(upbeat music)
- Well hi, everyone.
It's great to be actually out of the Capitol and here,
where things are calmer.
And I'm excited to be at the Spy Museum.
I entered through the door,
but I understand that their might be an air duct
that I can get out of.
I actually, when this first opened,
I had one of my parties for swearing in here.
And it's a very cool place.
And we're thinking a lot about spies
and things like that, recently.
I was just with the head of this museum, actually,
at John McCain's, in his name, forum, in Arizona.
There's some incredible work being done
around the world right now.
I think you know.
I actually, just to give you a little street cred for me,
I practiced telecom law
for something like 14 years.
MCI was my big client back then.
I know it dates me.
I'm a call cellular, probably dates me.
When the cell phones were really big,
but we thought we were really cool.
And I did all the regulatory work for MCI in Minnesota.
I was the lead lawyer for years.
And as they got into the market,
and we did a lot of competitive work,
so believe it or not,
I know all about RBACs.
And I'm not going to go into my old terms from the day.
But it was a great way to learn policy in this area.
And also the value of competition.
Something that I feel, I think you all know,
very strongly about.
Because not everyone writes a book about called,
"Anti-trust".
But, I did that.
I wanna thank Meredith Baker
for her incredible leadership at CTIA.
My friend Susan Buck, who I saw out there,
and everyone involved in your organization.
I think we all learned during the pandemic
that we can't make it without CTIA products.
We can't make it without Zoom anymore, or Webex,
or of course, Netflix.
So, I think people's lives have changed.
Some for the good, some for the bad.
But we know also, that we're emerging from this pandemic.
And my hope is that we're gonna emerge,
and not as 300 million plus silos that never see each other.
But to a place where we can relate to each other again.
What we do know is that these products of yours
are gonna be here to stay in a very good way.
But I am also concerned about our country,
apart from the technology,
just in terms of the divides,
and how we have to come together again.
My hope is that two things, actually,
sort of gave my, warmed my heart in the last few months.
The first was Justice Jackson's confirmation.
Soon-to-be Justice Jackson's confirmation hearing.
'Cause after she got out of the cold, dark cave
that was the Senate Judiciary Committee,
she ended up in the sun of the White House lawn.
And I bring that up because whether or not,
wherever you were on her confirmation,
it was more that people at home were watching that.
People, instead of just being in their own silos,
a lot of people were back at work,
or they were talking to each other at family gatherings.
And actually people liked her, and talked about it.
And her approval ratings when up.
And it made me think again,
this feels different than people
just watching it in their own silos.
That they're talking to each other again.
The other thing, of course is our,
the outpouring of support for the people of Ukraine.
I'm not sure that would be happening right now
if people were all divided,
and weren't able to see each other again.
And I was just with the ambassador,
the Ukrainian ambassador, we're united on the Hill.
We thank all of your companies,
and anything that you've done to help.
And there's many, many things,
and products that have gotten the people of Ukraine
through this.
As much as people have seen the evil of Vladimir Putin,
they've also seen the courage and conviction
of the people of Ukraine in bright blue and yellow.
And so, we're feeling really good about
the way the world is united.
And I think from a business standpoint,
as we go forward,
it obviously has created further issues
with supply chains, and the like, we know that.
But it also has created some new coalitions,
and a new-found interest with our own partners.
Taking what we have with the North American Trade Agreement,
the USMCA.
I don't know how many times I said
I was the first candidate on
the Presidential stage of the Democratic Primary
that said that I supported that, I said a lot.
But beyond that, is looking at this coalition we have
with our partners from Asia to Europe.
And what that can mean for business in the future.
And sort of re-imagining some of the supply chains,
and some of the things that we've done.
We're doing part of that right now.
I think you all know with the competition bill,
with the semiconductors,
which I think is pretty important to your industry.
It's a bill that was know at one point
as the "Endless Frontiers Act".
Then it was know as the "Innovation Competition Act,"
and then on the Hill, the call it "You Seeka."
My favorite name for it is "Now you seeka, now you don't".
But it seems to be heading into
a major conference committee,
headed up, my friend Maria Cantwell, on our side.
And we're really devoted, as you know,
it was originally a bipartisan Senate bill.
So we are really devoted to getting that done in the Senate.
And I promise you, if I'm wrong,
I will come back, and I don't know, stand on my head,
or something next year.
But we are gonna get that bill done.
That's the other thing.
The other piece of my work that I have cherished
this last year, has been the work on broadband.
I lead the bill in the Senate,
that Congressman Clyburn lead in the House.
Significant investment, of course, in broadband.
And pretty much of the amount,
not quite, but almost very close to what we wanted
was in the final bipartisan infrastructure bill.
I think that is incredibly important
to our country's future.
I have a state, that of course,
has a big thriving metropolitan area.
Something like 18 Fortune 500 companies.
I always tease Mark Warner that I have more companies,
Fortune 500 Companies per capita than he does.
Then he always says, "Per capita."
We have that, but we also have significant rural areas.
And the digital divide was seen
with one big magnifying glass during the pandemic.
Where you would have school districts,
I would have some rural school districts,
where they would have 95% broadband,
high-speed broadband,
and the kids would all be online.
And these included some of our rural areas.
Then I'd have others that would be 50%, or 40%.
And some of the kids would be with paper and pencil,
and just listening day after day, after day on a phone.
While the other kids were looking on a screen.
And so, we tried.
You guys did a lot of things, hot spots and the like.
But there was still issues out there.
Closing that digital divide is so important.
I kept using the example during these debates
about a high school girl, I met her mom,
near Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
Who, to study for her biology exams,
had to go to a liquor store parking lot every week
to take the biology exams,
because that had the best high-speed internet.
The funniest part is one of my colleagues,
who will go unnamed,
who maybe was from a more urban area, said to me,
"Do you think talking about that high school kid
"going to a liquor store is really a good thing?"
I'm like, "No! It was a parking lot."
"Well, why would they go to the liquor-"
"Well, it had the only internet around in the town."
It just made me realize that not everyone
kind of gets what we're talking about.
And I know we have worked very hard on the South Side,
with 5G towers.
I have a funny memory,
I won't say which one of your companies,
while working with one of your companies,
when I went to a town called Hill, Minnesota.
You can imagine the problem it's name was 'Hill'.
There were hills everywhere around it.
And it had bad service.
They had an ice storm, and all their trees had gone down.
And I was with the Governor.
What do you think they wanted to talk about?
Even though they lost all their trees in an ice storm,
and that's why we were there?
Their cell phone service.
And we were able to get them a better tower.
All of this, I think, is gonna contribute
to a more connected America, a closer America.
And it's really big, important part of what we're doing.
I also co-chair, with Senator Burr,
at the NextGen 911 Caucus.
And that is something
that is incredibly important right now.
I had the, on my own experience in my state,
I live six blocks away from the 35W Bridge,
that collapsed in the middle of a beautiful summer day.
And as I said,
the next day bridges shouldn't fall down
in the middle of America, but it did.
We rebuilt it in 13 months.
And in part, I'm gonna talk to George Bush in an hour,
so part of that, I'm working on Afghan refugees.
Anything you can do to help us on this,
he's a big devoted to getting them on some path.
They're right now in limbo, after helping our country.
But talk about, I went off on a tangent,
but he helped us build that bridge for, in 13 months.
But the other thing that came out of that,
was this incredible success of our 911 system.
We had 55 cars in the Mississippi River, and trucks.
55 of them.
And yet, only 13 people died, as tragic as it was.
And so much of it was because,
think of all those cars, multiple people in them.
It's because people were able to reach 911 like that.
The emergency vehicles showed up immediately.
And we saved so many lives.
And that moment in time,
is something that we are so proud of
with our 911 system in my state.
But now fast-forward, years and years later as we know,
there's still problems with,
whether it's firefighters going into a building,
and then they can't download the picture of the building
for it to be safer.
We still have issues with coverage, as you know,
which relates to the initial issue I brought up.
Minnesota has a particular problem
that not every state in this room has,
which is snowmobilers,
whose snowmobile broke down,
and they are in the middle of somewhere.
And if they don't have cellphone coverage,
and they haven't really thought,
because they're so used to things working.
And then they freeze,
but I'm not gonna go into the whole sad story.
And so, all of those things,
not only are dangerous for people,
but they can take undo time.
And this is key, for our emergency personnel, right?
Because they gotta go find them, and it takes days.
As opposed to being able to figure out where they are.
So I'm committed to passing the Next Generation 911 Act,
that I introduced with my friend,
Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
That would include 10 billion in funding
to deploy Next Generation 911.
And we'd really hope to get it in that Reconciliation Bill.
Which we really didn't have reconciliation.
That was the whole issue on the democratic side.
That's a democratic bill,
and we're trying to get some funding in that.
Turning to some of the issues of the day,
that are important to me.
First privacy,
like many of you, I'd love to see a federal privacy law.
Instead of a patchwork of different laws.
But we wanna make sure it's strong enough,
and it works for everyone.
I think the Facebook whistle blower,
having been a member of the Commerce Committee,
worked with Francis (indistinct).
I think that really opened people's eyes to
some of the issues,
when it comes to social media privacy.
But also of course data,
that some of these kids are exposed to,
in what they're seeing on social media.
One mom likened it to me as,
she said that it was like
"Faucets were turned on in her house."
She had three kids.
She's always trying to get the older one
to get apps off the phone,
and she can't figure out how to do it herself.
And then a new one comes on,
and they're seeing bad ads about eating disorders
and the like, just bad stuff.
And she said,
"It's like this faucet is overflowing, continually."
And she's sitting out there by herself with a mop
trying to fix it.
So, I think that area,
with updating some of the kid's laws is really ripe.
Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn,
Senator Markey's working on that,
privacy bill.
Again, Senator Cantwell, and others.
And I hope we get some kind of an agreement on that.
I saved the best till last.
The work that we're doing on the gatekeeper tech companies.
The four companies.
I just personally believe when you have companies
with that kind of market power,
we're looking at 90% for Google.
All of them either duopolies, or monopolies.
When it comes to Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon.
This doesn't mean they're bad companies,
they're good companies.
They've given us incredible technology
that we use every single day.
We understand that.
But when you have companies with that kind of market share,
no matter how big you are,
at some point you need rules of the road in place.
But some point the Justice Department and the FTC,
is gonna figure out exactly how
this is gonna come down under the law.
But in the meantime, if it takes five years,
whatever years,
we have to have some rules of the road in place.
And so I found this,
what I still think is a sweet spot we've got,
I've mentioned the kid stuff, the privacy stuff.
I think the work has to be done on algorithms,
there's a lot of bipartisan work being done on that.
But this ideas of self-preferencing for the big four,
for the gate keepers.
It's one thing if you're a monopoly, that's hard enough.
But if you're then preferencing your own products,
or a company you may end up buying
over other competitors, that is a huge problem
for capitalism.
And with Adam Smith, the godfather of capitalism,
who of course,
the guy who talked about the invisible hand of capitalism.
Who also said you have to watch out for
"The unbridled power of monopolies."
And so as you go through American history,
you see that the guy that authored the Sherman Act,
Senator Sherman, republican from Ohio.
And there's this whole history
of bipartisanship when it comes to all of this,
through the decades.
And you fast-forward today,
and we really haven't done anything on competition policy,
regarding those four gatekeeper companies,
since the advent of the internet.
And my bill, the one on self-preferencing,
is the first one to get through
the Senate Judiciary Committee,
to be headed to the Senate floor, since we had the internet.
This is a bill I have with Senator Grassley,
and it is again,
I put the three parts of it like this:
the first is that you can't self-preference
your own products.
This kind of gets into the Apple Music, Spotify,
or the Google restaurant reviews and Yelp.
You can do that stuff, you can have these companies,
we're not gonna destroy them.
It's just, how do you treat them,
when you own both the platform,
and you own the competitive product
that is on that platform?
So, it just says you cannot self-preference.
The second thing it says is that cannot copy
other people's data that's supposed to not be public,
like the "Wall Street Journal" reporter
finding the luggage organizer,
four person company in Brooklyn,
submitted their data to Amazon.
Next thing you know, that same product
turns up on Amazon Basics.
And so, you can't do that.
And the third piece of it is,
you can't require companies to buy a bunch of stuff,
just to be able to be up further on the search platform.
One of my favorite examples of this,
I was on the "Steven Colbert Show,"
talking about monopolies,
and we're having this kind of amusing discussion.
And then all of a sudden he felt that it had gone too far,
and he looked at the camera, we're on live, and he goes,
"I would just like to say one thing.
"Google 'I love you.'"
What he's saying is "Don't screw me on my search."
He's making a joke about it, right?
So that is exactly the problem with monopolies,
and why we wanna make sure
that we have some rules of the road in place.
Senator, I know boss,
Senator Grassley, I've gotta go meet with Senator Schumer,
and oh no.
Senator Grassley is the lead sponsor of that bill with me.
And then, we've got on that bill, Durbin.
We got on that bill, Lindsey Graham,
Mark Warner,
Corey Booker,
Josh Hawley,
Mazie Hirono,
Samantha Bee called it the "Ocean's 11" of co-sponsors.
And so, we are moving to the floor with the bill.
And I just wanted, this is not all.
You guys don't all have a dog in the fight,
as they say, on this.
But I wanted you to know about it.
It's important to me.
And I thought that you gotta find out the status
of what's happening.
Cicilline and Buck have the counterpart over in the House.
We're hoping to get floor time very soon on this bill,
as we are hoping that we can get some agreement on
privacy out of the Commerce Committee.
I'm not the lead on that.
But that's something else that's going on at the same time.
The broadband stuff is super-exciting.
Whatever you think of what else I just said.
As is the competition, "Now You Seeka, Now You Don't" Bill.
So that's where we are.
And again, wanna thank you for all you did
to get us through the pandemic.
So many service providers have announced
that they will be participating in
the Affordable Connectivity Program.
That is great.
And again, I think we never wanna forget
what high-speed internet access means.
When it's fair, and when it gets to people,
and when they get the truth.
And all we have to look is over at friends,
many, many miles across the ocean in Ukraine.
They have the access,
their people are holding together,
they have an incredible leader,
and that's how democracy works.
On that note, I will go back to the Hill.
Thank you, all.
(group applauding and lively music)