>> talks with u.s. chief technology officer aneesh chopra. then, anita mcbride speaks to students on c-span's distance learning class about the changing role of the modern first lady. and later, the head of the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission speaks to a senate committee on the japanese nuclear crisis. >> tonight, a discussion examining the boundary between federal law and states' rights. you'll hear from panelists including a former arizona sheriff who is a plaintiff in a supreme court case that challenged the constitutionality

of the brady handgun law. this event from the annual conference on world affairs at the university of colorado airs tonight at 8:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> this week on "the communicators," our guest is aneesh chopra, the chief technology officer of the united states. >> host: and aneesh chopra, chief technology officer of the united states, if you would start by giving us the parameters of your job, what the goals are many this position -- who you report to, etc. >> guest: well, i serve as an assistant to the president, and i report directly to him in my capacity as chief technology officer. i also hold a senate-confirmed position which is the associate director for technology in the white house office of science and technology policy where i work with dr. john holder, the president's science adviser. the job of the assistant to the president and cto was created by

our president because he felt that too off our policy -- the too often our policy discussions fail to capture the full potential of technology, data and innovation s. so he challenged me to complement the traditional technology portfolios that would have been in ostp, but to think about how those capabilities could leverage these other priorities of his with particular emphasis on the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation as a means to achieve these larger policy objectives. so that's been the bulk of it, to advise the president to insure that any piece of paper that comes before him is properly vetted to see whether there are opportunities to engage in interagency collaboration. >> host: let's start with one big technology on the front burner right now now, and that'e potential transaction of at&t buying t-mobile. how does that lend itself to technical innovation. >> >> guest: well, it's difficult to comment on a specific merger.

i'd love to go deep on the issue, but the problem is it's an issue that's in front of us from a decision-making standpoint. there are equities at the justice department and the fcc, so i'm not in a position to comment specifically about the merger, but i'm more than excited to talk about the possibilities for technological innovation in wireless writ large because the president has included that as a major thrust of our activities in the wireless initiative he rolled out in february. >> host: and we will get into those, but we are joined by cecilia kang of "the washington post" as well. >> guest: hi, cecilia. >> host: hi. thanks for joining us, mr. cto. you did have an event today on spectrum, and this is related to some of the innovation and goals that you've talked about and also related to the merger as peter brought up in that one of the promises that at&t has put forward is to bring out wireless connections, broadband connections wirelessly to 95% of

the country. so, in fact, they could themselves fulfill, in many ways, the goal that you set out, you at the white house have set out and the president on blanketing the country, 98% of the country. >> guest: well, the difference is still over ten million -- yes, of course, it's still ten million americans, but your point is well taken. in fact, the fcc's national broadband plan has said today's 3g coverage is largely in pieces and parts covering 95% of the population. it is our hope to not only see that 3g connectivity upgraded to 4g which many of the carriers -- in fact, all of them have committed to doing -- but we also would like to extend those capabilities to those harder to reach communities. but it's not just about the extension of coverage, although that's an important part of the president's agenda. it is also insuring that the united states economy will benefit as we progress through the wireless innovation chain to 5g and beyond, that we've got

the right innovation investments taking place today to prepare for the future. >> host: sure. one of the things that as part of this goal is to really create jobs right away as part of this innovation economy. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: one thing that the ceo of at&t said recently in an article was that he does see duplicative jobs with the merger. so, i mean, that's basically saying straightforward that there will be some sort of overlap in jobs, and that could lead to layoffs. is that a concern when you look at a merger like this? it's hard to even talk about spectrum policy or telecom things without talking about the merger in that way. >> guest: well, i would start, let me take a step back. at&t actually commented publicly, it was actually the tax acceleration provisions for the administration rolled out, the president rolled out last year that encouraged them to front load some of their lte investments. in fact, at&t has said we were taking advantage of these

provisions so we could actually front load capital, that means more jobs in the shorter term which is exactly what the tax policy had indicated. beginning by saying today on the ground as our private sector is investing in the upgrades to their wireless infrastructure, they're already taking advantage of policy incentives to encourage more jobs now. but the wireless story is really far beyond just the specifics of the jobs at the carriers. i think it would be a misunderstanding for the audience to presume that jobs, unleashing the power of mobile broadband are only that in the trenches, if you will, digging out networks. overwhelmingly -- and, again, the economists this morning couldn't quite put an upper bound on the number, but it has been estimated to be over $100 billion of economic value if we proceed with the president's entire wireless initiative, especially as you look into the out years because of all the companies that are taking advantage of that wireless infrastructure to build out

their own products and services. so the jobs story on wireless is, frankly, a bigger one for the impact on the economy writ large as opposed to the microeconomic question of whether or not a given set of carriers builds out. >> host: sure. >> host: well, aneesh chopra, given that you talked about how the carriers and the private corporations are building out already, what's the purpose of having a public governmental role in this broadband? >> guest: oh, well, this is -- let me take a step back and just sort of outline the president's strategy for american innovation. it's a strategy that he unveiled for the first time in september of 2009 to articulate the government's role in this entire ecosystem, and it's relevant to the question you just posed. so the president basically believes that a foundational principle of our innovation strategy is that we invest in the building blocks of innovation. and we've identified as building blocks infrastructure investments that traditionally

have been seen in the roads, railways and runways discussion. but the president has now incorporated our digital infrastructure as part of that definition. we've also talked about human capital, the individuals that pursue degrees in science and technology, engineering and mathematics. and we've also referenced the importance of basic research and development, that which our federal labs and our nation's leading universities have been doing at a tremendous clip. plus the private sector's investments in r&d that have been encouraged in areas like the r and e tax credit. so the president has said this is very much aligned with the role of government. the key question, of course, is how. so one of the key principles of the wireless initiative is the how for wireless is entirely built on the private sector. so the whole initiative we've unveiled has been about incentives, encouragements, policy levers to allow the private sector to extend its

capabilities to more americans and to insure that we're prepared to lead the world in wireless innovation in the years to come. briefly, before i close out the story of the president's innovation central, in addition to -- strategy, in addition to our investments category, he does believe we should create the right market conditions to support market-based innovation. so for that we've encouraged a number of initiatives namely around the president's start-up america program to encourage more entrepreneurs in this country. hopefully, we'll get into that discussion. but the president did say there are a few issues in our economy where we need an all hands on deck approach, and he has outlined a thurm of those, and you've heard him talk about this most recently, unleashing a clean energy economy, driving a health care system that improves quality and lowers costs insuring that we have an educational system that delivers leapfrog or breakthroughs, if you will, to close the achievement gap and, frankly, to

hit the president's goal of achieving our college attainment goals he set by the year 2020. and i'm going to happily walk you through line by line specifically, but our basic premise is private investment, public policy actions that will spur more of it in a way that delivers -- >> host: so before the private sector even gets their hands on the spectrum, a lot of things that need to be done for this strategy or this plan to work. >> guest: yes. >> host: so there are a lot of different cars on the train, that's right. when will, when feasibly do you look for -- what's the timeline for this, for spectrum to even get in the hands of the private sector? and this is assuming that everything works, that you get broadcasters to really -- [inaudible] spectrum, that you get the legislation you need in congress, that you get the repackaging. i mean, you see there are a lot of cars in this process. >> guest: but not are sequential. there are many that work in parallel.

>> host: that could work in parallel, that's right. so if i am, say, a u.s. cellular, a sprint/nextel, one of these carriers, when can i expect to see the spectrum at auction for me to get my money lined up and ready to bid? >> guest: well, let's go through the steps that we've called for. the president unveiled a set of principles for a wireless initiative that is anchored on a very important legislative requirement, and that is to allow for the fcc to conduct voluntary incentive auctions. it is a policy tool that we think is very much in the spirit of current policy which is to allow the fcc to auction spectrum but add some very important components that these 100-plus economists are mission critical to achieving the real economic benefits of wireless. and so it starts with the proposition that we need a bill from our congress that the president will sign this year that will allow the fcc to have incentive auctions authority. there are also, we believe, critical investments to be made

in combination with the incentive auction authority. with we believe it is critical to invest in what we think has been a ten-year promise in the making to build out a nationwide public safety broadband network. as you all recall in the wake of the tragedy of 9/11, we identified the fact that our communications systems are not up to speed when it comes to what's in the hands of our first responders. i was in a cop car in new york city even this past year, and the cop car had no digital communications in the, in the actual vehicle. when i asked when you pull over a vehicle how do you actually run the plates, he said i pick up the cb, i radio in the plate numbers and wait for the operator to respond back. in today's realtime, mobile, all the-on connections in our personal lives to think that our first responders don't have access to the not even better, just the same tools that we have

in our personal lives, the president says, huh-uh, that's not happening on our watch. we are going to insure that our families in this country are safe and are secure because their first responders are equipped with the very best that's available to them. today it's not there, so we've allocated $10.7 billion out of the incentive auction proceeds to build out that public safety broadband network, and there's some components in there that are worth talking about. we also believe it is absolutely critical that we extend this 98% goal. the president just sees this third wave of economic growth on the internet. we had the dial-up era, the early broadband area, and now we get into the mobile broadband era. this absolutely is an economic equity question, and we believe for technical and feasible reasons 98% is the right target, should get access to this capability, and ten million more americans should have it than have it today or that have the

capacity to have it today based on projections. and then third, and perhaps the one that brings me the most excitement from the perspective of my role as chief technology officer, the president allocated $3 billion out of the wireless proceeds, auction proceeds for an innovation fund specifically so we could insure that the u.s. economy, our nation's pest and brightest -- best and brightest scientists, technologists in the federal universities, our federal labs and our private sector colleagues who have been repeatedly telling us that they are increasingly shifting dollars away from basic r&d at what you would call the metal of our wireless networks up into these more high-margin services, you might call them the iphone app store, everybody has their version of the app store. this is an important part of our story, and the president believes we've got to get the right engine of innovation flowing so as we project five years out and beyond, it is the

american economy that will produce the products, the services, the infrastructure that would export to the world what we think is that next wave of economic growth. >> host: this is c-span's "communicators" program. our guest this week is the u.s. chief technology officer aneesh chopra. joining us is cecilia kang of "the washington post," she is the technology reporter for that newspaper. very quickly, we've referred obliquely to this meeting at the white house this week, what was this meeting? >> guest: yes. earlier today a group of economists from all ends of the political spectrum, if i may use the term, those that served in the bush administration, in clinton administration, those that are in all walks of life, if you will, in terms of their political leanings came together and wrote a shared letter calling on congress to promote this notion of voluntary incentive auctions to insure that that policy lever is in place because fundamentally our economy is a market-based

economy where you have assets that trade to their highest and best use. and what these economists said and, of course, i'm not trained as an economist, but what they basically said was that by moving toward a voluntary incentive auction authority, there will be a market mechanism that would allow whether or not the owners of spectrum today or i should say those that are utilizers of the spectrum today would see value in contributing that spectrum to be available for those that believe there's a better, higher economic purpose to that end. >> host: so the most vocal proponent of auctions, a company that really wanted to buy spectrum was t-mobile. t-mobile may now be sort of swallowed up into the at&t universe. do you think, so related to the spectrum strategy there's a concern. analysts, industry experts say that you're not going to have as many people bidding on the spectrum, so you may not make that $27.8 billion that you want to feed into those different components that you just laid out, the r&d, the public safety,

all that stuff. so how does the, the consolidation of this industry effect the success or projected success of your whole strategy? >> guest: well, again, it's difficult to comment about a pending merger, about it implications, but let me make a first broad observation. irrespective of the market landscape, the authority to conduct incentive auctions is a mission-critical step from a public policy standpoint. there will be circumstances in each direction along the way, some that would argue increase in the value of spectrum, others that would argue potentially might decrease the value of spectrum. the beauty of having the auction's authority is nothing defines success than a mechanism whereby an owner or a utilizer of an asset expects a price, and a buyer of an asset offers value. that, you know, the games of trade as the economists spoke of today is the ultimate arbiter of

whether or not there's enough demand in the market. if there is insufficient revenue to meet the needs of the owners or the utilizers of spectrum today, then the auction won't move forward. the policy remains solid, that is that the incentive auctions' authority give the fcc the tools to conduct that auction. i happen to have high confidence that economic principles will hold and that the absolute reality is is a -- spectrum is a scarce resource. we've recently come to understand just the sheer magnitude of the use in our personal lives. just to give you some statistics recently, the average smartphone uses 25 times as much data as a regular voice cell phone. and our tablets that all of us are buying at record clip that have made my family's life a little bit more exciting, 100 times the usage of data. so we do not know what the

ultimate, the demand will be projecting out five, ten years, but unless you have the tools to conduct that auction, you can't actually realize whatever the circumstances may be. >> host: do you think there's enough competition in the wireless industry? >> guest: thankfully, i'm not the one to render that -- >> host: but should you as the cto of the country? >> guest: it's the fcc's judgment every year. >> host: what about the justice department and the politics of this merger? >> guest: in this context, justice department activities are really not at the review of the white house. these are actions that are effectively independent, as they should be. so for purposes of evaluating a given transaction, it's really not the process, purview or appropriate for the white house to engage. that's just the nature of the circumstance. >> host: well -- >> guest: but the bigger question, the bigger question is whether or not there are

emerging technologies that are changing the mechanisms by which one reaps the value of wireless technology. we haven't even begun in this conversation discussing the power of shared spectrum. and dynamic spectrum allocation. and the market makers that would allow those that are rights holders to spectrum to, essentially, allow secondary users to participate in that market and that there's an economic transaction to be had. so it is an important question, of course, to say what are the carriers doing, and what's happening in the economy. but my job for the president is to say, are we properly deploying the right r&d investments, insuring that we've got the entrepreneurial engine focused on this? are the policies in place so that we can insure leadership on this issue for the years to come? and i have a lot to say on that front. >> host: speaking of policy, what would you say about this idea that -- well, actually, i should just ask you directly. why did you decide to give spectrum to the public safety

community in that there are some that would say that that actually led t-mobile to decide that they could not get spectrum, they wanted to more quickly deploy 4g because you didn't answer my first question in on when spectrum would be available -- >> guest: oh, sorry. >> host: but before i get to that, do you think t-mobile was affected by that decision in that they needed and wanted that d block spectrum, and i'm getting really in the weeds here, but that spectrum, that 10 megahertz that will be, according to your plan, allocated to public safety? and some would say that effectively, that decision effectively forced the company to decide that it didn't have many other options but to consolidate with at&t. >> guest: look, the good news is i'm not the chief strategy officer for t-mobile, so it's hard to get into their brains to understand exactly what their call -- calculus was or at&t's or sprint's. i had a specific charge by the president: does our policy today insure that our first responders

have access to the same technologies that you and i do as individuals so that they can perform their mission objectives to the fullest extent possible. and as we evaluate, we went through a very exhaustive exercise the private sector, our first responders, academic leaders, we held public forums, round tables. i was personally engaged on this issue because the president asked me to do so. vice president and his very, very strong team has been a leader on these issues for years. the national economic council, we've all partnered up to understand objectively what are the needs of our public safety community, will they be met under various policy constraints, and that led us to make the decision that were this capability to get into the hands of the first responders in the technical means by which they need them, it was important for us to establish their own public safety network and to give them the best and the brightest. >> host: aneesh chopra, were the broadcasters of the spectrum meeting at the white house? >> guest: well, let me be

careful -- oh, today's meeting? >> host: yeah. >> guest: they might have been in the audience. i would tell you i've spoken to a number of them, and there are some very thoughtful conversations to be had that are all going to be built into the congressional process. and there are some questions about, look, what does voluntary mean, will i have the ability to still broadcast my channel but participate in this auction in some form or fashion? will there be opportunities for me to make sure that if, in fact, i don't want to participate many this that you're not going to force me down into the lower vhf frequencies that'll be less than ideal for me. those are thoughtful conversations, and those are conversations that absolutely will take place as we set the rules of the road on the hill. today's meeting was really about understanding the economic value, not the owners of the spectrum or the holders of the spectrum. no reason why a judgment by a broadcaster to say i see a vision of mobile broadcasting that is in my future that delivers economic value in

excess of what i could have otherwise gotten from auction. bless you. that's the power of a voluntary incentive auction. >> host: should there be an inventory of spectrum? >> >> guest: well, i think, you know, certainly there are a lot of technical questions about what's currently in use, what's not. my focus on that question is really to understand how does one engage on dynamic spectrum sharing so if you look at the white spaces debate, one of the key questions is, is there a database that one can use to insure that you're not interfering. those are technical components that you would want to have as part of a larger innovation agenda that takes full advantage of spectrum that may be in this, what the national academies wrote a piece, and they had a wonderful line. they said design your spectrum policy focused on lightness, not darkness. today's policy is darkness. clear the band, it's empty, now the highway's yours, go run and build economic growth. in the future their argument and

the academies' report on wireless was, look, there's a lot of noise. you've got to start engineering wireless products and services that can manage around the noise. in a sense that's this question of, you know, the notion of a noun is there a, quote, inventory versus the verb of how does one understand the situational awareness, i'm much more emphasizing the verb than i am any particular notion of a noun. >> host: let's switch gears to privacy. the white house for the first time said that it endorses the cd of a law, a first-time law for privacy on the internet. do you support the recommendation by the federal trade commission to create a mandate for a do not track sort of technology that would stop web sites from, basically, following users on the web based on some sort of browser technology? do you support the do not track? >> >> guest: we have not taken a tomorrow position at this time. what the president called for,

and this is one of the areas that i've had particular leadership and emphasis on, the commerce department has been phenomenal in developing a green paper that was published maybe three or four months back at this point. and that was the basis upon which larry strickland delivered the testimony that he did just a couple weeks back where we expressed our formal commitment to base privacy protections, and we thought that the fair information practice standards should be the baseline. we also acknowledged the ftc should have authority on that base privacy provision and that there should be enforceable codes of conduct emphasizing the role of voluntary cooperation. now, why do i give you this long, convoluted story? it is conceivable that the browsers, the internet economy more generally, key stakeholders on their own in a voluntary fashion come together to put together the functional equivalent of a do not track programment and that that may come in as a voluntary,

industry-led program that then could be enforceable by the ftc as a commitment they've made to improve privacy. the reason i see the slight distinction here is that our framework stops short of any particular mandates akin to do not track and was much more about a framework for how policy, privacy policy should come moving forward. and it emphasized, most certainly, the notion of voluntary enforceable codes of conduct. >> host: which is what the industry wants. they want sort of a more self-regulatory, voluntary thing. it sounds, actually, quite different from what the ftc's -- >> guest: well, i don't know if it's particularly different or not. the question, ultimately, is to -- again, separate the noun from the verb. what is the objective? if objective is to strengthen the privacy posture of the american people in a digital age, i think we're as explicitly clear as possible about our intentions.

the policy mechanisms we've outlined thus far -- and we haven't really rendered a final judgment about what the ultimate legislation should be, but as a model and a framework we've said base privacy protections, we've said insuring there's enforcement authority over the ftc to look into this, that commerce in its capacity has a privacy office that can engage on these issues in a bit of a more engaging and collaborative way, and it's about voluntary codes of conduct as a mechanism. now, we've had some experience outside of privacy with this notion of industry consensus standards activities, and i think very positively on health care i.t. in less than one year we've seen the private sector step up to the plate and agree to technical standards for safe, secure e-mail. did you know that you today can't have your doctor e-mail your medical record to a specialist? in the 21st century economy, you can't have your medical record e-mailed to yourself? because e-mail is inherently insecure. people are concerned about the implications for health

insurance, sorry, hipaa, the health insurance privacy and portability act. the industry after hearing the challenge stepped up to the plate, and in 90 days agreed to a technical amendment to how e-mail is operating, basically, authenticating you and you as the sender and receiver and insuring it actually is transmitted using the principles of the highest levels of security. that happened because the private sector stepped up and did it. and by the way, no regulatory framework yet. the industry, 90% of the health care sector, has already accepted they would support what's called the direct specification for safe, secure e-mail. so if you focus on verbs, that is how do we achieve an objective, and you engage in what's been the greatness of the american economy, incredibly entrepreneurial and innovative companies, but when you panel their energy against policy