Tree Canopies, Broken Data, and DOGE Math – Episode 26 of Unbuffered

Christopher Mitchell (00:16)
Hey, welcome back to Unbuffered. We’ve got a new new approach. I’m I’m trying out new intros lately. And for this intro, I just I just I don’t know. I I didn’t insult Sean, but I we were just talking about how I’m a terrible boss and a worst host. And Sean was explaining

Sean Gonsalves (00:32)
No, no, no. You’re a great

host, but the boss part, I mean, you know, I feel like I get set up for failure, you know what I mean?

Christopher Mitchell (00:40)
so I’m Chris Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a better host than boss. And Sean, who’s been on

Sean Gonsalves (00:44)
That’s it.

Christopher Mitchell (00:46)
the show before, was just explaining to me how I always screw him when it comes down to preparing for the show. So I just want people to get a sense behind the scenes of of what goes on. I think it’s a little bit fun. Later on, I’m gonna talk about something else behind the scenes that I thought was brilliant that Sean had done. So let’s talk about it, Sean. How how do we prepare for these shows? Not all the time, but but sometimes,

Sean Gonsalves (01:07)
not not not all the time. You’re right.

So so l let let me strike the word always from the record. That was hyperbole, okay? But what happens is often you’ll send me a message saying, Hey, let’s hop l let’s record a podcast. It’s like twenty, thirty minutes before the podcast. You throw out like a couple of like random ideas with no links to stories or I’m not even necessarily sure what you’re talking about. I prepare for and then we get we come on to record it and then you’re like, no, that wasn’t the thing I was talking about.

Christopher Mitchell (01:35)
two

things. One of two things though. What do I do? Like there’s two there’s two branches

Sean Gonsalves (01:38)
Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (01:39)
that I have.

Sean Gonsalves (01:40)
So you’ll you’ll you’ll either you’ll either ask me about a story that bleeds together with like a million other stories that I wrote, and I which I don’t have any time to like pull up some of the pertinent like details or numbers. You’ll tee the story up and then be like, so Sean, what happened there? And then I’m like scrambling to try to be like, wait, how much was that grant for again? And how many people live in that town? And and you know, stuff, you know, just basic stuff like that. Or you’ll pick a story that you really want to talk about.

That I don’t know as much about, you go and start you go on this thing and then you hit everything that I probably would say and then you turn it over to me and then it’s like, hey, so Sean, what do you think? And it’s like, you already said it.

Christopher Mitchell (02:22)
So that’s what it’s like to work with me. Today we’re gonna puzzle through this and we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna we’re gonna start off with a really short story that that will probably turn into the longest story, and then we’ll run out of time for everything else, the way things go. but we’re I just the 706 report from which if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, from the Federal Communications Commission. Just I was just looking at it again and I’m just like just beating my head against the wall. So we’re gonna talk about that briefly.

we’re gonna talk about how NRECA, which I like to call NRECA, because I think it sounds awesome, but they insist on calling it the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, NRECA. they’re noting that one out of three of the electric co-ops that have gotten these fiber awards in BEAD are turning them down. This is terrible. We’ll talk about that. Sean did he edited a story, I think, Can’t See the Sky for the Trees, which is a great story on communitynetworks.org.

Talk

a little bit about that in Ohio and Starlink, but we’re not going to talk too much about Starlink. Some people are like, I’ve had enough of Starlink. Okay, we gotcha. I hear you. talk a little bit about story that bleeds together with others in Massachusetts with a municipal fiber network moving forward. it’s kind of cool. and apparently there was some sort of a fiber cut that led to a problem at the airports, and that leads into What the Tech!? is back.

Sean Gonsalves (03:38)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (03:39)
Sean’s got a what the tech segment. So

That’s what we’re gonna do today. But like I said, we’re gonna start up at 706. And 706 is like this section of the Telecommunications Act, and it requires the Federal Communications Commission every year to issue a report. It doesn’t do it every year because why would it? But most years it issues a report that says that it has to decide and and and have this report on whether advanced telecommunications is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. That’s the report, right?

And under the Democrats, the there’s usually more of a sense of like, all right, like is this really working for most Americans in terms of are they getting the speeds or you know, is it reliable? Is it affordable? Those are the things that are considered. When Carr took over for the Trump administration, he was like, none of that matters. What matters is how do the telecommunications companies feel about it? And not all of them, let’s be honest, not most of them. How do the big ones?

The big ones that like I depend on for support, how do they feel about things? And so it’s a different report. You have something to say?

Sean Gonsalves (04:41)
Can I can I can I can I guess how the big ones feel

No, it’s just a question, but can I guess how the big telecom companies feel about it and how Brendan Carr feels about it? It’s going terrific. It’s like the best.

Christopher Mitchell (04:53)
Mm-hmm. How how do you think they feel about it? It is.

Sean Gonsalves (04:57)
It’s like the best it’s ever been. Like everybody’s got Internet access. It it’s there’s no problems. They’re just doing so wonderful. And that’s the reason why he can focus on like going after Jimmy Kimmel. Like

You know, those kind of things.

Christopher Mitchell (05:11)
I think this is like the third paragraph. And like this is this is like the statement, right? This is like this is what Congress waits every year to hear is how are we doing? And and and I just this is what made me want to do it because I just it break it breaks me. This is the quote from the report from the introduction. With the inclusion of satellite, deployment of broadband to the home or business appears to be virtually universally available to all Americans. Now there’s a citation on this.

Okay, a footnote. These things have a lot of footnotes. The people that put these together do a lot of work to document things. And a lot of times just skip over the footnotes. Cause like the report, like two out of three words in this report are footnotes, right? Like that’s how it works. These reports are actually not as long as you might think because they’re mostly footnotes. Guess who he cites in in this, or who the FCC cites in this? Just out of the top of your head, people that comment to the FCC. Broadband’s everywhere and it’s great. Who who does he cite?

Sean Gonsalves (06:07)
Ooh, I’m gonna step out on a limb and say Elon Musk or press release from

Get out of here, really?

Christopher Mitchell (06:13)
Sascha Meinrath and

a report which is about how Starlink doesn’t deliver the services it claims, and it’s like the physics don’t work as well, and there’s congestion. That’s the citation for the key claim.

Sean Gonsalves (06:25)
The the the the

does Sasha know know that that his work is being misrepresented?

Christopher Mitchell (06:32)
Gonna ask him, it’s pretty wild to me. But the reason the other reason I wanted to bring this up, and we’re gonna move on, is that this kills me because like I just I did a search of it to see what’s going on with speed tests because like I was I don’t know, I’m poking around, there’s all this talk about BEAD. I’m I’m in our internal chat and I’m angry because like the ACLP folks, you know, at New York school of law, they put together this report about like how many locations are still there. They try to be very robust and rigorous.

But it drives me crazy because they treat this data from the Federal Communications Commission, which is made up by big companies and then in no way quality checked by the Federal Communications Commission. They treat it like it means something. And I just

Sean Gonsalves (07:14)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (07:15)
it breaks my heart to see like good analysis time being wasted on like data that is garbage. But like it’s it’s what we have. So they do it. But it just struck me that it is the year 2026, Sean. And like

We are not using any kind of actual science to figure out whether or not people have decent Internet service, right? Ookla spends, I don’t know, millions, tens of millions of dollars, you know, collecting speed tests all around the country. And Doug Dawson

Sean Gonsalves (07:40)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (07:41)
has this post recently. He’s like, you know, like we could use this in terms of evaluating whether these claims from these ISPs have any merit. There’s ways to do it using science rather than just taking these like ridiculous claims.

Which are made without any fear of like penalty for lying. We could we could actually like evaluate them in subway to find out, do are we doing better on high quality Internet access? And we don’t. Why would we? You know, it’s just and so like anyway, like that’s and then I read I saw the footnote and I was just like, who is is this a joke? Like, I mean like

Sean Gonsalves (08:15)
Well,

let let me let let let me paraphrase the great philosopher soldier boy. Science Science

Christopher Mitchell (08:21)
Ha ha ha.

Sean Gonsalves (08:23)
You know, I mean we’re living in the age of faith. You’re supposed to take it on faith, man. You know, like

Christopher Mitchell (08:26)
Yeah. Yeah. No. And and

you know, the big companies say that they are doing better. And so we are doing better. So okay. With that, NRECA.

Sean Gonsalves (08:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (08:38)
John, good thing or bad thing that out of the 63 rural electric cooperatives that are building rural fiber networks, that 20 of them have now pulled out of the BEAD program and more are about to.

Sean Gonsalves (08:53)
It I mean, it it’s terrible news if you live in those service areas. I mean, first of all, nobody’s coming to save you. It’s not these aren’t areas that are profitable to build. These are electric cooperatives that have been delivering wires to homes for a hundred years or so. They own the poles, they have bucket trucks the whole nine yards. They’re the best positioned to deliver the most affordable broadband, the most reliable broadband there is, a fiber connection. And if they’re saying that this BEAD program is such a mess that we’re out, then

There’s gonna be a lots of folks that better hope that Elon Musk’s claims of Starlink being great and affordable work for them because otherwise they’re gonna be, you know, stuck with like smoke signals or sending carrier pigeons to to to to be online.

Christopher Mitchell (09:40)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s just it’s terrible because I mean, it’s it’s one thing. I mean, I well there’s more rural fiber being built, but every time it’s built by a rural electric cooperative, it’s better for the community. Because if that co-op decides that they’re gonna start raising rates every year, like I have to deal with here in the city, you know, then they can go to the co-op board and be like, what is the deal with this? And the co-op board can say, This is legitimate, we’re facing inflation because of all this stuff, you know, the price of diesels through the roof, we got all these challenges.

All right, fine. Well, then that’s understandable. If on the other

Sean Gonsalves (10:11)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (10:11)
hand they’re like, well, we’ve mismanaged this and it’s a disaster and we don’t know what we’re doing, well, then they can try and figure out how to handle it. Right. Like they have a democratic voice in like how that co-op is run. And so they can choose that. And we know that Rural Electric Cooperatives have been doing a really great job of getting high quality fiber optic connections out there at a reasonable price. Some of them also do wireless and and they take it seriously. I mean, like that’s

One of the and not only that we know that they’ll be there in fifty or sixty years, still doing

Sean Gonsalves (10:38)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (10:39)
it. So every one of these rural electric co ops that pulls out, that’s just bad news.

Sean Gonsalves (10:44)
Well, you know, one one of the things that will never be the case with with a rural electric cooperative is if you find out, wait, you wanna, you know, raise my rates or whatever, why? It’ll the answer is never because, well, we have to pay our shareholders. or do

Christopher Mitchell (10:56)
Right.

Sean Gonsalves (10:57)
stock buybacks or something like that. So it’s not like there aren’t real world like business issues at that that have to cause, you know, operations to raise prices or whatever. But like you pointed out, I mean, just by virtue of the fact that the decision making is local and and and

the member owners d can bring some pressure to bear in terms of the decisions that are made, the leadership there. you know, so it, it, it, it’s a huge difference. And it’s it it it’s a real shame. And it’s probably, what’s the word? Hart is is it har harbinger? It’s probably a harbinger of things to come. I mean, of of just how we went from a few years ago to thinking, wow, we can really move the dial on getting, you know,

everyone sort of connected to the Internet or for the most part everyone connected to the Internet to now where it’s like, you know what? I’m not sure how how much better things are going to be after BEAD than they were before BEAD.

Christopher Mitchell (11:50)
I mean, I feel like you’re leading into our next story in Ohio. this seems like, you know, there’s I don’t know, like a little bit of a a little segue here in terms of like whether or not I mean, now Ohio had one electric co-op that was doing a lot with with fiber that I when my last time I checked in there. I don’t know if some of the others have picked it up. So this isn’t totally related, but we are seeing a switcheroo

from

Sean Gonsalves (12:11)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (12:12)
the federal government from prioritizing these high quality fiber connections to

satellite Internet access and in Ohio, friend of the show, Tom Reed,

Sean Gonsalves (12:22)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (12:22)
did a study and found something interesting, which I think was not entirely unexpected.

Sean Gonsalves (12:28)
Right. He found that seventy percent of like thirty thousand Ohio broadband serviceable locations that were supposed to get Starlink are under tree canopy. And you know what? Trees block the sky. And

Christopher Mitchell (12:42)
They sure do. Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (12:43)
and and and and if they block it in in in a way that prevents the the hundred and ten degree clear view that Starlink like dishes need, that’s a real problem. So that’s

Christopher Mitchell (12:54)
Yes.

Sean Gonsalves (12:55)
That that’s sort of like the headline of what his of what his study found. But there’s other interesting tidbits that I think that came out of that. Well,

Christopher Mitchell (13:04)
yeah? Well d continue. What else is interesting?

Sean Gonsalves (13:07)
for me it was that so the whole rationale of the benefit of the bargain thing that the Trump administration is calling what they did to the BEAD program is that by shifting

A lot more money over to Starlink, it was going to save taxpayer dollars because the cost per location was supposed to be way lower. But Tom Reed is finding that actually, given this tree canopy issue, that in order to fix this, is gonna require not only dealing with the tree canopy, but building all of these 50 to 150 foot tall towers. And when you add all that together.

They’re looking at something around fifteen thousand to even maybe as high as fifty thousand dollars per location, which sounds a whole lot like the kind of numbers you see with delivering fiber.

Christopher Mitchell (13:54)
But let’s go back to basics, right? So, like the the the BEAD program was basically like, all right, you live in a rural area, you don’t have decent connections, we’re gonna give this private provider $8,000 or $10,000 or $17,000, and they are going to build out a fiber to your location. It’s gonna be awesome. And the Trump administration came in and said, you know what? We could save a lot of money if instead of doing that like $10,000 or $12,000 or $8,000 connection, if we gave

$2,000 or $1,000 or $800 to Elon Musk, and then we gave you nothing. And

Sean Gonsalves (14:31)
Ha ha ha.

Christopher Mitchell (14:32)
it gets better because now, having gone from having a fiber connection to now not getting anything new, you just you’re just out there, you know, like be able to get Starlink, like you could before.

Sean Gonsalves (14:44)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (14:44)
Now you also get to buy a tower. So it’s really exciting. I mean, like for those like

DIY enthusiasts who never thought they’d have an excuse to put a hundred and fifty-foot tower together on their property. I mean, that seems probably too much, but like, you know, put a big tower together on their property. Now they

Sean Gonsalves (14:57)
Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (14:59)
have an excuse to do it. Like, if you’re like one of these like guys or sometimes wife who’s very technical, you’re spending too much money, and your spouse is like, like, I don’t know, honey. Like, your hobby is taking up too much of our income. Now you’re like, we need this tower. Like the federal

Sean Gonsalves (15:14)
yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (15:15)
government has basically required me.

To build this multi thousand dollar tower, so I’m on it.

Sean Gonsalves (15:20)
Right, exactly. I gotta go down to Home Depot and and, you know, spend forty thousand dollars to get the stuff I need to build the tower. I mean it’s nuts.

Christopher Mitchell (15:29)
Well, and the best part was, of course, is that the federal government was like, I mean, the Trump administration was like, we’re gonna have these savings. And like there’s no savings in that like all the money that’s not spent on the program was designed to go back into the state to lead to other benefits such as like job training and digital equity benefits and things like that to make sure people could actually use this stuff. And the Trump administration has been like, that savings.

We’re gonna tell you how we’re gonna use that, but not right now. We’re gonna tell you next month. wait, I mean next year. Wait, I mean at the end of the summer. Sean, good news, it is still summer. It cannot be the end of the summer until the Trump administration rolls out the new rules because they promised us like four times that we would have them before the end of the summer this year.

Sean Gonsalves (16:17)
It I and who knows if it’ll ever come. But here it it’s almost like saving taxpayer money and getting everyone connected was not really the primary concern or even a thought. It’s almost like this was like a whole like you like scheme of like how do we shovel money into Elon’s pockets? I don’t know. It I mean, maybe I’m just too cynical, but it almost seems like savings was never really serious. And not Jeff Bezos

Christopher Mitchell (16:40)
Yeah, not just his pockets. Yeah, I mean, like in this in this case, yeah.

But like there’s there’s a lot of shoveling into pockets that’s going on. It’s really it’s really

Sean Gonsalves (16:49)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (16:49)
frustrating. So yeah, I mean this and this is like that’s mostly southeast Ohio, I’m guessing. And so, like, you know, if you’re in western North Carolina, anywhere in West Virginia or Kentucky, and you’re stuck on satellite, good luck. It’s just ugly out there to try and get a hundred and ten degree view of the sky.

You’ll still like you’ll still be able to get some Starlink, but you’ll have a lot more interruptions because you don’t have enough of the birds to grab onto when they’re going by. So

Sean Gonsalves (17:15)
Well, and I

was just I was actually it his report did look I I think at Northeast Ohio, but friend of the show, Bill Callahan actually pointed out that actually it’s it it’s actually a bigger problem across Ohio. yeah, I I gotta

Christopher Mitchell (17:27)
Really? Hmm.

Sean Gonsalves (17:29)
follow up with him on that front, but that’s that that’s that that’s what he was suggesting. I was trying to look at the what he had sent message on Blue Sky and people should follow us on Blue Sky. he’s saying that

That a big chunk of Starlink locations are in southeast Ohio counties that have hills and tree covers everywhere. So you know.

Christopher Mitchell (17:53)
Right, that’s the Appalachians. And so yeah, that’s what I would have expected.

Sean Gonsalves (17:57)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (18:00)
All right. So we are just gonna briefly touch on Southwick, Massachusetts, which is kind of cool because it’s an opportunity for us to remind people that Western Mass has this really great network from Westfield Gas and Electric. And it’s connecting, I don’t know, like 20 towns, and there’s some other towns that are looking to get hooked up. And so in Southwick, they’d had a vote and like you know, it’s broadly popular that they would use Westfield Gas and Electric.

They needed to have a two-thirds vote in order to issue debt to get connected to it, to to run it out to everyone. And they did not get that. I think they fell short of 14 votes. The vote was like right, like

Sean Gonsalves (18:40)
Yeah, yeah. It was it was it was a s it was a small number of votes.

Christopher Mitchell (18:43)
353 to 204 is what you wrote in the story. I think Karl probably wrote it. You edited that story, I think. and and so they’re moving forward.

Sean Gonsalves (18:47)
Yeah, right, right, right. But you know, a and I live I and I live

in Massachusetts and and I’ve in a previous life, you know, being a reporter, I’ve covered hundreds of town meetings. And I can tell you that if a you know, a flu outbreak hits one family and they don’t show up at town meeting, it can drastically change the vote outcomes. You know, fourteen people and you know, next thing you know, you know, it’s it’s a whole different ballgame. So

Christopher Mitchell (19:13)
Well, what’s interesting is I feel like, you know, trying to figure out what’s actually going on in these towns if you don’t live there is pretty difficult. But it sounds like people are broadly supportive of it. They just a number of people are nervous about the debt. Not too surprising. the folks out there tend to be very conservative financially, which I’m I’m familiar with from my household. So they are still moving forward, but they’re gonna do it on a, you know, likely slower basis, but like by using available cash and trying to figure out what they can do.

Sean Gonsalves (19:40)
Right. I think they’re

Christopher Mitchell (19:42)
So

Sean Gonsalves (19:42)
cobbling together some of their rescue plan funds and some other and and some other funds that they have, to I think do like kind of like a fiber hood approach, and kind of get started with I think like something like seven million bucks or whatever, but and and and you know, I guess, you know, the hope in those instances is that once word gets around that, you know, this connection is fantastic and it’s more affordable than, you know, I

I I’m I’m thinking it’s Comcast that is probably the the cable monopoly there, but still it’s like, you know, the the hope is once word gets out, people start to go, you know what? I’m gonna get it and then that and then those revenues can then be used to you know, to grow the network.

Christopher Mitchell (20:23)
Yeah, exactly. I think we should send you over to Western Mass for a couple of days to

Sean Gonsalves (20:27)
Yeah, it would actually

I was thinking about that with that story because I was looking at a map to see exactly where Southwick is because you know, Massachusetts I think has what three hundred and fifty one like cities and towns. You know, I’ve been to a bunch of them, but this state is one of these states where like unless you’ve have reason to go there, there’s a bunch of places that you’ve literally never heard of until you hear of them. Or you you know, you have to like have a specific reason to go there. But Western Mass is

Beautiful and Southwick, I think, is like right on the borderline of Western Mass and Connecticut. So but close to where close to Westfield, which is where Westfield Gas and Electric is you know, headquartered and and and you know are sir are serving building networks and serving the towns in and around the hill towns and matt in western Massachusetts. And like you said, I think it’s up to like around twenty.

Christopher Mitchell (21:16)
Well, what I’m

what I’m curious about, yeah, I think this would be twenty, twenty one, something like that. What

Sean Gonsalves (21:20)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (21:21)
I’m curious about is the places that aren’t on it. If

you’re

Sean Gonsalves (21:23)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (21:24)
sitting there and like a lot of these places, I mean, they may only have they may not even have Verizon DSL anymore. They might just have wireless service from, you know, whatever T Mobile, Verizon or AT and T wireless is available because a lot of the the copper was shut down.

Sean Gonsalves (21:39)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (21:39)
Comcast might be available in a few places, but I’m

I’m fascinated at the places that are like, no, this is this is cool. We don’t mind having property values that are falling. We don’t mind not being able to have our kids do homework and you know, and I mean there’s not a lot of children in these areas often. These are often more places that are really top heavy in the demographics. And

Sean Gonsalves (21:58)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (21:59)
but I would be just I’d be curious what’s going on because like it can’t be that hard to work with Westfield Gas and Electric and they’ve got this down. It seems like it’s gone well. So like what are the what are the other folks waiting for?

You know, like in and towns that aren’t moving forward with this. That’s what I’m curious about.

Sean Gonsalves (22:14)
Right. Or maybe they’re happy with Hughes Net or whatever they I don’t know.

Christopher Mitchell (22:17)
Right.

Sean Gonsalves (22:19)
You know. I mean I’m I’m sure like in in every place there’s always gonna be a handful of folks that, you know, say, Look, I moved out here ’cause I wanna be off the grid and all that kind of

Christopher Mitchell (22:26)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Gonsalves (22:26)
stuff. So there’s always a handful of those folks. But you’re right, like it’s it’s you know, it’s I feel like Westfield Gas and Electric has ha has a down pat. They work well with these towns, it seems and

Christopher Mitchell (22:38)
Yeah, I I don’t know. I just I just saw I just saw a Reddit post from someone who was like it was like a headline, I think it was on Reddit, but it was a story of a discussion about about having a digital antenna nowadays, you know, like rather than having streaming services and stuff like that. And they were like, This is pointless. They’re basically like a lot of the the the sports games, you can see some of them, but most of them aren’t even available on that anymore. you just get bad sitcoms, you know.

Sean Gonsalves (23:04)
Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (23:04)
Like

like and I don’t know. I I realize that probably still obviously more people watch sitcoms than listen to my show. So like who am I? But like at the same time, like I just feel like I don’t know, like I’ve if if you have that option of having that antenna and you put it up and you’re like, this is great if you’re really into like Univision. But like otherwise, it’s like there’s not a lot on there for people that wanna like keep up with a lot of the modern shows and and that sort of a thing or sports anymore.

Sean Gonsalves (23:32)
Well, you know, I guess like my grandfather would say, you know, I guess to each his own or whatever, but you know, I think about I mean this

Christopher Mitchell (23:38)
You’re you’re trying

to hide the fact you probably still have a cable system, don’t you? You have a clicker. your old man, you got

Sean Gonsalves (23:44)
the

Yeah, get the yeah, the the the the clicker, right.

Christopher Mitchell (23:52)
All right. All right. All right. So you wanted to talk about fiber cut in the airports.

Sean Gonsalves (23:56)
Yeah.

Yeah. Only because it’s just a reminder of how important fiber connectivity is for across our society, like not just for home Internet access. And so th you know, a lot of folks that are gonna listen to this. I said a lot of folks as if there’s like thousands and thousands of people, but let’s just pretend for a minute.

But y yesterday, it a lot of the northeast part of the country, a lot of the airports had a ground stop for I think most of the day. but at some pretty big airports, Philadelphia, Newark, I think LaGuardia and

Christopher Mitchell (24:31)
Yeah, I mean like

if if Newark has a problem, like the entire East Coast is like disrupted is bad.

Sean Gonsalves (24:35)
Yeah, yeah,

i exactly. And so there was something like six hundred delays. I mean, I can’t imagine being in those airports or trying to, you know, all those international flights and whatnot, but there was a ground delay. And I think it w they they’re saying that it was a c a

Christopher Mitchell (24:48)
Ground stop, I think.

Sean Gonsalves (24:49)
gr a ground stop, right, exactly, which means nobody’s in or in or out. And and so it they discovered that it apparently was an aging circuit and a cut fiber line.

And it just you know messed up the entire there with the the the Philadelphia tracon facility, according to the FAA. So ground stop, everything grinds to a halt. So it’s just a reminder of how fiber connectivity is is is is just so much broader than than home Internet access. And it also points to just how like fragile these systems can can can be. And so I was

Christopher Mitchell (25:26)
Unnecessarily fragile.

Sean Gonsalves (25:28)
gonna say, and that’s the part that I know that is something that

You talk a lot about about just how brittle the the systems that we have are have been built and it’s a r it it’s a real problem.

Christopher Mitchell (25:39)
Yeah, I mean, how does one fiber cut lead to that? Did you say there’s also another circuit problem? Is it like two problems that compounded? Like

Sean Gonsalves (25:45)
They

I and the a according to this FAA administrator Brian Bedford, he said it was an aging circuit in its backup system caused it to fail and then there was also a fiber cut that

Christopher Mitchell (25:55)
Yeah. I always

I always wonder about these explanations. Do you remember the Super Bowl when the power went out?

Sean Gonsalves (26:00)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (26:01)
So I mean I remember provider down there. And I just I remember their explanation, which was reported over and over again every time I just bashed my head into the wall. because Entergy was like, there was like a problem and the system cut out like it’s designed to do. So that like like the implication being that like everything worked the way it was supposed to.

And you know, the Super Bowls that didn’t have a 17-minute power outage had somehow done something wrong. And

Sean Gonsalves (26:27)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (26:27)
and I was always like, But what what happened? And no, this is not okay. Like this is ridiculous. Like this is a sign of Entergy like skimping on maintenance and preparedness and all this other stuff, and like, you know, just screwing people, which Entergy totally has a ser history of doing. If you if you read about like the way they have screwed cities in terms of charging them for like lights that don’t exist for street lights and

And just all kinds of issues. Like, and so I these official explanations I feel like are often lacking and the and the press just does a really poor job of explaining what really happened.

Sean Gonsalves (27:00)
I think I think that was the Super Bowl where the Ravens played the forty niners and my son was young and he was rooting for the Forty Niners and you know he experienced what a lot of young people experienced, which was crying at that Super Bowl. But I remember you know who was prepared for the power outage? Oreo cookies. Remember they put out like that like on the spot commercial about like Dunkin’ Oreos in the dark or something like that? It was like they they were prepared, I guess.

Christopher Mitchell (27:29)
That’s awesome. And you know, twice I wouldn’t do this at the beginning of this show, but I will note that we’re always looking for the right sponsor. We’ve never had a sponsor before, but I think the golden double stuff Oreo is the most magnificent mass-produced cookie ever created. And I would I have

Sean Gonsalves (27:44)
You converted me. You converted me actually.

Christopher Mitchell (27:46)
a video of you having your first one. They’re amazing.

Sean Gonsalves (27:48)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (27:50)
the best mass-produced cookie, absolutely.

Sean Gonsalves (27:52)
That was a good.

Christopher Mitchell (27:53)
all right. Sean, I just have three words for you. What the Tech?!

Sean Gonsalves (27:58)
What the Tech?! All right, real quick, what the tech. So a lot of people have probably seen, maybe not, or heard that the FAA is rolling out this new AI, and they literally call it SMART. It’s probably some acronym, S S M-A-R-T. I don’t know what it stands for, to help supposedly air traffic controls.

do things like analyze like airline schedules and like overlay better like predictive weather maps and whatnot. And all this is being done in the name of efficiency. And, you know, there’s apparently there’s some pilots and air traffic controllers are saying, hey, this will, you know, make things more efficient and will help with, you know, clear clearing up delays and things like that. And then I came across another former air traffic controller who’s like,

raising the same kind of question that I and many others have, which is the hallucinations sometimes AIs have. Like can you imagine like some kind of like chat GPT response of like, you are absolutely right that two airplanes shouldn’t land on the same runway at the same time. You were right to call me out on that. Should I dispatch a you know hazmat team to reduce casualties? Like I I don’t know. Like and

Christopher Mitchell (29:14)
You captured it well, I wanna go back to this ’cause this is what I was referencing

earlier. In the chat, I busted a gut ’cause you wrote you wrote, You are absolutely right. Allowing two planes to land at once was a massive mistake, entirely on my end. And honestly, it’s good that you called it out.

Sean Gonsalves (29:32)
Sound familiar? Man. And so I listen. Well, first of all, just in in fairness though, you know, I was, you know, obviously sort of tongue in cheek and joking and everything like that, but it’s not where the this new AI system isn’t that like, we’re getting rid of air traffic controls and they’re gonna be making all these decisions about when planes land or whatnot. But it it’s I feel like we’re creeping more and more towards this system of automat automation.

And it and and it I to me I still have legit questions about like, okay, cool, like this is gonna help you predict weather better and and supposedly make you be able to like clear planes to leave quicker and taxi quicker and all that kind of stuff. But it just makes me wonder if the AI hallucinates or they get bad information, how that like affects the decision making of air traffic controllers. So right about now, if I was flying into DC, I’m not saying I would cancel my trip, but it would definitely make me think about like Amtrak or Greyhound a little bit a little bit more.

Christopher Mitchell (30:28)
I I do think there’s from a if you step back for a second and and you take the the broader the issues around air traffic control and whatnot, there’s this balance of I I my impression is as someone who’s not a specialist in this and hasn’t even read very much about it, is that we have this legacy system and we haven’t wanted to pay the costs of updating it. And and it’s hard, it’s really hard on air traffic controllers, right? and then

This administration has this approach, you know, which is typified by Doge, the the Department of Governor on Government Efficiency, you know, run by Elon Musk, of of like, I know everything as a as a young 22 year old that Elon thinks is smart because of my posts on X. And so like I’m gonna determine that this is safe and that we can roll it out. And it’s kind of horrific, a number of the the things that they changes that they’ve made. And I’m deeply nervous about it.

And I feel like a rational person is stuck here being like, isn’t there somewhere in the middle? And I feel like that’s where we that’s where we need to be heading is this sense of all right, we need to have the you know, we need to have an emphasis on the bureaucracy in these different places to like make sure that they are updating the technology and doing so in ways that that make these jobs easier and safer and that sort of a thing. And like that’s where I just I don’t know, like we have we’re in this this difficult era and I think the next

20

years in part

Sean Gonsalves (31:56)
yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (31:57)
is going to be how do we manage these bureaucracies to make sure that we can have modern systems that are, you know, fault resistant and and and can fail gracefully if they do fail,

Sean Gonsalves (32:07)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (32:08)
rather than just sticking around with whatever we had in the 70s, which is what it feels like we’ve done in some areas.

Sean Gonsalves (32:13)
Right. And I mean, listen, it i if if if air traffic controllers have better information, to me that feels like a good thing. Theoretically, that’s a good thing. But you know, we’ve all seen these problems with bad information. I mean, a couple of weeks ago, weren’t we like this close to possibly having a nuclear showdown with like China because some bad info that some AI system you know, so even though human beings are in sort of control of of of the final decisions or whatever.

It still matters if those human beings are g being given bad information, combined with the fact that so many people think that because it’s coming from some AI system that it that it’s giving you the like ultimate truth or superior information.

Christopher Mitchell (32:56)
Right, exactly. And that’s this is dri drives me nuts. I mean, I don’t know that we still know all the truth behind the girls’ school that was bombed in Iran, but I believe it’s come out that that was a target that was chosen by AI. And we know that that Hegseth in the Pentagon had deliberately chosen to get rid of people that were double checking those sorts of things to avoid that sort of a thing. And and to be honest, like one of the things that I think is important to understand is all the different aspects of this and

Two aspects of this are one, it is bad to kill innocent people, especially innocent children. But two, it is extremely damaging. And this is not as important as what I just said, right? Like, number one, and number one through 10, we shouldn’t kill innocent people, right? But like

Sean Gonsalves (33:38)
Right, right. Right, right.

Christopher Mitchell (33:40)
also, it’s really bad for our perception around the world. you know, that that we are just a country that has this massive military and we’re just gonna kill whoever we want to.

Whether they’re on a fishing boat in the Caribbean or something like that. Like, I don’t I don’t know how’s making those choices. And like, and I just I feel really frustrated in that, like, we shouldn’t be limited to choosing between you know, a AI making these decisions or bad, untrustworthy people. And and this just gets back to like, I don’t know if it’s more technology or if it’s just the way it’s always been, but like I do feel like right now

There’s a real challenge. And and I think if it’s technology, it’s something that we need to continue talking about on this show and and the work that you and I do. I

Sean Gonsalves (34:23)
Yeah. Right.

Christopher Mitchell (34:25)
think there’s a technical aspect to like we are bad at evaluating whether people are good at their jobs or not. Right? Like, I mean, it’s just

Sean Gonsalves (34:29)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (34:30)
like just straight up. And like this has been probably been true for a long time. And the way in which technology changes that is interesting and we’ll we’ll cover that. But like a lot of this does come down, I think, to whether we’re talking about the people who are making decisions about AI.

or or others, like we have to trust their expertise and and we’re at a pretty low place for that right now in terms of trusting other people’s expertise or even being able to evaluate it in an intelligent way to know if they’re building a system that involves AI, is are they doing it in a good way or not?

Sean Gonsalves (35:02)
Exactly. And that word good is key because we’re not you know, obviously, you know, there’s a lot of things that technology offers and and and and there’s potential for all of this stuff that can enhance quality of life and a million other things, but we want to make sure that this technology is being used for good, especially at the local level and not just simply this tool of control and to extract, you know, blood from Iraq or what or what however the saying is.

Christopher Mitchell (35:32)
So I wanna I do wanna end with a slight continuation of this, which is that the government accountability office has also released a report about the wall of receipts from Doge

Sean Gonsalves (35:43)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (35:44)
and found what we already knew. I mean, I’m not really sure that any of this was actually breaking news, because I think anyone who was paying attention saw this already, but it was full of lies and just incompetence. These people were terrible at what they did. They made

Terrible decisions. And I this is Elon himself. This is all the people he hired. Many of them just were terrible. And I mean, it ranges from them saying, well, we get credit for like canceling this contract that that Biden canceled, the people under Biden canceled. And so we’re going to take credit for that and add it to our wall of receipts because it’s a number that we can say that we’re saving the government. In other cases, they were like, We’re canceling these subscriptions that we don’t need. And then they didn’t cancel them.

Like they’re still they’re still running right now. And they were like, No, we get credit because we said we were gonna cancel them. So like this number goes down to our wall of receipts. And like they just they just had no idea what they were doing. we’ve we’ve talked about this before in terms of some of the conversations regarding the word equity, for instance, where they were

Sean Gonsalves (36:41)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (36:41)
poised to wipe out home equity programs and financial programs because they had the word equity in them and these these doofuses didn’t actually know.

what home equity was, because they probably only lived in their mom’s basement and then rented a house, maybe, or an apartment or something like that. Like these are people that had no life experience and just had no business making those decisions. But it’s official now. The government accountability office is is one of those places that you know, it actually checks the citations to come back to the beginning that it uses. it doesn’t use a lot of them. It does massive I’ve been a part of these studies before.

They do massive interviews and a lot of work and and they’re pretty serious about it. So if people are interested in just what a fiasco it was, also we do have a number now that that Elon Musk saved us taxpayer dollars by paying nine point five billion dollars to federal workers to not work. that’s how much went to to paying people not to work under Doge.

Sean Gonsalves (37:39)
And and what

and r remind me again, what what what was the promise of the cut and then what what did it end up being? Two tr two trillion.

Christopher Mitchell (37:44)
it was originally two trillion dollars, which would

have it would I’ll tell you what, if you could save two trillion dollars every year, you would cut down that that deficit pretty quick. the debt. I mean you if you if you were able to do two two trillion dollars, we have a massive, we go from having a deficit to a massive surplus. and the

Sean Gonsalves (38:02)
So

Christopher Mitchell (38:03)
economy comes to a total close, unfortunately, but like we have 40 trillion in debt. And so he said he was gonna cut two trillion from the

Deficit, which is not possible. I mean, it’s like it’s ridiculous. and then it was 200 billion. And I think it’s

Sean Gonsalves (38:18)
Right. That’s what it was.

Christopher Mitchell (38:20)
credible experts like experts at this, that looking at it, I think would say that he added hundreds of billions of dollars of debt because some of his cuts, for instance, when you cut the tax collectors and then you have a bunch of more people who are cheating on their taxes, you

Sean Gonsalves (38:34)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (38:35)
are losing far more money than you would have had if you had paid the tax collectors. So

We are far worse off for that program. And that’s ignoring again millions upon millions of of children and other people, but children especially who have died because of some of those cuts, which again not only robs us of the potential in life, but also creates like a ton of terrorists in the future, people who hate us because of those kinds of negligent actions. And that is something we’ll be dealing with for decades. So I find that really troubling.

Yeah. And and I this is this is relevant to what we do, I think, because we talk about mutual aid and solving issues collectively. We cannot do that if we have doofuses in charge of the federal government. We need to like work on things collectively. And sometimes that means locally without government. Sometimes it means regionally without government. But sometimes it means government. And we have to have trust in it. We need a people that know what they’re doing. And you have a bunch of doofuses that are just making these dumb cuts.

it

poisons the well. And that’s what we’re seeing. It’s really frustrating. So

Sean Gonsalves (39:49)
It is.

Christopher Mitchell (39:50)
I think it is relevant to what we’re trying to do here with the show and our work in terms of how we solve problems and move forward and technology, how that interrelates to that. So

Sean Gonsalves (40:00)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (40:01)
I just I had to rant a little bit. We saved it for the end for people that just want to skip ahead. but

Sean Gonsalves (40:05)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (40:07)
that’s just that’s my bad boss take. So another reference to the beginning.

Sean Gonsalves (40:13)
You’re not a bad boss. You’re not a bad host. Actually you’re a good you’re you’re actually a great host, but you know, it it I can get I you know, I get rattled if I if I don’t feel prepared. You know what can I say?

Christopher Mitchell (40:24)
I know,

I know, I know. See that’s the thing. I love I love that you you have immense talent and you have like these tiny much

Sean Gonsalves (40:32)
You hear you hear one?

Christopher Mitchell (40:33)
of of like confidence. And I think if you have more confidence you wouldn’t bother working with me. So let’s let’s not try to get you too much confidence.

Sean Gonsalves (40:41)
No, I lo I I I like what we’re doing. I think it’s important, so

Christopher Mitchell (40:45)
All right. Well, thank you, Sean. I very much appreciate you coming on and appreciate

Sean Gonsalves (40:49)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (40:49)
people listening. I will throw in, you’ll probably hear a little bit more of fundraising pitches for us. And so let me throw in ilsr.org/donate. You’re gonna hear it again in a second. But you know, times are getting tough and and we’re trying to we’re trying to cut the budget a little bit. We’re trying to make sure that we can be resilient into the future. But if you were thinking

Don’t need to donate a random number to them. Remember, we love it when people make a donation that is not even. So, you know, donate thirteen dollars and sixty-two cents or a hundred and forty-three dollars and ninety-eight cents, whatever. Something

Sean Gonsalves (41:21)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (41:22)
random. I I find it I find it more fun. but you know, we could really use that support. and you’ll be hearing more from us as we move forward on that, I think. given the direction things are going. So but thanks for listening. five star reviews, you know, tell your friends about us.

Tell your enemies about us. Tell anyone about us. thanks for listening.

Jordan Pittman (41:44)
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unbuffered Podcast. We have transcripts for this and other episodes available at ILSR.org/podcast. While you’re there, check out our other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, Local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcasts. Email us at [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow us on Bluesky. Our handle is @communitynets.

You can catch the latest research from all of our initiatives by subscribing to our monthly newsletter at ILSR.org While you’re there, please take a moment to donate. Your support in any amount helps keep us going. Unbuffered is produced by Christopher Mitchell with editing provided by me, Jordan Pittman. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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