Broadband Breakfast on October 14, 2026: Broadband & AI in the Midterm Election
What do informed policy observers and political hands feel about the Republicans' and the Democrats' prospects on November 3?
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Broadband Breakfast
Concerns over data centers and the risks of artificial intelligence, including artificial superintelligence, have transformed the midterm elections. On the one hand, local communities are fighting the power, water and land demands of new data centers, and voters are feeling those costs in their electric bills. On the other hand, we're at a moment where broadband funds under the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program are finally being deployed. What do informed policy observers and political hands feel about the Republicans' and the Democrats' prospects on November 3?
Broadband Breakfast
Panelists
- Blair Levin, NEW! Senior Fellow, Center on Technology Policy (CTP) at New York University
- Joel Thayer, President, Digital Progress Institute
- Nicholas P. Garcia, Senior Policy Counsel, Public Knowledge
- Evan Swarztrauber, Principal, CorePoint Strategies
- Drew Clark (moderator), CEO and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast
Blair Levin has spent the past 30 years at the intersection of broadband policy and capital markets. On Tuesday, Oct. 13, the Center on Technology Policy (CTP) at New York University announced that Levin had joined CTP as a senior fellow.
Levin is an internationally recognized leader in technology and telecommunications policy, with a distinguished career spanning senior roles in federal government and decades of influential analysis of technology policy, business, and capital markets. From 1993 to 1997, Levin served as Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. In 2008–2009, he co-led the technology transition team for President-elect Barack Obama and subsequently oversaw the development of the 2010 National Broadband Plan. Levin has served as a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, The Aspen Institute, and the Brookings Institution. For more than two decades, he has worked as a telecommunications policy and equity analyst at firms including Legg Mason, Stifel Nicolaus, and New Street Research, earning him recognition from The Wall Street Journal as “the most learned of telecom analysts.” He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.
Joel Thayer is the President of the Digital Progress Institute, a nonprofit seeking to bridge the policy divide between telecom and tech. He has founded his own law firm, Thayer PLLC, and was previously an associate at Phillips Lytle. Before that, he served as Policy Counsel for ACT | The App Association, where he advised on legal and policy issues related to antitrust, telecommunications, privacy, cybersecurity and intellectual property in Washington, DC. His experience also includes working as legal clerk for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen and as a congressional staffer for the Hon. Lee Terry and the Hon. Mary Bono.
Nicholas P. Garcia is a Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge, focusing on emerging technologies, intellectual property, and closing the digital divide. Before joining Public Knowledge, Nick served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Investigations Division of the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office, where he investigated and prosecuted cybercrime, fraud, grand larceny, and organized crime. Nick received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, his M.A. in Ethics and Society from Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education, and his B.A. in cursu honorum in Philosophy from Fordham University, where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Tau Honor Society.
Evan Swarztrauber is principal and founder at CorePoint Strategies, a technology and telecommunications policy consulting firm. He is also a senior fellow at Digital Progress Institute and host of The Center Edge podcast. From 2017-2021, he served at the Federal Communications Commission as a policy advisor to then-Commissioner Brendan Carr and Chairman Ajit Pai. He has also served as a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a senior vice president at public affairs agency AxAdvocacy, director of public affairs at technology think tank TechFreedom, and a staffer in the New York State Assembly. He received his undergraduate degree from The George Washington University.
Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing tool to collect and verify broadband data left unpublished by the Federal Communications Commission. As CEO and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media community advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.
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