from the corruption-dressed-up-as-big-boy-policy dept
We’ve noted how Republicans are busy screwing up the infrastructure bill’s $42.5 billion BEAD broadband grant program. After performatively whining that the program wasn’t moving quickly enough for their liking during the election season, the GOP announced it would be significantly slowing fund dispersal just to make life harder on poor people and to throw billions in new subsidies at Elon Musk.
To be very clear: this taxpayer funding had already been awarded to states years ago. Several states were just on the cusp of deploying next-generation, affordable fiber when Republicans decided to “fix” the program to the benefit of their billionaire benefactor.
Now Republicans are looking to cause even greater delays and legal battles by threatening to withhold billions in broadband grants from any states that try to engage in oversight of the “AI” industry.
The House had already approved a budget bill that attempted to ban state AI regulation for 10 years. Now Texas Senator Ted Cruz has introduced budget reconciliation text in the Senate that would prevent states from getting their already-allotted broadband grant funds if they attempt to impose any oversight or regulation of automation.
From his proposal summary:
“Forbids states collecting BEAD money from strangling AI deployment with EU-style regulation.”
While most people don’t want onerous or badly written regulation that hurts automation innovation or locks in monopolies, a blanket ban is little more than ignorant corruption, especially given the sort of bad choices that corporations have been making with such technology (see: the use of faulty AI to deny Medicare to the elderly, the media industry’s use of AI as a bludgeon against labor, the dangerously rushed use of AI chatbots in mental health, or the ample new privacy questions being raised).
Despite a lot of whining, the federal U.S. approach to “regulating AI” so far has effectively consisted of zero oversight whatsoever. You’ll notice this still somehow isn’t enough for many tech giants or Marc Andreessen types; they want a blanket ban that effectively pre-empts the possibility of any sort of oversight, privacy, or consumer safety provisions that might protect the public from the whims of gentlemen like himself who have proven to have abysmal judgement and little to no functional ethics.
Between awful Supreme Court rulings, problematic executive orders, and regulatory capture, the Trump administration has effectively destroyed federal corporate oversight and consumer protection (something that still oddly isn’t getting enough attention in press or policy circles). That leaves states as the last refuge of any sort of compensatory oversight, which is why corporations — via the GOP — are now taking aim at state power.
Meanwhile this BEAD program was already facing up to two years of additional, unnecessary delays due to the GOP’s Elon Musk cronyism. Trying to bully and extort states into going easy on tech companies by stealing already allotted BEAD funding is inevitably going to cause endless new legal fights and even greater delay. It’s ignorant corruption dressed up as adult policy making.
The choice also exposes the ideological hollowness of a party that claimed to be looking to “rein in big tech” (read: bully them away from content moderating racist, right wing propaganda on the internet), and is now handing them a gift ensuring these companies are more unaccountable than ever.
Filed Under: ai, automation, bead, broadband, consumer protection, cronyism, infrastructure, llms, oversight, regulation, ted cruz
