The Bureau of Industry and Security's upcoming export controls on advanced AI-related semiconductors will introduce expansive compliance hurdles and sales limitations that will hurt American firms and could push U.S. allies to work closer with China, a major technology think tank and a leading semiconductor industry group said this week.

It's "not too late" for Nevada to change course on its BEAD plan, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation Director-Broadband and Spectrum Policy Joe Kane blogged Thursday. Kane said the state's provisional choices for allocating its funding, which required NTIA approval, "reflect a misunderstanding of the digital divide." The state could deploy high-speed low-earth-orbit satellite service for $600 per location. "Nevada could use savings from a more reasonable deployment plan to provide a similar affordability benefit to its low-income residents" as the FCC's affordable connectivity program, he said. Nevada's Office of Science, Innovation & Technology didn't comment. Kane also urged NTIA to revise its fiber preference in BEAD program rules (see 2412130011). NTIA should stop its "irrational preferencing of fiber deployments and require that states choose the most economical technologies to complete deployment so that leftover funds can address more widespread and serious causes of the digital divide," he said.

International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Running a large trade surplus with the U.S. is only one way to draw President-elect Donald Trump's tariff fire, argues a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; other ways would be by expecting the U.S. to provide a defense umbrella, enacting digital services taxes or other anti-U.S. regulations, and taking what ITIF called "soft positions toward China."

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation arguments against publicly owned broadband networks (see 2412020039) reach a "laughable conclusion" that such systems don't address market failures, American Association for Public Broadband Executive Director Gigi Sohn said Monday. "Tell that to the tens of millions of U.S. households that cannot access, afford, or use a broadband connection," Sohn said. "Community broadband networks have arisen because big cable and telecom companies refuse to serve some communities with affordable and robust broadband." Sohn said ITIF's report is "full of weasel words and meaningless phrases" and ignores the huge public spending and in-kind contributions that have benefited those companies.

Local governments should reject calls to establish government-owned broadband networks (GON), said a new Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) report released Monday. The group evaluated the "finances, regulatory status, and economic sustainability" of 20 GONs and found that favoring these networks "wastes societal resources, creates unfair competition, and is frequently unsustainable in the long run." Local governments "are not well equipped to build and operate broadband networks and are likely to waste the resources they employ," ITIF said. Although acknowledging GONs have a role in broadband deployment, the group urged that officials refrain from "selective deployment or cherry-picking" GONs over private ISPs to prevent overbuilding.

The top lawmaker on the House Select Committee on China called on the U.S. to continue imposing strict export controls and investment restrictions against China, adding that those tools must be coupled with bolder investments in innovative American companies if the U.S. wants to “win” its technology competition with China.

The U.S. should use its Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain executive order as a tool to restrict a broader range of imports that are dumped by foreign companies in the U.S., said Rush Doshi, a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow and former National Security Council official. He also said the administration and Congress should work to codify the ICTS order, which could allow the U.S. to better harmonize the restrictions with allies.

AI is “part of everything” and will only grow in importance, but the U.S. is falling behind other countries in developing AI policy, Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said Thursday during the Augmented and Virtual Reality Conference. “Innovation and technology are moving forward and policy is falling further and further behind,” DelBene said. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Extended Reality Association (XR) sponsored the conference at the AT&T Forum.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation warned of potential unintended consequences if the FCC approves industrywide handset unlocking rules, as proposed in a July NPRM (see 2407180037). Comments were due Monday in docket 24-186. “The NPRM’s tentative conclusions in favor [of] a uniform 60-day unlocking requirement overstate the benefits of the Commission’s proposal relative to its costs,” ITIF warned. Handsets are often tied to a carrier because they are subsidized, the group added. “This bargained-for exchange is beneficial to consumers who may be more price sensitive and thus willing to forgo some future flexibility in exchange for more money in their pockets at the time of purchase,” ITIF said: “Mandatory unlocking denies consumers this choice.” Incompas supports unlocking requirements, President Angie Kronenberg said Monday. "The practice of locking phones makes it more difficult for consumers to change providers,” she said: “Unlocking requirements allow customers to switch networks more easily, which means larger providers are incentivized to compete for customers rather than locking them into a plan -- enabling smaller providers to better compete.”