• The FCC Strikes Again
  • AI Can't Stop, Won't Stop
  • NBCUtube

The FCC Strikes Again
I wrote about the FCC ban on foreign-made routers when that announcement was made but at the time, I was neither looking for nor expecting additional bans. But since then, the FCC woke up and realized that perhaps DJI had exposed some of their incompetence through their creative use of undercover duplicate brands (like Xtra). While they were digging around looking for leads on that story, they must have come across a robot or two. Robots have been experiencing something like a renaissance lately. The 2026 CES and Mobile World Congress shows were full of robots walking, rolling, dancing, fighting, talking, singing, and otherwise trying to impress people with their capabilities. In-home robots have been aiming at becoming a thing, although former Wall Street Journal tech columnist and new internet entrepreneur Joanna Stern would want you to know that right now, while they be a New Thing, they are not very useful and the ones that are useful are being remotely controlled by a human. Nevertheless, consumer-grade robots are gradually becoming better and as prices come down, interest rises. In countries like Korea and China, robots are already being used to keep people company and help them age more gracefully and successfully in their homes. As the population growth of the United States continues to slow, this concept may become more appealing here as well. People do not want to leave their homes just because they are getting older. They are looking for ways to adapt their homes to their current and future physical realities.

But you don't have to go all the way to a domestic caretaking robot to see that robotics has already captured the hearts and minds of many here in the USA. For many years, robot vacuums, pool cleaners, and lawnmowers have been growing in popularity. Almost all of these robotic devices are designed and/or manufactured outside of the country. So, while the FCC was poking around drones, cameras, and routers, it must have awakened rudely to the potential dangers of having robots in the intimate spaces of our homes and had a mid-level anxiety attack. Now they have resigned themselves to banning robots. And while their language specifies humanoid and quadruped robots and power inverters, that language is considered by many to be broad enough to cover the vacuums, pool cleaners, and lawnmowers many Americans have grown to love.

As with the ban on foreign-made routers, the FCC is citing national security as the reason for the ban. The danger is in the amount and nature of the data that can be collected by these robotic devices that can be weaponized against US citizens and the nation at large. Yet, as with foreign-made routers, models already approved for sale, regardless of how unsafe they may be, are not impacted. It's as if the FCC is saying that any data already harvested and being harvested is fine.; we just don't want any new models coming from outside the country harvesting data anew.

It is possible that the FCC will clarify its position on robotic cleaners and landscaping tools, but it does seem to have intentionally selected power inverters. Energy storage and solar projects will likely be impacted as supply diminishes over time, and companies scramble to make the changes necessary to comply with this new ruling. This does seem to fall in line with the current administration's stance on any energy industry that isn't oil or natural gas.

I guess we should be glad that many robotaxis are makes/models that are or can be manufactured here in the US as it would otherwise seem like the next logical step would be to ban autonomous foreign-made cars. Surely roads are important for national security too, right?

AI Can't Stop, Won't Stop
We already knew that two OpenAI models escaped their sandbox and attacked Hugging Face to get the answers to the test to which they were being subjected, but we didn't know until this week that other companies were also affected as the models roamed the internet in search of the best cheat sheet. I already expressed my dismay that the models were free to explore the internet unsupervised for such a long period of time and how something absolutely needs to change in how models are tested and monitored.

That matter isn't settled and is still up for debate, but this week's new debate is around the potential dangers of open source and/or open weight models. Open weight models, where companies and users can supply their own training data to customize the models for their own purposes, are very popular, especially in China. Whether or not the popular Chinese models used distillation methods (i.e. learning from the responses of frontier models to further develop the capabilities of the open weight models) has also not been settled, but either way, these models have become more powerful and, in many cases, now provide enough value that American companies are eager to use them to help ease some of the strain on their technology budgets. They may not be as capable as the latest releases from Anthropic or OpenAI, but they are more than good enough for most of the use cases an average enterprise would have, especially with the ability to train them on proprietary corporate data. This poses a risk to the companies making the best frontier models and thus a wee war of words has been waging over whether the models should be banned or if they are good for society. Many AI companies finally gathered themselves together this week to announce that they support the continued access to open weight models, but Dario Amodei of Anthropic missed that meeting, apparently. As more questions were asked and people began to suspect that Anthropic was against open weight models due to the risk they impose to their business model, Amodei was pressed to reply that Anthropic isn't against open weight models. His stance is that it isn't the models that are the issue, but the risk of models being abused by authoritarian governments.

You don't say.

Open weight models are a risk to the business models of the successful American AI companies. OpenAI and Anthropic have been racing to go public as soon as possible and take advantage of the remaining tail winds in their sails. They do not want to risk having the industry tank before they've been able to wrangle all of the capital out of the market that they can. This is logical and good from a business perspective. They are currently making the most money from corporate subscriptions as enterprise companies are willing to pay reasonable prices for something promising to increase productivity or reduce waste. But if another company offers a model with even 80% of the ability of the best models at a 50% cheaper price, it is also logical and good to take that bet.

Even if open weight models were banned in the United States and companies like OpenAI and Anthropic could breathe just a little bit easier with less competition domestically, there still remains the real risk of loss abroad as the foreign countries working on open source and open weight models won't stop progressing. There is no council or governing body that can restrict the growth of AI models everywhere. It may be in the best interest of all parties to work together to minimize the negative aspects of AI and maximize the positive, but when was the last time we saw that happen in real life? No, the AI beatings will continue until morale improves.

NBCUtube
We'll end on a happier story this week as there is a bit of good news to discuss. This week, NBCUniversal and YouTube announced a multi-year partnership that will bundle Peacock with YouTube Premium in the United States at no extra charge. YouTube Premium subscribers will get access to all Peacock content including live sports from the NFL and NBA. Universal films and Bravo original shows will also be included. Some live sporting events will be available via the NBC Sports YouTube channel and NBC Sports will also partner with YouTube as a production partner for some YouTube live events. International streaming services such as Universal+ and Hayu will be available in select in global markets. And the agreement also extends distribution deals for Comcast, which will continue to make YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Premium available on its Xfinity and Xumo platforms.

This agreement will go into effect in early 2027. Right now, this seems to be a major win for YouTube subscribers and offers more reach for the Peacock streaming service. It seems like a good deal. I will not search for a catch. Not this week, anyway.