Tom Wheeler
Businessman and former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission of the United StatesWikipedia
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Search complete. 10 mentions across 5 episodes found for "Tom Wheeler".
Oct 16, 2026
Andy LoweHOST
Yep.
Andy LoweHOST
Can I have Tom Wheeler back?
Dave KoleHOST
Yes, please.
Andy LoweHOST
Please? Please? I remember being so irate when Tom Wheeler got the job.
Andy LoweHOST
I was like, wait a minute, he's a cable lobbyist.
Dave KoleHOST
Yeah, it's like the cable lobbyist guy is now in charge of the FCC.
Gigi SohnGUEST
And what Barron and I have been working on is getting the broadest swath of top FCC officials, chairs, commissioners, media and enforcement bureau chiefs, chiefs of staff, general counsels on an amicus brief in support of Disney in the district court.
Gigi SohnGUEST
And I got to tell you, when you have commission chairs as different as Mark Fowler and Dennis Patrick and Michael Kops and Tom Wheeler.
Gigi SohnGUEST
So Mark Fowler was perhaps the most deregulatory FCC chair probably ever, or one of the most.
Gigi SohnGUEST
For Reagan.
Gigi SohnGUEST
He calls
Berin SzokaGUEST
Brendan's actions the most corrupt use of the FCC's power in its history, which is an understatement.
Gigi SohnGUEST
Right, so you have Mark Fowler, Dennis Patrick, and then on the other side, you have Michael Copps, who thinks that eight-year license terms are too long and that they should be shorter, and Tom Wheeler, who I work for, so, you know, you got to figure he's pretty regulatory, too.
Gigi SohnGUEST
on the same amicus brief saying what the FCC is doing here is outside of their authority and violative of the First Amendment.
Blair LevinGUEST
For the first time, I believe, in the history of our country, we're basically at zero population growth, and that's a problem.
Blair LevinGUEST
Another thing on the demand side, and Tom Wheeler, former FCC chair, just wrote about this, is that we're going to have a token divide.
Blair LevinGUEST
I'm not exactly sure I know what to do about that.
Blair LevinGUEST
But in terms of the use of AI, are we going to get to kind of a new version of the digital divide that's more about OpEx than it is about CapEx? And by the way, a final thing I just note, though, it's not specifically related to that, is that the data centers are a very different business model for fiber deployment.
Juan Carlos BagnellHOST
And the stuff that you get is lower in quality and poorer in performance.
Juan Carlos BagnellHOST
So each state went state by state after Ajit Pai was stupid enough to roll back the Tom Wheeler FCC decisions on net neutrality.
Juan Carlos BagnellHOST
And this is a basic one.
Juan Carlos BagnellHOST
This is a very basic litmus test if you understand tech and politics at all.
Darrell WestHOST
To discuss these important questions, we are pleased to be joined by two distinguished experts.
Darrell WestHOST
Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of several important books on AI and technology innovation.
Darrell WestHOST
Bill Galston is the Ezra Zilka Chair of Governance Studies at Brookings and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
Darrell WestHOST
He recently wrote a piece questioning the safety of AI systems for that paper.
34 MINS LATER
Bill GalstonGUEST
Is it not possible to bifurcate regulation based on the sphere of activity? you know, whether it's mainly in the economic sphere or in the military sphere.
Bill GalstonGUEST
There are certain things that go on with with nuclear energy in the military sphere that are subject to forms of regulation that are very different from those in the civilian nuclear sphere and i wonder as a structural matter whether there is some useful analogy here i'm not sure there is but i'm not sure there isn't if i knew more perhaps i'd be a little bit more sure
Darrell WestHOST
Well, I want to thank each of you, Tom Wheeler and Bill Galston, for sharing your thoughts with us today.
Darrell WestHOST
Each of your considerations of human history and the role of technology innovation and how that should condition our current issues with AI I think are very important.