CT. Tea.

Thanks very much to the omniscient voice from above for the introduction. Thanks as well to, my co panelists, very distinguished, Carlos, and Jennifer, and Mindy, and Duray for their perspectives, illustrating, I think, the richness of this conversation. Thanks as well to our hosts, to the Museum Institute, and the Charles Koch Institute, and to the Center for Democracy and Technology. I think it's fair to say that these three groups might not always agree on everything, but, but I think it's significant that they've united to come together to defend and to promote, something, core freedom that I think a lot of Americans across the ideological spectrum embrace, which is the freedom of speech. And we fight for principles like freedom of speech because they serve as the foundation, for our great nation. It's obvious, of course, that Americans don't share a single cultural heritage. And I think what binds us in many ways is our commitment to a set of principles. One of the core principles, of course, is this freedom to be able to express yourself. A freedom that is unusual across the course of American history and even world history. Over two hundred years ago, as you know, America ratified the first amendment to the constitution, which states in part that congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. But provisos on parchment are sufficient to protect this freedom. I think what we also need is a cultural commitment, to the importance of free speech. In these days, to be candid with you, I confess that I am worried about whether or not that commitment is starting to unravel. For one thing, just as an informational matter, many seem not to know that there is such a thing as freedom of speech. A survey released earlier this week by the University of Pennsylvania, showed that only 48% of Americans know that freedom of speech is a freedom guaranteed by the first amendment. And 37 of Americans could not name any of the freedoms that are protected by the first amendment. Similarly, a Pew study last year revealed that 40% of millennials believe that the government should be able to bar individuals directly from making certain offensive statements. Small wonder then that free speech seems to have an uncertain role in modern society. Fewer people today seem to be willing, to abide by that old dictum misattributed to Voltaire that I might disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. One has to wonder whether those who will carry the torch in future generations, the next generation of leadership will be as dedicated to open debate, or will simply find it easier and preferable to marginalise the views with which they might disagree. I also see worrying signs from my vantage point at the Federal Communications Commission On Twitter for example seemingly on a daily basis, people regularly demand that the fcc yank the licenses of MSNBC or Fox News or CNN or any number of other news outlets because they disagree with the opinions that they might have seen on one of those cable news networks. Setting aside the fact that the FCC doesn't license, those cable channels, Kind of an important technicality when one is, thinking about these things. These demands are fundamentally at odds with America's cultural and legal traditions. Now on the other hand, when it comes to the future of free expression, I do see some positive signs as well. And the most hopeful one in my view at least is the expansion of Internet access. Obviously, the Internet wasn't around when America was young. Back then, the most important information network was the postal system. In 1796, newspapers accounted for 70% of the weight carried by the postal service. At forty years later, that, mounted increase to 96%. Princeton sociologist Paul Starr has explained that, and I quote, at our at the nation's founding, Americans were concerned not with building just a continental nation, but a Republican one. For my left leaning friends of the audience, that's a lowercase r. Our founding fathers made clear, that's, that, dictum and their treatment of the postal system. Europeans tax publications sometimes heavily, but The United States did not. It promoted them by offering cheap postal rates. And we also made it a priority to build out that system. We built a more extensive postal network than any other nation, and we extended it into rural areas that in other countries were simply left without. And so it was this new nation, which was after all conceived in liberty, had its the world's first true mass circulation press. Now this idea of universal access to information networks starts with the earliest days of our nation, but it hardly ends there. And just look at the agency that I have the honor of leading, the FCC. We were created in 1934, and the very first section of the communications act, section one, says that the FCC is charged with making available wire and radio communication service to all the people of The United States. Not some, not many, but all. And today when we talk about universal service, we have in mind, I have in mind bringing high speed internet access or broadband as it is called to any American who wants it Broadband is of course important for many reasons as you know to get a job to start a business to get health care to educate your kids precision agriculture and so many other things, but it is also vital for free speech and political engagement. Speaking publicly and getting engaged politically, start with being informed, and it's hard to imagine doing either without Internet access. Indeed, since I started this speech, I've thought of checking and posting myself on Twitter about four or five times, and some of you might be doing it right now. The Internet has made it much easier for the American people to learn about what the government is doing. Right now, for example, anyone can go to the FCC's website, fcc.gov, and read the proposals that various commissioners will be voting on at our monthly meetings at least three weeks in advance. Seems like a very mundane thing I recognize, but it all wasn't always this easy. Not long ago You would have had to hire a lawyer or a lobbyist or you would have to physically travel to the FCC's building itself here in Washington to get this information and even then you wouldn't get this information until after the FCC had voted And instead of having to mail a letter complete with a stamp and to make your voice heard in an FCC proceeding, anyone anywhere with Internet access can file a comment online Now this level of transparency is also reflected in Congress where elected officials connect with their constituents in ways that were inconceivable generation before. A concern, for example, the bipartisan congressional duo of Will Hurd and Beto O'Rourke. Earlier this year, as you might know, these two Texas congressmen, used Facebook Live to document their entire road trip from the Lone Star State back to our nation's capital. They answered questions from constituents. They discussed political matters. They tested with various people, hopefully, while watching the road safely. And just being seen on that trip together online, I think, built a sense of bipartisan camaraderie, which is something that I think America could use more of these days. The Internet, of course, has also given, non elected officials, Just, American citizens, wide widely a platform to make their voices heard like never before. I mean, look at Durey, who I had the chance to meet, just a few minutes ago. In the analog age, the reach of his message was dependent on the willingness of of distributors to carry it. Today, however, he could reach thousands, if not millions, directly over a platform like Twitter. The old saying used to be that freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. But that has dramatically changed because with the Internet, any American can become both speaker and publisher. And that is a powerful proposition. Any American can build an audience well beyond one's physical proximity. And any American can make news from periscope coverage of a terrorist attack to viral sensations like Chris Crocker, who a decade ago this week made national and international headlines with his very passionate defense of Britney Spears. Obviously, the Internet has also transformed elections. I'm not sure if you're aware, but president Trump's primary platform for getting the message out directly to the people was and still is Twitter. And the Internet has also democratized, political fundraising. I just asked senator Bernie Sanders who raised $218,000,000 online, $27 on average at a time, a remarkable figure in the history of campaign finance. Now the evolution of smartphones here with cameras has also given rise to citizen journalists And I heard a little bit about my this for myself when I was in Houston just last week in the wake of hurricane Harvey people used social media to provide firsthand on the ground reports that enhance situational awareness and let people know where, citizens were dying for help. And they also allowed emergency responders to identify those in need of rescue. I still think about the 14 year old girl who was rescued by the coast guard after telling Siri Siri called the coast guard. So obviously, digital media and the explosion of online expression has created new challenges, some of which my proceeding counterparts have talked about. But in my view at least, I still believe in my heart that the positives outweigh the negatives. I believe that the Internet has democratized our political discourse. It has an invigorated political debate, and in my view at least, it can help sustain our shared commitment, our cultural commitment to free expression. But for too many people, I think this is entirely an academic debate, And that's because they are on the wrong side of what I call the digital divide, the gap between those who have access to the Internet and those who do not. The Internet, of course, can be a great equalizer. It can bestow the opportunity to speak and to learn and to thrive regardless of who you are or where you live. But if you find yourself on the wrong side of that divide, you're likely becoming less audible in national discourse and more disconnected from civic life. And it's here where I wanna pick up the baton from Durey, who closed, I think, with a keen insight about access being critical to having one's voice heard. The most significant digital divides are along economic and geographic lines. I mean, basically, if you're wealthy and you live in a city, you should be in good shape. But if you're low income and or live in a rural area, you are much more likely to have a problem. Just consider this, 93% of Americans earning more than $75,000 a year have home broadband service, compared to only 53% of those making less than $30,000. In urban areas, only 2% of Americans lack access to high speed fixed service. In rural areas, 28% go without a Lot of stats and statistics I get that but think about what each percentage point represents Each point represents somebody who's on the wrong side of this divide hundreds of thousands of them who can't fully participate in America's twenty first century digital democracy. And I've met many of these folks. You've talked today about breaking out of the bubbles that we inevitably tend to inhabit in our daily lives. I've done my best to do that in my current role, and And there are a few things I enjoy more than getting, out of the the capital and visiting different parts of the country and learning firsthand about some of the challenges that face people in areas with poor or no high speed connectivity. And this year alone, I've logged more than 3,000 miles on road trips across the country. Places like Medillia, Minnesota, and Cleveland, Ohio, Wardensville, West Virginia, and Casper, Wyoming. I'll be hitting the road again next week, visiting parts of, South Florida that have been devastated by hurricane Irma, and then heading to the rural Midwest, including my hometown of Parsons, Kansas. And at every stop, regardless of who I meet, the front and center of my mind will be the FCC central mission, closing the divide and extending what I call digital opportunity to every American The FCC has the tools to accomplish this mission, and I'm proud to say that we are putting those tools to work Now the details are admittedly weedy, conceivably a little boring, but they're important. And so with your indulgence, I'd like to spend just a few minutes talking about them. Now the first of these tools involves federal subsidies. At the initial FCC meeting for which I could set the agenda in February, We adopted two significant measures on a unanimous bipartisan basis. I might add to expand broadband and access in unserved areas to give millions more Americans a voice And one of those was in order to bring mobile broadband to millions of Americans who don't have it today Now previously, the FCC was spending about $25,000,000 a year of taxpayer money to subsidize wireless carriers in areas where there was already wireless service from a number of different competitors. But this FCC is redirecting that money and more, $4,500,000,000 over the next decade, to bring four g LTE to people who simply don't have wireless access today. And we're doing it in an efficient, fiscally responsible way. At the same meeting, we also voted to move forward with $2,000,000,000 in fixed broadband investments. And here too, we set up a competitive process to make the most productive use of that money when it comes to bringing high speed access to unserved Americans. To the extent that we offer these federal subsidies, we're not simply cutting a cheques to companies and saying, go god be with you. We also wanna make sure that we have accountability. We put in place build out requirements and reporting requirements along the way, So that if we give one of these companies taxpayer dollars, they have to tell us that they're meeting a certain deployment benchmarks within a certain period of time. Now federal subsidies are one thing, but we also need to update our rules. The public private partnerships are useful, to spur infrastructure investment in areas where economic incentives for private investment just aren't there. But we also wanna modernize our regulations to give every single company a stronger business case to build and expand high speed networks, because that is the primary way in which Americans are going to get connected. And that is why we have been aiming to reduce the regulatory barriers to the installation of wireline infrastructure. Our goal here is pretty simple, just to lower the cost and the speed of deployment of infrastructure on things like utility poles, and to accelerate the transition from fading copper networks, some of which can get wiped out by things like a hurricane, to fiber networks, high capacity networks that give everybody high speed access. And this these sets of rules being modernized means that more money will be spent building the networks of tomorrow instead of propping up the networks of yesterday. As the world goes mobile, we're also aiming to promote more wireless infrastructure. The networks of the future are going to require not so much massive cell towers, but hundreds of thousands of small cells, some of which you could hold in your hand. And these are going to be the tiny building blocks of what is going to be called the five gs networks of the future. Now five gs has delivered fiber like speeds and testing, and it could ultimately mean better access and competitive choice for consumers, and hence lower prices and better service quality. But our efforts aren't limited to just what's on land. For instance, we recently approved, again, unanimously, and order paving the way for an innovative satellite company to use a planned constellation of seven twenty satellites in low Earth orbit, to deliver high speed access to hard to serve areas. Think about very remote rural areas or tribal areas, places that don't have access at all. Now other satellite companies are looking to do the same, and we'll be taking a look at those applications. Now even with all of this, smarter subsidies and reformed regulations, some Americans still could be left behind. And that is why last September, I proposed that congress create what I called at the time, gigabit opportunity zones. Now the idea was pretty simple, provide tax incentives to encourage companies to build out infrastructure in low income urban and rural areas that otherwise would be too easy to write off and to leave behind. My proposal here was inspired by former hud secretary Jack Kemp. Mister Kemp lamented decades ago about how many cynics as he put it, miss how rapidly in an entrepreneurial economy the poor can move up the ladder of success. And I agree with that. I fear that too often in America, we leave on the shelf human capital that is untapped, that is unheard, that is virtually invisible to too many people. We need to change that, not just because it's the right thing for them, but because it's the right thing for our country. And I'm thrilled that senators, Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, and Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, as well as congressman Doug Collins have introduced the gigabit Opportunity Act or Go Act, which advances my proposal. In my view at least, this legislation would be a powerful tool for delivering to low income Americans the online freedom of speech, a freedom that they enjoy today only in theory. Now to bottom the bottom line of all this this litany is pretty simple. Bridging the digital divide is my highest priority as the chairman of the FCC. To work, to learn, to educate, to heal, but most relevant here to speak, those are incredibly important functions. And so in this mission, we simply cannot fail and we cannot falter. It certainly won't be easy or else it would have been done already, but we'll keep going and we'll keep fighting for it. America's civic future, and I think the tradition of free expression along with it, depend on that. I'll close simply where I began with the eighteenth century. Our first president was quote worthy in many respects, but one quote in particular has always caught my fancy. George Washington remarks that, and I quote, if the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent, we may be led like sheep to the slaughter. And I think that in the twenty first century, a strong platform that allows people to share their ideas and inform themselves and their communities about current affairs can forestall that fate. In a remarkably short time, when you think about it, the Internet has become one such platform. The FCC's charge, our cultural traditions, and I hope your aspiration as well, is to extend that online megaphone to all Americans. I look forward to working with hopefully members of this audience and Americans across the country to fulfill this digital vision in the modern age. Thanks very much for your attention.

Thank you.