Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable and satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Peter we would like to welcome a new phase to the communicators, congressman jerry mcnerney, a democrat from california, member of the energy and Commerce Committee as well as cochair of the Artificial Intelligence caucus. Congressman, welcome to the communicators and thanks for being here. Rep. Mcnerney pleasure to be here. Peter i want to start with one of the issues thats in the news this week, the state attorneys general in investigating google specifically for antitrust. What is your take on it . Peter the California Attorney general is not one of the 48. Only two states declined and california is one of them. I have not had a conversation with the attorney general about it, but google is a californiabased company. If we want to look at how it is doing its business practices, it is important to do it in a very thoughtful way. I know the department of justice and federal trade commission are also talking about doing investigations into anticompetitive practices of these companies. And it is good to look at this and investigate it and make sure the companies are behaving. Im not sure that breaking companies up is a good idea. These are Big Companies with a lot of tentacles, a lot of employees, and if you break a company like that up, if you can manage to do it, theres going to be unintended consequences. For example, whats going to happen to the data these companies own, how we would parse that up, how any people would be displaced, is it going to have an effect on the overall economy. So regulatory approaches might be better than antitrust in my opinion. Peter does your district in california have a tech presence . Rep. Mcnerny there is a tech presence. I dont want to say we are a suburb of silicon valley, but we are certainly affected by silicon valley. May be 40,000 people from my district commute over to the bay area for their jobs. Not all of those are intact are tech, but quite a few of them are. It is a long, hard slog. I dont envy the people who have to do that. Of course, i have to slog back and forth to washington. But there is a number of people who work in the tech sector who lived in my district. Peter joining our conversation ofay is john hendel politico. John thanks for having me, peter. Congressman, antitrust talk has become part of the 2020 campaign. Elizabeth warren has talked about breaking up companies more proactively and made that a part of her platform. Is that something candidates should be more careful about . It sounds like there was some reluctance to go forth with a message about breaking up the companies. Entering that sphere, how do you view that now . Peter it rep. Mcnerney it may be a popular issue to talk about, but looking at the details of who is going to be affected, it is important to look at all possible ways to manage these companies. They clearly have run off the rails in some instances and i will be glad to talk about those with you, but it might be better to talk about how to contain those with regulation than with actually breaking the companies up. The talk should be a little more moderated in that area. John one issue you did lead on this summer is the issue of deepfakes, which are kind of digital forgeries. That came up in a big way when there was a rudimentary version made of Speaker Pelosi. It slowed down her words, it made her look intoxicated when she in fact wasnt. You wrote a letter to facebook in late june, as i recall. What have you been hearing from the Company Since then and how concerned are you about this issue of deepfakes ahead of the 2020 election . Again, these are entirely digitally forged videos that make people look and say things that they have not done at all, stirt has created quite a in recent months. What have you heard from facebook, given they were kind of front and center in the conversation around Speaker Pelosi and deepfakes . Rep. Mcnerney i think there is an important distinction between deepfakes, where you completely fabricate statements and views, and what happened in the altered video. But they might have the same effect. I mean, if they are used to alter the electorate for an election, i think that is very dangerous. We need to be careful about that. We were made aware that facebook was monetizing that video, so that is kind of what set me off. You hate to see videos like that become viral, because you never know what the final impact is going to be. I initiated a letter to facebook, to Mark Zuckerberg in particular, had almost all the democrats on the committee sign that letter, and they were willing to do so, including the chairman. The letter was received, and when we got back the response from facebook, it was a very simple, terse letter. Really didnt give me any comfort that they are taking the steps they need to take to protect our elections from false information from extremist viewpoints. John have they followed up and any other way, or has that been the crux of their response, that short letter . They have talked about deepfakes a little bit since then. I know they had a recent announcement referring to a 110 Million Investment they are trying to make, part of a deepfake detection competition, but i did not know if there has been anything recently to reassure you or whether that remains a strong concern going into the election. Rep. Mcnerney i think they havent really satisfied my concern at this point. I would like to see them answer in a way that gives me comfort that they are actually doing something. They havent committed the resources that are needed to do this. Peter congressman mcnerney, you mentioned that there were some times when these Tech Companies have run off the rails. If you can cite an example of that that concerns you, along with what john was talking about with the deepfakes, but also, is there a role for congress in some type of legislation if you are hesitant to see the antitrust movement go forward . Rep. Mcnerney Cambridge Analytic up comes Cambridge Analytica comes to mind immediately. But just the way they have been using data, they have been willing to sell it. Theynot at all comfortable are taking the care they need to update. American people are concerned. They feel like they are losing control of their data. Who is using it . What are they using it for . Is it going to affect them when they try to take a loan . Is it going to affect their Health Records . Are they going to try to use that to sway them in a political matter . These are things that americans are rightly concerned about, and we have seen case after case where these data is not being taken care of in a way that is needed. For example, i think facebook takes a lot of data it doesnt really need. We should have a requirement, maybe a legislative requirement on privacy that requires data minimization. If you dont need data, dont take it, dont store it. And also data security. Are we going to require them to use encryption or other sorts of very strong methods to protect data once they have it . Those are a couple of things i think we could do on legislation. John how far along are the conversations regarding data privacy legislation at this point . I feel like at the beginning of the year, a lot of people pointed it out as a potentially unifying topic that could Bring Congress together, but now we are approaching the middle of september and there still hasnt been any bigger proposal put forth by either Commerce Committee. Is that something that concerns you in anyway . What do you think the reason for that is . What have you been seeing behind the scenes in terms of those conversations . Rep. Mcnerney i forgot to say when we started that these are issues that are complicated. They often have nuance and both sides of a story. , theregard to privacy, yes Consumer Protection subcommittee is working on actual legislation. My focus has been on the areas i mentioned, data minimization and data security, but the subcommittee is moving forward on developing specific legislation. John we are getting closer and closer to californias own rules going into effect. Is that something you are pretty open to . Do you think a federal bill should go into effect before that . How did the california delegation balance that . That has been an interesting thing to consider. You see a lot of people in industry and especially some republican lawmakers saying, we need a federal bill, so we can put that in place before the california rules go into effect. How have you viewed that process in california . Rep. Mcnerney i am kind of proud of being from a state that actually put together a very strong Consumer Protection on privacy. Gdprllows the european bill. The bill is strong. The California Law is strong. Im looking forward to see it go into effect. Somenk there have been concerns one way or another. At the federal level, i think we also need something that is very, very strong, and one of the concerns is, are we going to have a federal bill that preempts, or is california going to have its own bill . And so on. I think it remains to be seen how that issue gets worked out. Again, i wouldnt be able to go to my constituents and say, i voted for federal preemption that weakens your own protections, so there is going to have to be some negotiation on this line. Peter do you hear from your constituents on these issues . Rep. Mcnerney i certainly do. A considerablear amount, and i also hear about Net Neutrality. John and what do you hear from them . Rep. Mcnerney folks want to have Net Neutrality protections. The big throttling, blocking, paid prioritization, those things are pretty clear. We need to protect consumers from those. And right now, the federal Communications Commission has basically abdicated any authority. So the companies are free to do whatever they want and that is going to lead to problems. I dont know how long that will be before problems start cropping up, but they will. In the house, we passed a pretty strong Net Neutrality act this year. It is not going anywhere in the senate. I think thats a problem for my republican colleagues. Americans want Net Neutrality protections, and i think republicans need to step up and move this forward. John do you think thats going to be salient as an election issue next year . You have seen a lot of Democratic Candidates mentioned Net Neutrality in their platforms. Virtually all the major candidates, possibly with the exception of joe biden, referred to Net Neutrality in their platforms. How do you think voters view that issue . Is that something that is going to be an animating force, or is it lower on the tier of issues . Rep. Mcnerney it is an animating force. There is a subset of my constituents, or any districts constituents, that feel very strongly about this. That will be a single issue for a lot of these folks, and rightly so. They need to know that information is not being blocked, that something one of the Big Companies doesnt want to see out there is blocked for some reason, or throttled. This is a significant issue with a small subset of my electorate, but i want to serve all my district, not just this subset or that subset, and if i dont take their issues into consideration, i am not doing my job. Peter congressman mcnerney, do you hear from your constituents on the issue of robo calls . Rep. Mcnerney [laughter] i certainly do. Thats an issue thats driving people crazy. We were having a committee and people were getting robo calls as we had hearings. That hasissue i think technical solutions. Not only that, it is an issue that has bipartisan support. The house passed the bill, the senate. I think we are going to be able to get something done on that. John you talk about there is a technical solution, but is there a First Amendment issue at play here as well . Rep. Mcnerney i really dont know how to answer that one. Its just that if we allow robo calls to continue, you know whats going to happen. Andle get call after call stop answering their phone until phones become obsolete. So we have do something to protect that actually Critical Infrastructure of ours. John it sounds like you see that as a potential legislative victory that could come in the months ahead. Are there any other victories you would point to in the tech or Telecom Arena . There was a hearing recently, almost a three hour hearing about the bipartisan frustration about the state of data and the fcc right now. Is that something you see coming together in the next few months and a bigger legislative length . Across the finish line . Rep. Mcnerney i do. We considered several pieces of legislation. All of those or at least all but one were bipartisan. They had a cosponsor on either side of the aisle. There is a clear need for better maps. The maps that we have out there, there are a lot of holes in them, they are not very accurate. The granularity, or the resolution, and my terminology, the latency. These are issues that need to be improved. It is widely accepted. And the technology is out there. A couple of witnesses were very clear that we can move forward on this. We tried it in virginia, tried it in missouri, we were very successful. So i think we can move forward with our legislation to make sure that happens, that the fcc takes over this and makes it happen on a national scale. John is there any concern about a broader congressional slowdown on productivity . I feel like that is always the conventional wisdom, that when you get closer to the election, it becomes harder to do things, and that forces prioritization. How much is that going to be a factor in the next few months on some of these issues . Rep. Mcnerney government funding is always an issue. But beyond that, these two issues we have talked about, robo calls, broadband mapping, there is a number of issues like that that there is good bipartisan will to move forward. Peter to follow up on johns question, do you see any legislative action in the next two or three months in congress . Rep. Mcnerney i personally would love to see some action on infrastructure. The lift america act is an excellent example. If we find the will and the way to do that and build out our broadband infrastructure, but we need to have the maps first so we know where the weaknesses are and then we can Start Building out. Following that, we have the question of whether broadband is widely adopted or not. So we have a number on that particular infrastructure issue. There is a couple of milestones we need to keep in mind. Peter congressman, have you been briefed yet on jim watkins, founder of 8chan, when he was in Congress Testifying on a closed hearing . Have you been briefed on that yet . Rep. Mcnerney no, i havent. It is certainly an area of concern. If there is websites out there people are using to incite violence or hatred, we need to look at ways how to control the verrilli of that. Of that. Rility obviously those things are protected to a certain degree by free speech, but you cant go into a theater and yell fire. There has to be some guardrails. But the real crux of this is, how do we keep that from being viral . How do we keep those hateful, violenceinciting messages from going to a wider public that would actually cause action that would be harmful . Peter does your background as a mathematician inform your views or spark your interest in these issues . Rep. Mcnerney it certainly does. I love math and science. Being able to work in congress on tech issues is really a pleasure for me. It is almost like i am not at work, i am having fun out there doing something i really enjoy. John where you have been able to jump up to step up is cochair of the Artificial Intelligence caucus, the wifi caucus. How do you approach issues like that . What should the government be doing on ai and other steps that may be are not happening that you think should . Thats one thing i have always wondered about. Rep. Mcnerney speaking of ai, went pete olson, the cochair, asked me to be his cochair this term, i opened the books and started studying ai. It is a fascinating area. The purpose of the caucus in my mind is to put information out there so our colleagues can understand what ai means. Is it as scary as it might sound . Is it going to create jobs . Is it going to transform society in some way . Toneed to use the caucus inform those other members of congress and staff. Thats what we have tried to do, we have had forums and summits and got people together. When we have a forum, maybe a few ai experts, the rooms are crowded, standing room only, so people are interested in them. And ai has tremendous potential to transform society in a positive way. It can make our cities safer, make our streets safer for driving, reducing restaurant reduce congestion, helping agriculture certainly, and health care, so there are a lot of areas where it can be helpful. We also have concerns. Can we put standards that prevent the bias problems that might occur with ai . Are we going to allow ai to bias financial or Health Care Records in a way that might be harmful to people . We need to establish standards for that. Is it going to be an important part of our National Security or National Defense . What about the employment issue . Are we going to be able to use ai to create jobs . You think ai is going to eliminate jobs, but thats not really whats going to happen. Most any job that someone has has several components, so it is a tapestry. You want to find the components that are going to work with ai and the components that are going to be replaced by ai and put those together in a way that makes people more productive and doesnt eliminate jobs. Peter how have we used ai already today on a daytoday basis, and where do you see ai going