Should BEAD Non-Deployment Funds Be Linked to AI? How Should Funds Be Spent?
Experts disagreed on conditioning broadband funding on state AI regulations, balancing digital economy goals against legal constraints.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2025 — A panel of policy experts offered divergent views during a Broadband Breakfast Live Online webinar Wednesday on whether the Trump administration should tie broadband infrastructure funding to state artificial intelligence regulations, as officials project roughly $21 billion in savings from the federal BEAD program.
The debate comes as the White House considers a draft executive order that would condition Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program funds on how states regulate AI. National Telecommunications and Information Administration chief Arielle Roth said last week that NTIA is "operating under the assumption that the states will get to use their BEAD savings."
Nathan Leamer, Executive Director of Build American AI, a new advocacy organization, argued that AI deployment should be central to the BEAD program's mission of connecting Americans to the digital economy.
Nathan Leamer
"The digital economy also means the AI economy, whether it's telemedicine or whether it's the future of robotics or whether it's manufacturing," Leamer said during the event. "If BEAD's goal is to connect all Americans and make sure they're able to participate across the digital economy, AI should be a central part of that."
Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, praised NTIA's "course correction" under the current administration while expressing skepticism about using BEAD funds as leverage for AI preemption.
"I'm a bit skeptical that you can use BEAD to do that without further insights from Congress," Thayer said. "There are things in the BEAD as written that you can use to advance a lot of the deployments that we're seeing in AI where it's not specifically there to advance AI per se."
Amy Huffman, policy director at the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, said Congress already provided the proper framework for BEAD spending when it passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
"Congress got it right the first time when they wrote this law," Huffman said. "Anything that's related to AI, particularly AI skilling, is already built into the law. Broadband adoption, including programs to provide affordable Internet-capable devices, that encompasses AI skilling."
Huffman emphasized that "AI skills are digital skills," noting that effective AI education requires basic digital literacy as a foundation.
Mackenzie Arnold, director of U.S. policy at the Institute for Law and AI, raised legal concerns about conditioning BEAD funds on AI preemption.
"The text related to BEAD is actually quite formulaic," Arnold said. "The funds are assigned via a formula. That doesn't seem particularly discretionary and hasn't been treated as such historically."
Arnold said the Trump administration "would have the weakest hand" in litigation because "courts are increasingly skeptical of reading broad powers into legislation where it's not explicitly granted by Congress."
The BEAD program originally allocated $42 billion for broadband deployment, but reforms implemented this year have generated significant savings. In Louisiana, the highest-cost locations dropped from $120,000 per location to roughly $7,000, with average costs below $4,000.
States are awaiting guidance from NTIA, expected in the first quarter of 2026, on permissible uses for non-deployment funds.
Member discussion