[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] are right. If i could is this if i get everyones attention, please. If we get everyone come back in, take a seat. We want, we want to welcome great champion for our broad bands, for competition who served on committees of significant importance to our industry, on both on the technology, internet, all of the infrastructure. She serves on the Commerce Committee, Judiciary Committee education . Agriculture. Its like a quiz. Is t c broadband caucus and the senate rules committee. How could i forget . But she is you know an important most important debates facing our country and our industry, and so were very thankful that she has come today to give a keynote and to talk about the issues of most importance to all of us in this room. So with no further ado, senator amy klobuchar, thank you for coming. [applause] okay. Well, thank you, everyone and its wonderful to be here and get off the field for a little bit, i will say. Theres a lot going on as you know we are not inown, or i might not be able to be here. We also have been working on the budget somewhat apropos of our topic at hand of competition. I been working to try to make sure that the antitrust division of justice, which is not the topic of my talk today, gets funded as we believe senator grassley and i believe it would be with the merger of the change that we passed on Something Like 88eight vote. If you only getions of their, and so weve been working about some technical language thats in there here it all sounds really small ball but its really a ball. And so we have been trying to get trees and talk a little bit about all the work that you are doing and wha be done to expand and to make sure that we have strong competition in america. And want to thank chip and angie for inviting me, and i know theres reps from Great Plains Communications and metronet here. Where are you guys . Summer. There. Of course minnesotas in the back. Humble humble. Thank you so much. I did notice they were the audience members that were nodding when i started out, thank you. So just so some of you know, my street cred still be here is ia. I was actually in the private sector for 14 years. Thats part of why i really care about competition. And one of my first big clients was mci. Actually changed law firms to keep representing them when there was a conflict. Their wor. Back then they were a really scrappy company. The federal law was in the midst of getting pt taking on the bell monopolies at the time to get into the market. The case had been don but it was a time where they were actually doing the work. And i was loved some of the regulatory hearings which were maybe a little monday sometimes but i remember about when Alexander Graham bell, the first were decent as we all know when we got the telephone was come here, watson, i need you. Right . That was a fuzzy set on the telephone. At the hearings i note that in the wild west world of mci when they were getting ready to relate the first communication between st. Louis and chicago, the investor erwin hirsch memorialized that great moment not exactly with Connie Watson i need you, but these words, ill be damned. It actually works. Know that Mar Companies and people you work with might feel the same way when new discoveries are made, when new innovations are made but the really drove me, that work with mci which i loved and started doing work for them all i became a prosecutor. It really, it drove me big believer in competition policy because i saw what happened when i got in the market. I also represent macaca medications by the way and has a blue see how that really spawned cell phone market, right . Before when they with the big bricks like the phone in wall street and how it brought down longdistance charges in a big way. Thats what you wonder why kick and obsessed with making sure we still of competition in tech in the fields and w broadband people can access them, it is really driven from that experience and from seeing what it means when weition. Im also a big believer in capitalism. I believe one of the ways you do that is, i make sure your guided thereby enforcement of our competition laws. It was one of grandfathers of capitalism who said yes, beware, i want to get the words right here, beware the unbridled por of monopolies. And we got remember that as■w ao forward. I actually wrote a book on all of this. It was called the antitrust, if remember, during the president ial campaign. My friend pete buttigieg, we truly are friends, we go back and forth a little bit in the debates, and since were on superue i may as will commemorate that moment, one of the more amusing things is when we got done with the campaign pete wrote a new york times■ bestselling book called trust, not to be outdone wunderlich i came up with my own two weeks on the noontime bestseller list book, antitrust. [laughing] that is actually true story. I want to talk about first of all incompas, your members have beenreat parer Digital Divide ad bring fast, affordable, reliable and competitive highspeed Internet Access to every household and mobile phone in america. Your work is the bedrock of our digital economy, and we all know that you cant participate in 2024 in the marketplace if you cant get online. Its about education. Its about healthcare. I visit all 87 counties in minnesota every year, some counties are so small i know every Single Person in the county, but it also does a lot hospitals including just about last month winners of four hockey days, all another store in waroa theres never been a gold medal mens hockey team in the olympics without a player from not just minnesota, from account of 1500 people were road minnesota. And went to some hospitals near their and the use of they are vs phenomenal because they have realized a lot of their seniors some of this came out of the pandemic are much better off accessing from home nearned to r coming into more likely into the hospital, their rural hospital. They set it up. Because the primary doctor there, thats clinic, its clinics attached to the hospital and then they get a doctor from mail or someone else who talks them through whats going on. This is just an increasing use of technology mayo some of the last mile areas i would say that m internet. And you see this with Mental Health care. The wazoo. All of the innovation going on that is a must for these areas for not going to be able to have a doctor with every specialty have Mental Health provider. Its a game changer but its not going to exist with the head if they dont have highspeed. I remember several hearings, i used examples of why we need highspeed to every household. My favorite was one of my colleagues i always use this example, i commit the mom of a High School Kid who had to do all of his College Exams in a liquor store parking lot. Its a true story, right . I dont know if you want to keep talk about that kid going in the liquor store. Unlike know, that was the only place that had highspeed. No, they just didnt get it because i dont think of of rural areas. These are true stories of what goes on. The doctors who sit in the mcdonalds parking lot reading xrays. So that was wig believer in the bipartisan infrastructure law. I do want to thank my colleagues who worked on it. I worked on the broadband part because of the debt deal with clyburn but the group the work on, i mentioned that today because senator sinema has announced today shes not running again and i just want to say thank you to her for her work on that agreement and negotiating including this latest agreement where i worked extensively with her trying to help my afghan refugees, the 80,000 people who are here that are interpreters the worked with our troops that are still in limbo, and she worked really hard to include that in the border bill. It got included and then unfortunately that part of it we will see another day i hope because really important part but its just an example of the work she does every single day. So the bipartisan infrastructure law younow, it makes sense to me that we go those extra last miles. Ive some counties in my s that maybe 20 dont have highspeed. I look at it having visited iceland went and saw that they the best highspeed internet next to spewing volcanoes, maybe just maybe we can get it on the Canadian Border where theres like no hills at all. So those are some of the things that really motivated me to get involved in this. You know the investment we see in states across the country, and also making it more affordable that program is already empowered over 20 million american households to get ]v online. Including 218,000 in my state, but whos counting . Other things that ive worked on and believe in when it comes to fair com÷ peti neutrality. Since the communication act was enacted in 1934 congress always intended for the fcc to have the authority to ensure americans have reliable and stateoftheart communication service. As you know way back that meant telephone. Now it means broadband. For years Net Neutrality divided the framework just do just that. It held large internet providers accountable for providing the connection consumers expect while promoting investments in nextgeneration broadband networks. Its also a reason one of the reasons the inee one of the Great AmericanSuccess Stories transforming not only how we communicate also the Way Companies do business, how consumers buyoo how we educate our kids. Unfortunately, from my perspective, it was repealed in 2018. And i going to have to focus in that area and make sure that everyone is going to be able to access the internet on affordable basis, spatial with ai coming along. Ill get to that in a moment. Theres just a reason we want to make sure it continues to be accessible. Im glad this last year the fcc took the first steps toward restoring Net Neutrality, andi lo the commission along with Business Leaders from across the Telecom Sector to make sure a fair and open internet. Next up, privacy. I have always found that to be one of the more ironic things. I dont think you thought i would say that, in the lobbying world of washington, d. C. In that when i first got to the senate no one really wanted to ha privacy law but companies were lobbying against it. Its kind of an instructive for just kind of giving a little at the beginning and maybe thats a good way to be because it was all this lobbying against it and then you know what happens, right . We see it happen and then t the void and so then one state think something is okay, thats okay, another state to something you hate, no, increasing patchwork of laws. Sonata number of the same companies are saying we need a federal privacy law, which i believed all along. Im still hopeful, im on senator cantwell ill. Theres a number of other proposals way back. I had a proposal with senator kennedy on these lines lit hope we are able to reach some kind of agreement so that we have a federal privacy law like so many other countries have. It would jusnt make it a lot easier for everyone other things along these lines that i just hopeful we can move on, very the internet. You know we had that rather famous hearing recently, and i am myself im sort of done with the throwing the popcorn at people and i think we need to actually legislate and get something done. I think onehb of the issues thas so challenging for families with the internet right now is yes, whats on it on the platforms in terms of what the kids can see, and the need to do everything we can to help those parents be parents. Im glad were going to empower them with better tools and the like but i do get sometimes just relying on it as the postage is trying to get the stuff off of their and monitor better through technology would be better. One mom told me she knows theres all these controls but she has three kids and every ong on one platform, then another thing, the kid gets around it and then just to have older kids try to teach the younger kids what to do and she just gets fined she said its just reminder like theres a a bigk in front of her and its overflowing all the time and teachers out there with a m try to clean it up, those were her words, not mine. And i think we just have to remember that as we look at howe actually going to work so that these kids dont get exposed to really dangerous content. Its one of the reasons im reve issue in some of the issues with dr. Singh where kids think their has tricked them into sending a naked picture. Weve had 15 suicides according to the fbi of kids just this year, and that we jt needis is e fentanyl laced pills, 30 of people that have exposure to fentanyl, we will have to do something on this kids front in addition to the privacy law and to be go into somewhat other stuff, go to talk about today on competition. At all of this, just think putting our heads in the sand because the privacytuff is probably a great example of that, if you wait so long and you do nothing, and thats what senator schumer and young and heinrich and rounds are trying to move on a eye. Not just a cohesive federal policy. Thats why on ai i think we did some rules of the road. So im one of the few senators that attended nearly every session, i had a near perfect attendance■ record of the meetings that they had on ai. And maybe because of my background, the work ive done with tact and appreciated that a number of the companies have come forward and said we want to have some rules of the road in place when it comes to ai. And as you know we had been working with them as well as consumer groups, nonprofit groups and the like to get those agreements. First and foremost, senator thune and i, neighbors in minnesota and south dakota,e me introduced kind of a base bill for nonsecuritny ai, would bes for the federal government when it comes to number of companies and groups have endorsed this bill. We nonsecurity topics into two areas. One is is high impact, things that could be more dangerous like critical infrastructure, criminal justice, biometric identification, if a power grids using ai to improve efficiency we need to make sure the systems undergo rigorous testing. So put some higher standard on some of those uses of ai. And then a second group is the ones may be health care, education when we task mr. Pak which is widely believed to be the one that could do this with developing some of the standard with nist dash instead of expecting agencies will go off on their own pickup talk better federal agencies that seems a a little scary. So the idea that nist woulde wok at nist. Im kidding. He works at an agency. Up first. Other things. Voice scams primarily concern about this at protecting peoplez identities and voices in general. I was just meeting with our veterans groups on this, and actually my state director at home her son is in the marines and at the time they got this call he was deployed and they did nowhere. It were not supposedo nowhere, and they get this call, her husband who is a recently retired reporter, and gets a call and its and their sons voice. Its beencraped off the internet and says dad, dad, im in trouble, i need your help, need your help. I think it was a grapple or if it was someone that was more naive than the somewhat cynical reporter, i think it mightve fallen for it but he immediately starts saying where are you . How can you be calling the . And then hung up. And so that is just one example and a talk to other families that are seen this so the scraped his voice off the tern a were probably trying to suck the pair into sending money, which is what weve seen in a lot of places. So senator collins and i have teamed up to call the ftc and the fcc to raise awareness and preventi voice calling scans. I think see more of this last thing ive been really focusing my work on ai and all of these things i hope will b included in this base framework of yet, you see them going to Start Talking about democracy [laughing] and okay, there we go, thank you, russia. Thats nice. [laughing] okay. So this is going to be like hair on fire problem if we dont do something about it. I believe fcc is going to try to use with the camp of their laws, and they have traditionally been pretty dysfunctional. They have been doing a few more things on a bipartisan basis lately with some of the newer people we put on. I chair the rules committee, its inner jurisdiction. So im hopeful they will step up in some way. You will receive fcc and others, but the best thing would be as if we put in some clear roles in law when it comes to our election. And what weve seen so far is disturbing. New hampshire primary in january, fake robocalls using the president s voice to tell people not to vote. We now know that came out of a democratic campaign, although the candidate was not aware. Wont say who it is. They hired a magician and he talked, i dont know. But that is a very kind of lukewarm little example, but just put it out where theres actual major forces trying to do this in aig way. And you could literally trick after voter after voter into thinking it is your own candidate last year, one republican president ial candidate released false ai generated images of former President Trump hugging dr. Fauci. Viral video of what appears to be my colleague Elizabeth Warren where she basically says republicans shouldnt be allowed to vote. People thought it was. This is not ai but if you dont believe me how bad this is going to ago, or two weeks ago if you solve the horrific shooting, the murder of the two Police Officers in minnesota, they were kille they rescued seven kids. Think of the kids out of the house and then they were shot the paramedic that went in, rn into rescue them was doing cpr was also killed. Well, a few days after that, photo goes out on the internet and it was a true picture of me at a rally, at a political rally Keith Ellison was in the photo. We actually have the picture iwhh things happen. And someone, and actually think it is for and interest based on the tax ive had on my aocacy but they put defund the police signs in the hands of everyone there. I was strongly against defund the police. I read the bill for cops funding and the senate the cops bill. But that thing went viral and finally had to call x and facebook and actually we could show the actual photo whi