Brookings Institution

With communities all across the country exploring ways to overcome the digital divide, and with Congress sending clear signals about the importance to address rural disconnect, now is an opportune time to help policymakers and practitioners understand the benefits of pursuing new infrastructure, public policies, and training programs. For us, that process begins with understanding where the current state of knowledge is clear and where it falls short.

We are at an impasse. Legislative and corporate policies are designed to solve a specific problem for a particular stakeholder at a set time and place. In contrast, the online hate ecosystem is volatile, unpredictable, constantly changing, and deliberately confusing.

For people pondering the potential effects of foreign interference in the 2020 elections here in the United States, it is worth understanding what other democracies are doing to confront the same problem and what lessons can be learned from their experiences. As a 2018 report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put it: "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s Kremlin employs an asymmetric arsenal that includes military invasions, cyberattacks, disinformation, support for fringe political groups, and the weaponization

Some experts are arguing that digital services by their very nature represent interstate commerce and therefore are best dealt with by Congress. In order to avoid the fragmentation of state-centered markets, it is necessary to have uniform standards, not state or local statutes. Given the current composition of the US Supreme Court, a majority of justices could endorse that interpretation of the interstate commerce clause and sharply limits the ability of state and local governments to impose rules on digital services or technology innovation.

Throughout the world, ink is being spilled and electrons exercised in a frenetic focus on fifth generation wireless technologies, or 5G. The 5G discussion, with all its permutations and combinations, has grown to resemble an elementary school soccer game where everyone chases the ball, first in one direction, then another. There are five often misunderstood facts to know about 5G:

A growing tech-skeptic chorus is drawing attention to the ways in which information technology disrupts democracy. No country is immune. With a better understanding of the principles undergirding both foreign and domestic responses to the threats posed by big tech, each subsequent section in this paper will lay out the specific dimensions of the political and economic problems that have arisen in the digital age, the policy responses and proposals pursued abroad, and the ideas guiding debate in the US.

The companies that have been the beneficiaries of the Trump Federal Communications Commission’s deregulation are now discovering that a government that does nothing cannot serve their interests.

Will this new Congress be the one to pass data privacy legislation? So far the Senate has done the most visible work. And, with a variety of stakeholders contributing input, will this be enough to bring about passage? As a committed optimist, it’s my belief that there is a sweet spot where business interests and privacy advocates can converge.