I wanted to ask you about some of the issues you worked on in the house when it comes to technology. Were you able to bring that over to the senate, such as data privacy and things like that . Sen. Blackburn indeed. Peter, i think we last visited when i was finishing work on the reauthorization of the fcc, which had not been done since 1990. And of course the precision agriculture deal. Some of those components that really are foundational items in our internet ecosystem. Getting those provisions finished was important and bringing that expertise to the senate where we are dealing with the privacy and Data Security issues not only of commerce but also judiciary committee. One thing i have found so interesting about being in the senate is how you take one issue set and you work crossplatform on it. I am also on the Armed Services committee and the Veterans Committee and at veterans, we are working to get everybodys records in the cloud. We are doing the same thing at Armed Services so that we can have someone enlist, for the rest of their life, their records are cloudbased. As they need medical care or if they want to track what exposures they may have had, such as hazardous toxins, things of that nature, the veteran will own those records and this will end the laborious process that is so frustrating to so many of our nations veterans, where they are having to go to places they were stationed or posted or places they were deployed and try to rebuild their record. It takes a lot of time and a lot of wasted energy goes there. At Armed Services, i am working on future threats, technology and 5g and Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Vehicles and supercomputing and hypersonic and our Technology Sector really underpins the innovation that is taking place around 21st century warfare. Peter joining us to delve into these issues is steven from politico. The announcement from House Democrats that they would pursue impeachment proceedings against president trump. I am curious what you make of that decision and do you have any concerns that might stunt momentum around policy issues . Sen. Blackburn i would love to see them focusing on issues that Americans Care about. On of the things we learned from the 2018 election cycle is that voters, especially women, want to see things done. They do not like bickering. I kind of call them the security moms. Women who are focused on keeping their children safe. Job security, income security, they want to make certain their elderly parents are well cared for. They want to make certain this nation is secure, securing the southern border. I think this may be an overreach by our friends in the house. We all know that we should have expected they would try another impeachment process. Yesterday, when i was on the floor of the house speaking, i talked about 2016 and vanity fair magazine in december 2016 had an article that talked about the democrats push to impeach president trump. He was not even sworn in yet. Before he was sworn in and he was still president elect trump, the Senate Democrats had started writing a bill that they felt like would be the way to get him and it would be looking for areas where there would be conflicts in his business interests and conflicts with his service as president of our nation. This is something they have been trying since before he was sworn in. They tried in 2018. It failed. They thought the Mueller Report was going to be exactly what they needed. It was not. That effort failed. They tried earlier in 2019 to get an impeachment vote. I think they were surprised when they read the transcript of the phone call. You talked about getting things done. You talked about the tech task force you are leading in the senate. What are you learning in those meetings . Sen. Blackburn one of the things i am learning is that we have finally arrived in a position where people are saying, we need some privacy and Data Security guard rails in law. It is time to get something on the books. That is very encouraging to me. I have worked to get a privacy standard. I believe we need one set of rules for the entire internet ecosystem with one regulator. I think individuals should have the right to opt in, get there explicit consent if they want to share their private or Sensitive Data and opt out if they do not want the platform sharing their nonSensitive Data. I do not think platform should be able to boot them off the platforms if they say, i am exercising my right to privacy. What i am learning is there are many an industry that share that view. This light touch foundational privacy standard, as simple as i have just laid it out, that is something that is a good thing to have. Basic federal standard. If you want to increase it through the Financial Service sector, you have something to build on. If you want to increase it through hipaa, which needs to be modernized so it accommodates the Digital Imaging and some of those newer arrivals into the marketplace, you have a basic privacy standard. That is what we are hearing. On Data Security, what we have found is that people would like to see a federal standard that exercises preemption. So that when there is a data breach, people are notified within a prompt and given period of time. Having the fcc with the ability to level penalties and having enforcement capabilities. When it comes to censorship and prioritization, we have heard from some of the smaller or newer Start Companies how the Big Tech Companies are really pushing them out of the marketplace. An example of this would be with yelp, where their rating system, they were being pushed aside and google was preference seeing their own rating system. We have also heard from companies that do not advertise on google or one of the search engines. When you do a search, run a google search, for their company, they are way down at the bottom and you have people that are advertising with google that are referenced and at the top. People would like that to be more organic. We are also going to be looking at antitrust and competition i think that is something we will get into early next year. Last week, we had a session on data portability to look at who owns your data and if you have the right to move that data to transport that data from one platform to another platform. Peter i do not mean to be trite , but there seems to be some tech backlash. Sen. Blackburn they have become a monopoly. You are seeing a push for more transparency in their operations, more transparency into how they develop their algorithms and insight into how they go about exercising their preferences as people are on these platforms. One thing we have heard a good bit about, if these Tech Companies say we are the new modern day town square, we are the public forum, why is there not a cop on the beat . That is making certain that they are rooting out terrorist activity or some of these videos you will see or hear about online. People expect that accountability from these platforms. Likewise, some of the social media platforms that are beginning to distribute news and have a newsfeed, individuals want to see them have a news director so they are passing on news that has been curated and not passing on rumors or innuendo. On a couple of those topics, including antitrust, you mentioned some smaller firms, we have seen state attorneys general as well as the Justice Department launch antitrust probes. Do you make of those efforts . Sen. Blackburn what you are seeing with these states attorneys general launching a probe into google and eight states into facebook, this is, in my opinion, frustration by the consumers and the citizens in those states. Small businesses that feel as if they are being booted off these platforms and cannot draw people to their websites. Or their facebook is not being pushed forward or limited in boosting a post. This is why you have the state going after them. And also why you are seeing the states go after facebook in this regard. It does not surprise me. I think they feel it is as if they have the right to move forward. They are bolstered a little bit because the fcc and doj have been looking at the social media platforms. Facebook just paid a 5 billion fine. Peter do you share some of these frustrations . Sen. Blackburn of course, i do. Everyone does. I am one of those individuals that was censored by twitter when i was in my senate campaign. They took down a video that i had put up, would not let us boost it. The reason, they felt like it was inappropriate speech or inflammatory rhetoric. I was talking about prolife. I was talking about leading the select committee over in the house. Nothing inflammatory about protecting life. Peter from a conservative point of view, you feel that you have been censored . Sen. Blackburn indeed, i was, yes. Have you seen evidence that that is a systemic issue . Sen. Blackburn we have so much evidence from individuals and from Smaller Companies about being pushed aside or disadvantaged by large social media outlets. If they are the public forum, if they are an information source, we want to make certain it is a fair and level playing field. I know you participated earlier this year on the white house summit on social media bias. What movement have you seen from the white house on this . Sen. Blackburn the white house has been very good on this issue. I appreciate the fact that they are moving slowly but very intentionally. They are working with us. The tech task force is allowing us to do a good educational deep dive on this, to meet with some of these privacy officers and leadership of some of these tech platforms and hear firsthand from them what works and what does not work. Hearing from stakeholders and advocacy groups is how we will make certain we do this right the first time. What we do know is the American Consumer does not want gdpr. In europe and the eu, the heavyhanded approach, you have seen some companies actually come out of their marketplace because of the cost of compliance and because of the intrusion into their compliance systems. We also know u. S. Based companies that are looking at california are very hesitant when they are looking at the California Law that would go on the books next year. They are very hesitant to do any expansion or they are yet to make a decision if they are going to stay into that marketplace. We do not want to disadvantage innovation and we do not want to disadvantage the u. S. Consumer. Peter did you have a chance to meet with Mark Zuckerberg . Sen. Blackburn i have talked with him before, and i did not meet with him when he was here last week. I am delighted that we are beginning to see some of these tech leaders come to the hill. I will spend some time in the near future out in the Silicon Valley doing a series of meetings and have a little better insight into the back kbone of some of these platforms and the way their algorithms are developed. Meeting hopefully with some of their engineers and developers and the application of those algorithms on their sites. Peter is Election Security part of the task force . Sen. Blackburn we are not looking at Election Security. That is not something in the directive we were given when we started the task force. Election security, after the 2016 election, is something we have looked at. We have had hearings on it at commerce, we have touched on it at Armed Services. For decades, our enemies have tried to thwart or to wiggle their way into influencing u. S. Policy. This is not something new. I remember being a kid and hearing about what the russians wanted to do to us. And the way they were trying to tear us down from within. With the advent of the internet, it just makes sense that those who do not wish us well are going to gravitate to that platform and try to use that to their advantage. Indeed, they did try. What we do know is that in 2016, they were not into any Voting System in any county or precinct in this country. They did not change one single vote. But we do know that they have continued their campaign to influence, try to influence elections, try to influence policy. Look at some of the information that came out about vaccines and it was traced back to russian websites. We should be working as a team with our government, with some of these Internet Service providers, and we have these bad actors and bots and have launched these websites and facebook pages, lets get them taken down. I want to ask your opinion on whether the fcc should have more oversight on political speech. Sen. Blackburn as we have talked about the issue of privacy, what individuals have said is lets have one regulator. That regulator has traditionally been the federal trade commission. People feel we should have one regulator. We have also, when it comes to political speech, we do not want to abridge anyones First Amendment rights, their right to free speech. I may not agree with someone says but i will certainly speak up and protect their right to have their say and i think it is important to do that. Peter when it comes to Something Like 8chan sen. Blackburn let me say it like this. That is something that is putting out harmful speech and that is one of these areas where an isp would be well served to review that and review the information. What changes would you like to see to section 230 of the Communications Decency act which shields some of these Internet Companies . Sen. Blackburn section 230 has been there to actually serve as a safe harbor, as you very well know. What we want to do is protect those provisions for new entrants we do not want to do away with it and make it impossible for new entrants to come into compliance or have it be something that keeps them from trying to enter the marketplace. I think that at this point, we would be well served to have a review and a discussion of 230, maybe a hearing and what the update should be around it as the internet has matured. Do you think Large Companies should have those 230 protections . Sen. Blackburn they should be part of a larger discussion. I think it is time for us to do that. As part of the discussion, do you think lawmakers should look at carveouts to 230 on issues like Child Exploitation or violent extremism . Sen. Blackburn right. We had a hearing last week on extremism and we continue to look at how you deal with extremism, how you deal with some of the violent content that is there and the sex trafficking that is taking place. As you remember, several years ago, i led the push to get backpage off the google search. This is one of the things that needs to happen to protect women and children and to thwart the sex trade and to prohibit them from using online to market these women and children. Several years ago, we worked with the Online Gaming industry and made certain they began to do ratings so you would have content that was ageappropriate. We have looked at this in our task force and will continue to do so. When you look at some of the apps, snap or some of these that young people get into, pardon me, and pedophiles have begun use those apps. They are tracking children and they are tracking children online. Ratings andy having awareness, so that parents realize what is going on, and making sure children are protected and their information is not being made public, and it is not going to someone who would do them harm. Host you started this interview talking about foundational issues you have worked on. One of those is access to spectrum. It looks like the fcc is getting closer to ac band auction. Blackburn yes, and one of the things we do know is spectrum, we have got a shortage of spectrum. And as we are looking at the utilizationx utilizations, whether commercial, government or military sectors, we know we are going to need more made to band spectrum. 5g is getting ready for deployment. 5g is going to be vital for our military. Military baserst that is going to be completely 5g reliant is in tennessee where Autonomous Vehicles are being tested, that will be used with the u. S. Military. We are excited about that. But all of this Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Vehicles, the internet of evolution ofhe different divisions of the military deploying in units. You may have somebody from the army, the marines, somebody in the navy, all in one unit. We know interoperability is going to be important, so recouping spectrum so that we build out a network on the commercial side and the military interoperable be is going to be vitally important. The mid to band is something that is going to be the mid band is something that is going that a highly sought area we can begin to build out some of these networks. Also, closing the Digital Divide and beginning to use 5g and 60 wireless to close that Digital Divide. That 5g 6g wireless to close that Digital Divide in rural areas. It was also it is also going to help us with technology in underserved areas, we have hospitals in rural areas that have closed and this will help us get health care to those individuals. Senator durbin is involved in rural areas and 5g development. What is your take . Votedr blackburn i have for and supported blocking huawei from further deployment in this country. To see some rip and replace on Huawei Technology that exists in this countr