Trump and Authoritarianism
The meaning of Washington’s turn toward Internet freedom.
James FreemanDec. 15, 2017 4:57 p.m. ET
President Donald J. Trump speaks to the media at the White House on Friday.Photo: Ron Sachs/Zuma Press
By
James Freeman
Online searches using the keywords “Trump” and “authoritarian” reveal vast supplies of media speculation about an allegedly dark future to be wrought by our 45th President. Many professional pundits were issuing such forecasts even before his 2016 election. They just became even less believable.
The standard format of this genre has the author claiming to hear disturbing echoes of 1930s Europe but presenting few facts to demonstrate that the United States in 2017 is taking a similar path. Fortunately this week brings a nice test case for the authoritarian thesis.
Authoritarian governments can vary in significant ways but one thing authoritarians do not do is reduce government control over communications infrastructure. On Thursday, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, and his two fellow Republican commissioners outvoted two Democrats and sharply limited Washington’s authority to manage the Internet.
Coincidentally, Mr. Pai is rolling back 1930s telephone regulations that President Obama ordered the ostensibly independent FCC to impose on the Internet in 2015. Why Mr. Obama thought that modern digital networks would be enhanced by a regulatory regime enacted the same year that Hitler achieved absolute power in Germany is a question for another day.
But Mr. Pai's Thursday remarks are instructive:
What is responsible for the phenomenal development of the Internet? It certainly wasn’t heavy-handed government regulation. Quite to the contrary: At the dawn of the commercial Internet, President Clinton and a Republican Congress agreed that it would be the policy of the United States “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet . . . unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”This bipartisan policy worked. Encouraged by light-touch regulation, the private sector invested over $1.5 trillion to build out fixed and mobile networks throughout the United States. 28.8k modems gave way to gigabit fiber connections. Innovators and entrepreneurs grew startups into global giants. America’s Internet economy became the envy of the world.And this light-touch approach was good for consumers, too. In a free market full of permissionless innovation, online services blossomed. Within a generation, we’ve gone from email as the killer app to high-definition video streaming. Entrepreneurs and innovators guided the Internet far better than the clumsy hand of government ever could have.But then, in early 2015, the FCC jettisoned this successful, bipartisan approach to the Internet. On express orders from the previous White House, the FCC scrapped the tried-and-true, light touch regulation of the Internet and replaced it with heavy-handed micromanagement. It decided to subject the Internet to utility-style regulation designed in the 1930s to govern Ma Bell.This decision was a mistake. For one thing, there was no problem to solve. The Internet wasn’t broken in 2015. We weren’t living in a digital dystopia. To the contrary, the Internet is perhaps the one thing in American society we can all agree has been a stunning success... It is time for the Internet once again to be driven by engineers and entrepreneurs and consumers, rather than lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats. It is time for us to act to bring faster, better, and cheaper Internet access to all Americans. It is time for us to return to the bipartisan regulatory framework under which the Internet flourished prior to 2015. It is time for us to restore Internet freedom.
Thursday was a very bad day for authoritarianism.
***
The meaning of Washington’s turn toward Internet freedom.
James FreemanDec. 15, 2017 4:57 p.m. ET
President Donald J. Trump speaks to the media at the White House on Friday.Photo: Ron Sachs/Zuma Press
By
James Freeman
Online searches using the keywords “Trump” and “authoritarian” reveal vast supplies of media speculation about an allegedly dark future to be wrought by our 45th President. Many professional pundits were issuing such forecasts even before his 2016 election. They just became even less believable.
The standard format of this genre has the author claiming to hear disturbing echoes of 1930s Europe but presenting few facts to demonstrate that the United States in 2017 is taking a similar path. Fortunately this week brings a nice test case for the authoritarian thesis.
Authoritarian governments can vary in significant ways but one thing authoritarians do not do is reduce government control over communications infrastructure. On Thursday, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, and his two fellow Republican commissioners outvoted two Democrats and sharply limited Washington’s authority to manage the Internet.
Coincidentally, Mr. Pai is rolling back 1930s telephone regulations that President Obama ordered the ostensibly independent FCC to impose on the Internet in 2015. Why Mr. Obama thought that modern digital networks would be enhanced by a regulatory regime enacted the same year that Hitler achieved absolute power in Germany is a question for another day.
But Mr. Pai's Thursday remarks are instructive:
What is responsible for the phenomenal development of the Internet? It certainly wasn’t heavy-handed government regulation. Quite to the contrary: At the dawn of the commercial Internet, President Clinton and a Republican Congress agreed that it would be the policy of the United States “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet . . . unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”This bipartisan policy worked. Encouraged by light-touch regulation, the private sector invested over $1.5 trillion to build out fixed and mobile networks throughout the United States. 28.8k modems gave way to gigabit fiber connections. Innovators and entrepreneurs grew startups into global giants. America’s Internet economy became the envy of the world.And this light-touch approach was good for consumers, too. In a free market full of permissionless innovation, online services blossomed. Within a generation, we’ve gone from email as the killer app to high-definition video streaming. Entrepreneurs and innovators guided the Internet far better than the clumsy hand of government ever could have.But then, in early 2015, the FCC jettisoned this successful, bipartisan approach to the Internet. On express orders from the previous White House, the FCC scrapped the tried-and-true, light touch regulation of the Internet and replaced it with heavy-handed micromanagement. It decided to subject the Internet to utility-style regulation designed in the 1930s to govern Ma Bell.This decision was a mistake. For one thing, there was no problem to solve. The Internet wasn’t broken in 2015. We weren’t living in a digital dystopia. To the contrary, the Internet is perhaps the one thing in American society we can all agree has been a stunning success... It is time for the Internet once again to be driven by engineers and entrepreneurs and consumers, rather than lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats. It is time for us to act to bring faster, better, and cheaper Internet access to all Americans. It is time for us to return to the bipartisan regulatory framework under which the Internet flourished prior to 2015. It is time for us to restore Internet freedom.
Thursday was a very bad day for authoritarianism.
***
