Who is Ajit Pai, the “Trump soldier” remaking America’s internet?

President Donald Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai promised last December to bring a “weed-wacker” to the agency that oversees the US’s media and telecommunications industries. He appears to be wielding a chain saw instead. “He’s such an interesting character in the Trump administration, because he is qualified for his job,” said president of Free Press Craig Aaron. But since Pai took the job, “he has taken a scorched earth approach to everything that was passed in the previous FCC and a lot of things that were passed much earlier.” Pai has “set out to completely defang the FCC,” Aaron said. He’s pushing “a really aggressive agenda to benefit the biggest companies,” and to show himself as a great “soldier” for Trump, he said.

That’s the point, Pai’s supporters say. Forget the White House’s other achievements, Adam Brandon, the president of libertarian advocacy group FreedomWorks said while introducing Pai at a speech in April, “the things that chairman Pai is working on right now potentially will have the longest impact coming out of this administration.”