might trigger some regulations." The question
is: Am I going to make a return off of this? Broadband is a high-margin operation. You
can make a return off of it. The facts speak for themselves. Since the
open Internet rule went in place, broadband investment is up, fiber connections are up,
usage of broadband is up, investment in companies that use broadband is up, and get ready for
it, revenues in the broadband providers are up because people are using it more. The reason
why you invest is for this reason, to generate more revenues and a good return on those revenues.
The oh-my-goodness-it's-gonna-be-a-terrible-thing-for-investment is just the first refuge that everybody makes,
and you have to look past that. [Susan Crawford] As a student of the Civil
War, you don't remember that one of the big prizes of 1863 was Chattanooga: railroad hub,
three railroad lines, two big rivers, two mountain ranges. What role did Chattanooga
play in your tenure? [Tom Wheeler] What a setup. That was well
done. [Susan Crawford] Thank you.
[Tom Wheeler] That was real. You want to talk to the Cracker Line that broadened the supplies
after Tennessee? [Susan Crawford] It's an incredible story.
We're going to get there but let's start with something related to telecom.
[Tom Wheeler] My good friend, Susan Crawford, says to me when I took this job that I should
bear three things in mind. I wrote these down. I kept them in my desk. The first was to return
the regulatory ideal, that there is a legitimate role for regulation to benefit the broad scope
of the population. The second was that we should have a legitimate credible definition
of what broadband is because broadband used to be defined as 4 megabits a second. That's
hardly broadband. The third was to tackle the outrageous practices that the ISPs, the
Internet service providers, the telephone companies, the cable companies, were doing
where they were going around the country and going to state legislatures and getting state
legislatures to pass laws that prohibited cities in that state from building their own
broadband network to compete with. I thought, "Hey, you know, if the people through
their local government decide they don't like the quality of service that they're getting,
they ought to be able to organize through their government and say, 'I want something
better including the government building it.'" Chattanooga was the case study of a Tennessee
law, so we sued Tennessee and North Carolina, making the argument that this was overreach
of the states� authority. Unfortunately, the Sixth Circuit disagreed with us.
The great thing is all the hubbub about this woke up an awful lot of cities, triggered
an awful lot of referenda to do things, and there is more activity to build competitive
broadband in the municipal levels, never has been. You know what happens? You do know what
happens. Of course what happens, I'm talking to Miss Fiber here being about that what happens
is when they decide to build, it's just amazing. The cable company decides to go faster and
expand their service. It's just incredible. I love this thing called competition.
[Susan Crawford] Private citizen Tom Wheeler, the legislatures of Missouri and Virginia
just introduced new snarling bills along these lines. What would you tell a sincere earnest
State legislature today about those bills? What would your two talking points be to that
legislature? [Tom Wheeler] First of all, that the people
do have a right to come together and say, "I want something better for my city." The
second political point that I would make is it's not really the Chattanooga�s where
this is a big challenge. It's the Wilson, North Carolinas, and it's the areas where
the people who voted for Donald Trump do not have access to the Internet and are not getting
access by the existing companies. They're the ones who were fed up with the system,
and I voted to that they were fed up. You need to be responsive to that.
[Susan Crawford] They voted your way. They have to.
[Tom Wheeler] I would hope they want to. [Susan Crawford] We're still wrestling with
this in such a big way that you're 10 times more likely not to have access to reasonable
high speed Internet access in a rural area than in an urban area. If we add together
wires and wireless, you're just not going to get it in rural areas at all. We have a
lot, a lot of progress, I understand. [Tom Wheeler] This is the idea. I think that
one of the messages that people were voting for in this campaign is, "I want power back
to me. I want decisions." The whole thing about draining the swamp is to get the power
back. If the government closest to the people is saying our people would like to have better
broadband, then who's to say no? [Susan Crawford] I talked to you about the
vision of the FCC because now we're going to go through the crossroads. I love looking
back. Let's walk on. The design of it as FDR�s agency was to be an expert agency insulated
from politics. Is that true? [Tom Wheeler] Of course not.
[Susan Crawford] Many of the staffers, people who are working at the FCC, there's a lot
of flow back and forth: people who have been staffers end up as commissioners, lobbyists
end up as staffers. There's a big circle here. What do we do about all of that?
[Tom Wheeler] Let me give a, you deserve a better response ...
[Susan Crawford] Thank you. [Tom Wheeler] Than the smart ass response,
I guess. Look. One of my aha moments was how special and independent the agency is. I'll
tell you a story. Early in my tenure we said that, for technology reasons, it was no longer
necessary to turn off your cellphone on an airplane for fear of interfering with the
grounding stations, which is the only reason that rule existed. You own the hubbub of,
"Oh my god, we're gonna be 35,000 feet and people are gonna be, the guy next to me is
gonna be yacking away." I didn't want that either. We were just doing that technical
issue. Anthony Foxx, the Secretary of Transportation,
and I are on the phone because he has the responsibility for the FAA of how consumers
behave on the plane. I was just doing the technology. You don't need, without interfering
the work of, say, what�s also on the plane. He says, "Well, this is cool. We can work
this all out." He said, "You take the technology. I'll take the consumer. We'll solve it." I
said, "That's fabulous." I said, "I'm testifying tomorrow in Congress at 10 o'clock and they're
going to ask about this. Let's make sure that we've got our language down. That's exactly
what you and I just agreed to." He says, "There are staffs at work on that. That's great."
About an hour later, somebody comes in, one of my staff folks comes in and says, "You
just got a call from General Council at the Department of Transportation. They can't do
it." Why? It was overruled by the White House. Now making a very long story short, there
was somebody in the communication shop at the White House that didn't like this idea.
The White House ended up approving it. I went and testified when the things moved forward.
The point of the matter is that I made the decision looking at the guy in the mirror
in the morning, and the Cabinet Secretary had to run it through, and as a former White
House staffer he know how that works. The ability to have an independent agency to be
an expert agency and to make independent judgments is really important. That does not mean that
there's any political agency, to answer your question, and in particular having an agency
that, for the vast majority of my term, was dealing with a Republican Congress that didn't
like what we were doing. That helped politicize the activities at the commission.
It is an independent agency, but of course, the commissioners read the newspapers like
the Lyman Supreme Court, Grand Supreme Court reads the election. They respond to letters
from Congress. [Susan Crawford] It's an agency made up historically
of one agency being glued together with memories of another agency essentially. Now people
are talking about taking it apart. Modernizing the FCC is the lingo being used. What's your
thought about that? [Tom Wheeler] It's a fraud.
[Susan Crawford] Keep talking. [Tom Wheeler] It's interesting. Actually,
I was going through some papers this weekend and I ran across a September 2013 article
in the Washington Post, the headline of which was something to the effect: "Here's how the
networks plan to defang the FCC." It quoted all of the cable and telephone company Washington
office heads saying that really the consumer protection and competition work of the FCC
should be transferred to the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. It's no surprise where they
want to transfer. The FTC doesn't have rule-making authority.
They've got enforcement authority, and their enforcement authority is whether or not something
is unfair or deceptive. First, the only regulation that they would be subject to would be an
adjudicatory finding that it's unfair or deceptive, one. Two, you got this agency over here, the
FCC, that is constantly worrying about all things in telecom. The FTC has to worry about
everything from computer chips to bleach labeling. Of course, you'd want to get lost in that
morass. We're, "Okay. We will get to that. We got to get bleach labeling taken care of
first." This was the strategy all along. What surprises me, no, what doesn't surprise
me is that, then the Trump transition team, which is basically folks from the American
Enterprise Institute who were folks who were ...
[Susan Crawford] True. It's not even funny. It's just true.
[Tom Wheeler] Who were long time supporters of this concept, come in and say, "Oh, we
oughta, we oughta do away with this." The story gets even more interesting. First of
all, it makes no sense to get rid of an expert agency and to throw it over here to an agency
with no rule-making that has to compete with everything else that's going on in the economy
and can only deal with unfair or deceptive because we're talking about one-sixth of the
economy, but more importantly, we're dealing with the network that connects six-sixths
of the economy. Here's what's really bizarre and how the story
really gets interesting. We in the FTC brought an action against AT&T and the FTC using their
unfair or deceptive standard, us using our broader capabilities. AT&T took the FTC to
court and said, "You don't have authority." The FTC statute says that common carriers
are exempt from the jurisdiction of the FTC. Now this is the same company that was previously
in this Washington Post article, the head of their Washington office arguing how it
should only be the FTC that has jurisdiction over their issues.
The court said, "Yes, you are right. And not only are you right about the FTC not having
jurisdiction over common carriers, the FTC doesn't have jurisdiction over the non-common
carrier activities of common carriers." Now, we have a situation where the carriers and
their supporters at the AEI and inside the commission are saying, "We should transfer
everything to the FTC,� which is a result of a Ninth Circuit decision on a case brought
by the same people that are arguing it should be moved, doesn't have authority. Go figure.
That's not modernization. [Susan Crawford] No. It is ...
[Tom Wheeler] That's just hiding the � [Susan Crawford] It's like escape velocity,
no coverage at all. You may not have heard, but there's a new chairman of the FCC.
[Tom Wheeler] Really? [Susan Crawford] Yeah.
[Tom Wheeler] No. [Susan Crawford] It just came out. It's news.
Ajit Pai. I can't tell who he is because I got these press releases, and they seemed
to be talking about two different guys, so from NCTA which used to be called The Cable
Association, now called The Internet and Television Association. Michael Powell saying, "During
his tenure on the Commission, Chairman Pai has consistently demonstrated a commonsense
philosophy that consumers are best served by a robust market place that encourages investment,
innovation, and competition. We stand ready to assist Chairman Pai to ensure that America
remains a global Internet communications entertainment leader." That's one Ajit Pai.
The other Ajit Pai, according to Free Press, "He's been on the wrong side of just about
every major issue that has come before the FCC during his tenure. He�s never met a
merger he didn�t like or a public safeguard he didn�t try to undermine. He�s been
an opponent of Net Neutrality, expanded broadband access for low-income families, privacy, all
kinds of issues. And he's been an obstructionist who," get this, "Has always been eager to
push out what the new presidential administration might call alternative facts, in defense of
the corporate interest he used to represent in the private sector."
I listened to a radio interview of you just a couple of days ago, when you said that commissioner
Pai canceled all the meetings that you set with him.
[Tom Wheeler] True. When I came in, we're a five-person commission, and the chairman
sets the agenda, and the chairman is a CEO, but there are four other commissioners that
are important to relate to, and it takes three votes to do anything. I set up that with every
commissioner every other week. We had a date on our calendar that was an hour for the two
us just to sit without staff and talk about, if you talk about baseball, they would have
talked about baseball, but talk about the issues of the day and other concerns and how
do we work our way through a series of problems. Commissioner Pai and I had early on a lot
of those meetings, but for the last 18-24 months he's canceled every meeting. The only
point I was making on Marketplace was that it's hard to work for consensus when you won't
sit down with each other. [Susan Crawford] Yeah. Time will tell I suppose,
or the next step. I think it's coming up right away, the AT&T-Time Warner merger. There are
two Donald Trumps on this one too. There's the Donald Trump in October who said, "This
is, you know, distraction of democracy." Then there's the Donald Trump of last week who
said, after meeting with AT&T, "I got to get some more facts. We'll see." Do you have any
guesses for us about what's likely to happen with that merger?
[Tom Wheeler] AT&T has now designed the merger to avoid the FCC. I think the commission probably
still has some jurisdiction, but I don't make those decisions anymore. Somebody said to
me the other day, "I have lost the Windex to my crystal ball."
[Susan Crawford] Good line. I have determined that you have something in common with Donald
Trump. You're maybe surprised to hear this. It is the exclamation point because of your
first book, Take Command!: Leadership Lessons From the Civil War. This is the Harvard Leadership
School. You may think it's the Harvard Law School. It's actually the Harvard Leadership
School. I wanted to get your reflections on leadership in this role because I want everybody
to understand what it takes to run an agency with a $388 million budget and 1,700 employees.
I thought I could tie this again back to the Civil War and have you talk to us about Ulysses
Grant. You don't have to talk about yourself but you could talk about Gen. Grant because
that must be a model leadership for you. [Tom Wheeler] Gen. Grant is my hero and not
just because he was from Ohio. The first chapter in the book that you said is called Dare to
Fail. I think that's the first rule of leadership, that what the book says is that if you prepare
for failure, you will no doubt succeed. One of the things that was so great about Grant
was that he was dogged in his, "I just won't fail, I'll get this done," and so he's always
been my hero. I got a little consulting company that I had
before the Commission that I just reopened, and it's called Shiloh Group. Why is it called
Shiloh Group? It's called Shiloh Group because it was probably the definitive battle of Grant's
career, and he lost on the first day. He got creamed. Everybody expected, the rebels expected
him to retreat away, but he didn't. He brought more troops up. The OK man saved the day.
That night, William Tecumseh Sherman finds Grant sitting under a tree whittling, working
at his frustrations on a piece of wood. He says, "Well, Grant. We've had the devil's
day." Grant looks up, "We�ll lick 'em tomorrow," and he did.
[Susan Crawford] He sure did. [Tom Wheeler] Persistence is the key, and
Ulysses Grant was a great model of persistence. [Susan Crawford] Gen. Lee and Gen. Grant,
I mean, keep going with this. Both went to West Point. Gen. Lee graduates top of his
class, no demerits. Gen. Grant, number 21 out of 39, plenty of demerits. Comment.
[Tom Wheeler] You're asking a guy who barely got out of Ohio State.
[Susan Crawford] There you go. Moral courage. [Tom Wheeler] You can't criticize me. You
can criticize him for being on the wrong side, but you can't criticize him for being a great
leader. That's a really good question. Look. I think the bottom line is this. It is what
you make of things. Let's go back, and let's take Ulysses Grant after he left West Point.
He distinguished himself from the Mexican War.
[Susan Crawford] He met Lee there. [Tom Wheeler] He met Lee, but Lee didn't remember.
Lee was a hotshot. He was a quartermaster. Lee was a hotshot engineer because he graduated
first in his class. He didn't get posted to various remote posts, particularly out west
where Julia, his wife, can't come with him and he starts drinking. He drank himself out
of the army. He came back to St. Louis where his wife Julia lived with her parents were
and tried to take up farming. That really didn't work.
He was reduced to selling firewood on the streets of St. Louis, wearing his old army
greatcoat selling firewood. He finally went back to work for his father in Galena, he
and his father never really got along that well, to be a clerk in the tannery. He was
passed over for early leadership roles in the Civil War. McClellan was one of the guys
who passed him over. Failure, failure, failure, failure, and then all of a sudden, and so
the point is, okay, so he failed. Move on. That's the great leadership lesson of Ulysses
Grant. [Susan Crawford] Another part of this is that
Ulysses Grant wrote to his wife Julia everyday when he was away from her. They were both
invited to see My American Cousin by President Lincoln the night of April 14th. Julia got
spooked so they left. Speaking of leading Washington, my segue here, as you walk away
from the portals, what's that like to be the chairman, to walk out and no longer be the
chairman? What does that feel like? [Tom Wheeler] First of all, you get a long
time, you get 77 days to work up to it. [Susan Crawford] That's true.
[Tom Wheeler] It's not a big surprise. You walk away with just an incredible gratitude
for the fact that at a time of such incredible change in how Americans communicate that you
got to be the guy who sat there and dealt with how Americans relate to those changes.
Because the people who say the problem is government are so wrong, and the government
is the people. It's where we come together to solve our common problems. It is a messy
process, and it's a painful process, but if we can�t work things out there, we're in
a whole hell a lot of trouble. The fact that I got to sit at the head of
that agency in these incredibly changing times and to say, "How do you look at these changes
in technology, economics, how people connect and make sure that public interest is represented?"
was a terrific privilege. I walk away from there proud that I could do it with the people
that I did it with. How fortunate can you be?
[Susan Crawford] Last question as this is about to turn to a Q & A here, but what are
you most worried about? There are millions of people who marched over the weekend, and
if they knew it, they would be marching about telecom as well. What should they be doing?
What should people worried about the concentrated market, the high prices, that inadequate service,
all of that, be doing in America? [Tom Wheeler] The most powerful asset of the
21st Century is the networks that connect us; networks have always been important. The
railroads ruled the industrial revolution. Networks have always been crucial, and the
network will define the 21st Century. These are broadband networks. As I said, we had
jurisdiction over one-sixth of the economy but six-sixths of the economy using those
networks. I've always used this phrase that how we connect defines who we are both commercially
and culturally. That connection and whether or not it is going to be controlled on a gateway
basis by essentially four companies is an existential question for American commerce
and culture. I am worried about what that future looks like.
What is amazing to me is how the Commission and seemingly the Congress
want to do things on behalf of these four companies that will have an impact on tens
of thousands of other companies and millions of consumers. I just don't think the debate
has gotten to the point where people recognize we're talking about fewer than half a dozen
companies here and how should you make policy. That's my concern.
[Susan Crawford] It's the public education moment of huge opportunity. What do you want
to ask Chairman Wheeler? Yes. A mic is flying through the air towards you. It's coming.
[Question] If you today have been replaced, what about the people who are working under
the Civil Rights Commission jobs. What percentage of people in the FCC ...
[Tom Wheeler] You mean the Civil Service. [Susan Crawford] Civil Service.
[Question] Our government employees, and does Trump think that he can just change everybody?
[Tom Wheeler] I'm the last guy to ask what Trump thinks.
[Susan Crawford] You can have that exclamation point.
[Tom Wheeler] The reality is you're absolutely correct that the vast majority of the employees
of the FCC are civil servants. I imagine that the new chairman will bring in, as I did,
a new top tier, and that they will be the ones managing those civil servants.
[Susan Crawford] Yes. [Tom Wheeler] They have to follow the directions.
[Question] What do we, the American people including the people in this room, need to
do to protect net neutrality? [Tom Wheeler] Thank you for asking the question,
first of all. I think that there are two things. One, we need to be heard but, two, we need
to be heard in different ways than before. Susan says 3.7 million emails and comments
to the Commission. They were pushing on a door that was already open. The door is locked,
latched, bolted, and welded right now. I think the battering ram is, to paraphrase
here, Madison had this great line in Federalist 10 where he said that ambition must be made
to counteract ambition. This was the whole concept of how the government was set up.
Economic ambition is what is driving this handful of companies. There must be economic
ambition that counters them. What we need is we need to hear the voices of those that'll
be affected. Yes, the small startups but also the big companies. GE, GM, if there are, so
let's just go through a couple of things. Artificial intelligence and machine learning,
what is it? It is the connectivity of all kinds of database resources. If that connectivity
has to worry about gatekeepers, what happens to AI, the Internet of Things? The Internet
of Things is going to change the whole economics of the Internet I believe from a push environment
to a pull economics. We can talk about that later if you want. Who will be deciding which
things get connected and on which terms? If one of the caregivers says, "Wait a minute.
I like my things better, and I'm gonna price differently to them, that I am this competitive
provider of this service." What does it mean? We see they already do that because we are
waiting on video. This is not a hypothetical. We need to be making sure that the companies
that are affected are delivering the message because I think that's what the Congress would
be most responsive to. [Susan Crawford] Question, anyone?
[Tom Wheeler] This is great. We answered every question in the room.
[Susan Crawford] I'm just looking for � [Tom Wheeler] Here she is, over here in the
corner. [Susan Crawford] There in the back.
[Question] I think my colleague probably asked this question better than I can, but I'm just
going to do it. We work at some rural community access television. I wanted to know a couple
of things. One is what is the role, like how can community access television play an important
role? What do you think? What do you predict? Can you predict? I know our Windex isn't working
anymore, but what the new chairman, what his perspectives are on public access, and how
we might stay protected? [Tom Wheeler] Great questions. When I was
at NCTA, I was a great supporter of PEG, Public, Educational, and Governmental Access. We actually
got it codified for cable ad. Things have changed a lot since �84. There had been
some intervening legislations and rulings by the Commission. I don't know where Ajit
Pai is on that issue. We never had an occasion to discuss it so I'm sorry, but good for you
for what you're doing. The diversity of voices is, so the beauty of technology is that it
has created the opportunity for a diversity of voices. That is also the vein of the technology
because if you're not using things like PEG to express yourself, there are others who
are using the opportunities for diversity of voices to do that.
The other thing is that we need to begin to become our own editors where we used to outsource
the editorial function to NBC or CBS or New York Times. Now, anybody with web access has
as much reach as any of those, and it's going to force consumers to be better consumers
of information. I think we'll get there but we're certainly going through a rough period
right now. [Susan Crawford] Over here, yep.
[Tom Wheeler] Wait a minute. [Susan Crawford] Mic.
[Question] FirstNet is Congress's effort to create a fifth cellular network for public
safety. We got three million price-sensitive picky cops and firefighters, maybe 12 if we
expect it for the second responders but to break even for network is about 40 million
users. In Britain, they said priority preemption and quality of service had to be provided
by carriers. I can't see a way through the success for FirstNet and this network in the
country given the vision of how this will end up.
[Tom Wheeler] FirstNet has been controversial since the day that Congress made the decision
made by Congress championed by Senator Rockefeller in particular, and it has evolved to a point
now where they're going to be buying services from an existing wireless provider and will
be getting the kind of priority service that you are referencing is available elsewhere
in other countries. It's going to be interesting. Let's see what happened.
We had three jobs with regard to FirstNet. One was to make the spectrum available. We
did that. Two was to make sure that they had $7 billion to start the process. We did that
out of auction revenues. Three was, in the coming year, there is the option of states
to opt out of FirstNet, and we were to be the judge as to whether a state should be
allowed to opt out, and that's a decision that the Pai Commission is now going to have
to make. That's going to be key because, for instance, if New York opts out or California
opts out or Illinois opts out or Texas opts out, the nationwide network collapses. That's
something we have to live through. I don't know how it's going to end up.
[Susan Crawford] Last question, anybody? Yes. [Question] Question around wireless spectrum,
when one looks on one side, the public benefit revenue from auctions are being able to just
type communication and the other side the rights of spectrum holders. There's been a
lot of controversy in this area with bankruptcy, spectrums that never used. Do you have any
thoughts on do we have the optimal model for how we license or sell and look at the whole
life cycle of spectrum management over long periods of time and also take in account innovation
that occurs? [Tom Wheeler] We could be here a while, it's
so well past dinner time. Let me go through a couple of things. One, spectrum allocation
was originally done based on analog physics. A TV signal is a six megahertz waveform, so
you need a six megahertz spectrum to put out a TV station. When you go digital, the efficiencies
of digitization allow you to get four or five channels into that same spectrum but the problem
is that everything that, not everything, the vast majority of the spectrum allocation tables
were decided using analog physics, and we're now in a digital time. You can get a lot more
out of the spectrum except that it's my spectrum. You can't have my spectrum.
[Susan Crawford] They'd rather give up their babies than give their spectrum.
[Tom Wheeler] My cold dead fingers, take my spectrum. This is true internationally. I
mean we have troubles in a big international conference allocating spectrum just last year,
two years ago I guess. The world is not as sensitive to this as we are. That's kind of
issue one. We're operating under old rules that support, "It's mine. I don't wanna leave
it." One of the great things that the national
broadband plan came up with, Blair Levin led a team under my predecessor Julius Genachowski
to develop a national broadband plan, you had a large hand in that, was to say there
ought to be a spectrum auction where we would re-purpose spectrum by having an auction to
buy it back and then resell it. The broadcast spectrum was the key there because go back
to my ... Why do you need six megahertz if you can get
a bunch of channels in there, get them in there and then sell off the others for wireless
applications both licensed and unlicensed by the way? Just literally, my next to the
last day on the job, that auction which everybody said, "Oh, it will never work. It will never
work." That auction hit what was called the final
stage rule where, in fact, we have created a market where broadcasters have agreed to
sell 84 megahertz of spectrum and the wireless carriers have agreed the necessary price to
buy that. For the next 39 months, there will be a whole process across the country of reallocating
spectrum re-banding and making this spectrum of available. The challenge with spectrum
is, A, they're not making any more, and B, is the physics that describe the chart, the
spectrum allocation chart or analog physics in a digital era.
[Susan Crawford] Here's a shared challenge I think we have, that for you this is blood
and guts entertaining fascinating stuff and for me frankly. How do we reach more people
with what are ultimately extraordinarily personal issues? People's phones are very close to
their hearts. They would give up a food before they give up a cell phone. What thoughts as
you give us a benediction here as you pass into private life? How do we get the resistance
going to focus on these issues in a more dramatic way?
[Tom Wheeler] You don't ask easy questions. [Susan Crawford] No. This is important.
[Tom Wheeler] I've just sat here and given you a wonk's eye view of telecommunications
policy. I love my wife dearly, and she loves me, but I can't hold her interest across the
dinner table on these topics. How in the world do we get ahold the interests of the vast
majority? We need to get out of discussing this kind of, we need to get out of our technocrat
mode and into our mode of Susan's point about how it's the Trump voter who has the worst
Internet experience and the key to getting an education to be able to do your homework,
the key to being able to get a job, the key to be able to interact with the world around
you, is to have broadband, and these people have been denied it.
Why? Because we built things around, again, four companies and we need to be getting the
story out that let's talk not about the networks but let us talk about the network effects
that the effects are the ability to do your homework, the effects are the ability to get
a job. The effects are job creation. Let me tell you great story, and then I'll
shut up. This is a story that more people need to hear. Hal Rogers, who is the chairman
of the House Appropriations Committee, represents Eastern Kentucky, which is coal country and
which is just as you know economically devastated, and Trump made a big play in coal country.
Hal Rodgers has said, "Connectivity is key." It kept bringing me back to the district to
pump the importance of fiber connectivity, Ms. Fiber.
I�ll tell you two stories. I was in McKee, Kentucky, one stoplight, 900 people, fiber
to every home, and business as a result of the Obama stimulus. There are more people
employed today in McKee than there were three years ago. Who's getting employed? It's not
just the folks who got let go from the coal mines or those who were selling goods and
services to them, but it's the disabled. I mean one of the things that we haven't talked
about that I'm most proud about is what we did to make technology available for individuals
who are disabled, the people who can't get out and about are now working for U-Haul,
Avis, and folks like this being online from McKee to West Virginia.
You go down the road to Pikesville where I met with a bunch of ex-coalminers. You shake
hands with these guys and you know who are now coding for Apple and others because there's
fiber in the Pikesville, the community college has fiber, was teaching coding. These guys
who had the gumption to go way underground and go to the coal face had the gumption to
say, "I'm going to take charge of my life in the new economy because I can, because
there is a fiber connection allowing me to do it." Those are the kinds of stories that
we have to be telling because how we connect defines who we are.
[Susan Crawford] Thank you for helping keep America being the Pottersville of the Internet.
We appreciate that. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your character and for the many,
many hours you put in on our behalf. We really appreciate it.
[Tom Wheeler] Thanks, Susan. [Susan Crawford] Thank you.