The FCC has spent the past year quietly rewiring the American import market, first routers, then drones, next undersea cables, and as of last week, robots. Adam Chan is national security counsel and senior advisor to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, and directs the agency’s new Council on National Security. He previously clerked on the Second Circuit and served as a national security legal fellow for the House Select Committee on China. ChinaTalk’s Aqib Zakaria co-hosts. We discuss… How the covered list works The case for “simple and stupid” rules over big-brained ones with endless carve-outs Onshoring plans, allied carve-outs, and the 65% domestic content test Why robot vacuums got swept in alongside humanoids How AGI-pilled you have to be for the robot rule to make sense Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The FCC's New Robot Rules

ChinaTalk

So what exactly is in the water at the FCC? Over the past year, the FCC has dramatically reshaped the U.S. import market for drones and robots, not to mention routers and undersea cables. Arnab Data of the FCC joins us to discuss what has gone into these regs, what their aims are, and how they may evolve in the future. Our Aqib Zakaria of ChinaTalk co-hosts today. Adam, welcome to ChinaTalk.

Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you both so much for having me. Glad to be here. So the FCC and national security, people don't appreciate this, but this dates back to like, you know, the founding mandate of you guys. We've got a big resurgence, a renaissance perhaps. Communications Act of 1934, Section 1, establishes the FCC.

One of two purposes is for the purpose of national defense. And so right there, you know, from the beginning, there was kind of a national security focus in the FCC's mandate. That mandate is still there. And I think, you know, you've seen actually just over the last decade, like a sort of growing role for the FCC and national security.

Chairman Carr, obviously, national security has been his priority for years. And so I think he's brought that focus to the chairmanship for the first time. You know, he brought me on as sort of a kind of unique person within the chairman's office to just sort of focus on and coordinate on the national security side of things.

We've set up this new sort of council on national security within the FCC to kind of coordinate a lot of the national security work that the commission is doing across multiple different bureaus and offices sort of within the FCC itself. Yeah, it's cool.

The FCC's New Robot Rules

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

The FCC's New Robot Rules

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.