NTIA Targeting Only the Most Onerous AI State Laws: Chief of Staff
NTIA isn't worried about state laws that tangentially touch on AI but is instead focused on those that are seen as directly affecting the development and success of the technology, Chief of Staff Brooke Donilon said Wednesday. A White House executive order in December directed NTIA to potentially curtail non-deployment funding from BEAD for states that have AI laws that are considered overly burdensome (see 2512120048). Donilon said the report due March 11 from NTIA listing onerous laws will highlight a handful of states.
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Speaking Wednesday at an Incompas event in Washington, Donilon said NTIA has been meeting with governors and often gets questions about whether a certain law passes muster. The Trump administration doesn't want a patchwork of state laws that stifle AI development, she said, without specifying the criteria for what NTIA considers overly burdensome regulations.
The Incompas summit also included other discussions about the uses of BEAD non-deployment funds, as well as topics such as permitting reforms (see 2602040012).
No decisions have been made yet about allowing uses for BEAD’s roughly $20 billion in non-deployment funds, Donilon said, noting that NTIA's listening session next week on the issue is aimed at gathering ideas (see 2601260054). She said some states, such as Ohio and North Carolina, have a pole replacement fund, and that potentially could be replicated federally. There's also some interest in seeing non-deployment funds go toward speeding up BEAD deployments, she added.
Asked about permitting reform to facilitate BEAD deployments, Donilon said NTIA has worked up permitting terms and conditions that at least 20 states have signed onto, with the expectation that others will as well.
Donilon also said that once the Trump administration took office, NTIA was pressured to just “tinker at the edges” of BEAD, given how far along aspects of it were. But it did a complete reset to "give us a program we would be proud of." Even with its tech-neutral approach, BEAD is still 62% fiber, and the reformed program saw increased head-to-head bidding competition by fiber providers, she said.
Regarding the spectrum bands that NTIA has named as potential sources of the 800 MHz spectrum pipeline, Donilon said some will take longer than others to free up. For example, 7 GHz is particularly far along since it was studied in the Biden administration. Another "prime opportunity" is 2.7 GHz, as it's used by only two big federal users, she said. While 4 GHz could potentially make 400 MHz of spectrum available, 15 federal agencies operate there, so it’s home to “a lot of agencies, a lot of complications.”