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Luddite DC Is Always Fighting the Last and Wrong (Technology) War

The Latest from Seton Motley | Less Government | LessGovernment.org
In DC. For DECADES

Since the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) now appears to have been nothing more than political theatre and a titanic waste of Musk and his team’s time and effort?

We are still stuck with the 456+ federal agencies, departments, commissions and boards with which we have always been stuck.  For now.  That number will be, of course, always and forever expanding.

DOGE brought modern technology to bear in DC.  And Luddite DC shot the bear.  Despite DOGE highlighting a lot of COMICAL Luddite DC anti-technology.

To wit: We learned the federal employee retirement records are kept physically…in a Pennsylvania limestone mine.  And have been kept there since the 1960s.  And those records are kept digitally…nowhere.

And according to DC and Deep State proponents everywhere?  The problem isn’t the limestone mine record keeping.  It’s Musk and DOGE.  For wanting to, you know, update a little.  Perhaps even to a computer.

DC won.  Because DC always wins.  Musk is gone.  The limestone mine records facility Luddite’s on.

DC’s adherence to the wrong and the yester-year infuses everything it does.

To wit: DC wastes $10+ billion every year on government programs to “connect the unconnected” to the Internet.  I say “waste” – because the US was 98+% connected to the Internet all the way back in 2015.  I know this, because then-President Barack Obama told me so.

And the connection tech has only gotten orders-of-magnitude better and faster since Obama’s decade-ago self-aggrandizing proclamation.  So that 98+% is now even higher.  The number of actually unconnected people is vanishingly small.

And the few unconnected are unconnected almost entirely because they choose to live VERY remotely in a VERY large country.  And these days our ever-improving cellular and satellite (ie wireless) connections have made even the remotest of remote America connectable.

Except DC isn’t spending ANY of the $10+ billion its wasting to “connect the already connected?”  On cellular or satellite.  Luddite DC only deems you eligible for their wasteful “connect” largesse?  If you are digging trenches and laying cable.  To each and every edifice in America.  In a country of 3,531,905 square miles?  That is anti-modernity, yester-year idiocy.  It is Luddite DC choosing the wrong tech.

Want another example?  There’s plenty, you know.

There is a current world technology war underway.  The objective is to be first to each new generation of wireless technology.  As in Fifth Generation (5G), of which you have almost certainly heard.

The country that gets to 5G first gets to set the global rules and regulations.  As you can probably guess, it’s always a two nation race.  US and China.  And I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t want China doing the choosing.

The only ammunition for this war?  Is licensed wireless spectrum.

Spectrum is a finite resource.  And like properties on a Monopoly board, some spectrum is more useful than other spectrum.

Shocker: DC owns about 60% of the US’s spectrum.

Shocker: It is doing very little distributing of it to the private sector.  And what little distributing it is doing?  It is doing very poorly.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work:

Those of the 456+ federal bureaucracies that possess some spectrum are supposed to consolidate their use of it.  So as to clear as much of it as possible.  So that it can be delivered to the private sector.

The government then determines how it will allocate the spectrum for private sector use.  There are two ways to use it: licensed and unlicensed.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) then conducts auctions to sell the licensed spectrum.  The unlicensed is just released into the wild.

Again: Only licensed helps with our war with China.

Here’s how it’s actually working:

Very few if any of the 456+ federal bureaucracies are consolidating and clearing spectrum.

So there is very-little-to-none available for the government to allocate – and the FCC to sell.

Oh: And Congress’ authorization for the FCC to conduct auctions?  Expired more than two years ago.  So the Commission couldn’t sell it – even if it had it to sell.

How very Luddite of DC.

DC’s spectrum focus – such as it is – is currently fixed upon what’s known as the mid-band.  Which you will be shocked to learn is in the middle of our spectrum band.  Here is how DC is doing with it:

“The government still holds about 60% of the mid-band spectrum (3,390 MHz). Of the remaining 40%? The government has allocated to unlicensed spectrum – the kind nigh utterly useless in the China-5G race – 33% (1,905 MHz). That means just 7% (450 MHz) has been licensed.”

Get that?  Luddite DC has allocated almost five times as much spectrum to unlicensed as it has to licensed.  They’ve vastly overemphasized the wrong tech.

With which I am sure China is exceedingly pleased.

If Musk were made aware of this DC policy imbalance?

He would be SHOCKED at how ridiculously off it is.

I’m guessing.  But it is a well educated guess.

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