FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: Implications for Tech and Media Regulation and the Rise and Fall of the China-Cyber Threat to the US

Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency’s agenda and usher through a host of regulations with major implications for the tech and media industries as soon as he has a Republican majority.

Regardless, Carr will need a third Republican vote on the commission to approve any measures that are not bipartisan. Trump has nominated Mark Meador, a former staffer to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), to join the commission, pending Senate confirmation.

The new FCC chair said that he could use his power to revocation spectrum licenses for networks if he found them to be in violation of the equal time rule. This came up in a fight about NBC airing a show about a woman running for president just before the election and then giving a show about a man who is running for president later on.

Carr also wrote about protecting the US from security threats stemming from China, including by addressing “TikTok’s threat to national security.” Whether that’s something Carr takes up as chair now seems more in doubt, as Trump has changed his tune on the app’s danger to the US. While Trump was the first to try to ban TikTok from the US, he’s now positioning himself as its savior — putting China and TikTok hawk Carr in a tricky position.

In a statement, Carr named a few areas of focus: “issues ranging from tech and media regulation to unleashing new opportunities for jobs and growth through agency actions on spectrum, infrastructure, and the space economy.”

The Justice of TikTok and the State of the Art: The High-Dimensional Case Against Trump’s First Day of Office

The order issued by Trump on his first day of office is meant to cut down on the penalties that American companies incur when they work with other countries, like in relation to TikTok. The order directs the Attorney General to not enforce the act for a period of 75 days to allow the administration to determine their course of action in an orderly way. The AG is supposed to “issue a letter to each provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred.”

Even if the White House interprets and enforces the law in a way that is technically incorrect, it is still up to them.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled the app’s “well-supported” national security concerns justify a forced sale — and if TikTok remained owned by ByteDance, the clampdown on TikTok would start on Jan 19.

Ryan Calo, a law Professor at the University of Washington, says that the power of the president is given by the law.

It is expected that Trump’s executive actions will be challenged in court in order to clear up the murky legal picture. They believe Apple and Google are concerned about potential shareholder lawsuits about the market value hit the big tech companies could take if they run afoul of a federal statute.

If Trump tells Congress that they have not done anything, then that means he would be lying to them, in order to prolong the legal start date of the ban.

This will give the administration time to pursue a resolution to protect national security and save the platform, according to the text of the order.

Companies reacted differently to Trump’s post. TikTok flipped its servers back on and sent a notification to all users crediting Trump with TikTok’s return. Oracle and Akamai reinstated web support.

A Constitutional scholar at the University of Minnesota Law School has said that extending the law’s start date and protecting businesses from liability do not change the act of Congress.

“Those actions do not stop the law from being in effect. It doesn’t stop, as far as I know, and it is doing right now, violating the law.