On Friday, in an open letter to the 119th Congress, I joined more than 100 economists and public policy experts from universities, think tanks, and businesses across the country urging practical reform of the Highway Trust Fund. Our message is straightforward: Congress can — and should — take incremental, bipartisan steps now to put the fund on a stable, sustainable path.
The Highway Trust Fund long embodied a simple user-fee compact: People who use the roads pay for them. That bargain delivered predictable funding and reinforced fiscal discipline.
Congress has repeatedly patched the shortfall with transfers from the general fund, which papers over the problem while weakening the principle that made the system durable.
Now the system is fraying. Fuel taxes have not kept pace with inflation, rising construction costs, or improved fuel efficiency. Electric and hybrid vehicles — a growing share of the fleet — often contribute little or nothing through fuel taxes. Congress has repeatedly patched the shortfall with transfers from the general fund, which papers over the problem while weakening the principle that made the system durable.
Congress does not need to solve every long-term challenge in one bill. It can make meaningful progress in the next surface transportation reauthorization, which lawmakers must pass by Sept. 30.
First, lawmakers should reinforce the user-pay principle by ensuring all road users — including drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles — contribute a fair share through transparent, enforceable mechanisms. Fairness demands no less. When some users effectively get an exemption, the burden shifts to everyone else or to taxpayers at large.
Second, Congress should improve price sensitivity. Heavy commercial vehicles impose disproportionate wear and tear on highways and bridges. User fees should better reflect vehicle weight and road impact. That change would improve fairness and send clearer economic signals about infrastructure costs. A system that reflects actual use and damage is more rational — and more defensible.
Third, legislators should evaluate a transition from per-gallon fuel taxes to mileage-based user fees. A well-designed road-usage charge would ensure payments reflect miles driven and vehicle characteristics.
Any transition must preserve the core user-pay principle while avoiding disproportionate burdens on low-income households, small businesses, and farmers. State pilot programs show mileage-based systems can protect privacy and maintain public trust. Congress should build on that experience rather than delay modernization.
Fourth, Washington should reduce reliance on general-fund bailouts and set clearer expectations for revenue reform in the next major reauthorization cycle. Temporary patches undermine fiscal responsibility and create uncertainty for state planners and private investors.
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Revenue reform alone will not secure the system. Transportation infrastructure now depends on digital systems that guide vehicles and manage logistics. America’s economy relies heavily on GPS-enabled positioning and timing. Disruptions to systems overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation would ripple across freight networks, emergency services, and daily commutes.
China and Russia have shown the capability to interfere with satellite systems and GPS signals. A prolonged outage would cost billions of dollars per day. Vehicles sold in the U.S. should incorporate tested backup positioning technologies to guard against such threats.
Supply-chain security also demands attention. Chinese firms such as BYD and CATL dominate global battery production. The concentration of manufacturing — and embedded telematics — in companies subject to influence by the Chinese Communist Party raises legitimate concerns about espionage and strategic vulnerability.
The U.S. should expand domestic battery production and charging infrastructure, reducing dependence on foreign-controlled systems that can compromise data security and resilience.
Finally, Congress should pursue sensible federal deregulation to reduce the needlessly high cost of transportation projects — and require state and local partners to do the same. Streamlined permitting, faster reviews, and fewer duplicative requirements would stretch every Highway Trust Fund dollar and deliver projects faster.
These proposals are not partisan. They are practical steps rooted in fiscal responsibility and national security. A stable source of funding for roads is not merely a budget issue; it is essential to economic competitiveness, national mobility, and public safety. By reinforcing the user-pay principle, modernizing revenue mechanisms, protecting digital infrastructure, and strengthening supply chains, Congress can signal a shared commitment to safeguarding America’s transportation future.
The 119th Congress has an opportunity to restore the Highway Trust Fund’s integrity. Lawmakers should seize it.
Government micromanagement has throttled economic growth for decades. The latest example came when the Surface Transportation Board deemed the Norfolk Southern-Union Pacific merger application incomplete and rejected it without prejudice. That decision delays what would be the first uninterrupted transcontinental railroad in American history — a privately financed project that could strengthen supply chains, boost growth, and improve American competitiveness without costing taxpayers a dime.
For now, that vision sits on hold.
A stronger rail network would help stabilize the supply chain while lowering costs for producers and consumers alike.
The STB said the 7,000-page filing lacked several key materials, including a full market-impact analysis with traffic projections. Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific now must fill in the gaps and refile.
That setback does not decide the larger question. Rail mergers have recovered from early regulatory obstacles before, and the STB’s ruling on completeness says nothing definitive about the underlying merits of this merger.
In May 2021, for example, the STB rejected CSX’s application to acquire Pan Am Railways as incomplete. Two months later, CSX resubmitted the application, and the board accepted it. The combined railroad later expanded shipping options, lowered freight costs for shippers, and supported regional growth.
Opponents of the present merger nevertheless treat the incomplete ruling as a final victory. It is not. It is a procedural delay, not a substantive rejection. And history shows that rail mergers of this kind can generate real economic benefits.
Today, shipping goods across the country by rail often means navigating a patchwork system of freight lines, transfer points, and carriers. Businesses must coordinate among multiple operators just to move a product from one coast to the other.
That fragmentation imposes real costs. It slows delivery, raises uncertainty, and forces businesses to protect themselves with larger inventory buffers and wider shipping windows. Those costs do not disappear. Businesses absorb some of them, and consumers pay the rest.
Farmers, manufacturers, and other suppliers feel that pressure most acutely. Many already operate on thin margins. Add shipping delays and higher freight costs, and those businesses face hard choices: eat the loss, cut investment, or raise prices.
That is why the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger matters.
A stronger rail network would help stabilize the supply chain while lowering costs for producers and consumers alike. It also would mark the first time companies attempted to create a true transcontinental rail line without asking taxpayers to foot the bill.
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The competitiveness argument matters too. A USDA study found that wheat grown in 2022 cost more to ship by rail to western ports in the United States than in Canada, even across comparable distances. Canada produces far less wheat than the United States, but its less fragmented rail network gives its exporters an advantage. American farmers, by contrast, compete from a structurally weaker position because the U.S. rail system remains broken into discontinuous lines.
That disadvantage carries real consequences. When uninterrupted, rail can move freight at costs up to 60% lower per ton than other transportation modes. A more seamless coast-to-coast rail network would narrow the gap between American producers and their foreign competitors.
Critics argue that the merger would reduce competition in shipping. That view is too narrow. Freight competition does not occur only within rail. Shippers compare rail with trucking, barges, pipelines, and air cargo. A stronger rail network would not eliminate those alternatives. It would complement them. In a resilient supply chain, businesses need multiple transportation options, not fewer.
An efficient rail system would make the entire freight market stronger by giving shippers another dependable, lower-cost tool for moving goods.
The task now is straightforward: Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific should complete the review process quickly and responsibly. The precedent exists for a successful resubmission after an incomplete ruling. If that happens here, Americans will gain the kind of privately financed infrastructure upgrade the country badly needs.
Winter storms this year didn’t just freeze roads. They exposed a harder truth: Government can no longer reliably perform the most basic functions of a modern society.
Across the country, public systems failed under predictable stress. In New York, snowstorms everyone saw coming left streets impassable for weeks. In Nashville, an ice storm knocked out power and left more than 100,000 people in the dark for days. In Washington, D.C., officials are still scrambling to contain the largest wastewater spill in city history, with repairs expected to take months.
The resilience America needs will not come from another government task force. It will come from policies that empower Americans to secure their own energy future.
These are not isolated mishaps. They are recurring failures — signs of national decay.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans endured an average of 11 hours of power outages in 2024. Eleven hours in the dark in the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country on Earth. Reliability is slipping while electricity prices climb. Families pay more and get less, even as utility companies demand higher rates.
That path is unsustainable for families already stretched thin. It is dangerous for small businesses operating on razor-thin margins. And it is a strategic liability for a country competing with communist China in the AI race.
Artificial intelligence data centers consume electricity on a staggering scale. A single data center campus under construction in Texas is expected to use more power than the city of Chicago. If America intends to lead the world in AI — and defeat China in the defining competition of this century — it first must lead in energy production.
Yet Americans are asking an obvious question: If government can’t plow streets or keep a sewer system running, why should anyone trust it to keep the lights on?
The Trump administration is right to pursue an all-of-the-above energy strategy. We have no choice but to build nuclear, expand natural gas, and unleash domestic production across the board. But large power plants take years — sometimes decades — to come online.
America needs more energy now.
The fastest, cheapest way to add flexible capacity is battery storage.
Home batteries can be bought off the shelf and installed in days. They can be charged by rooftop solar, small-scale generators, or power from the local utility. They store energy when supply is strong and release it when demand spikes. They keep homes running when the grid fails. And when thousands of them are networked together, they can function like a virtual power plant — pushing electricity back onto the grid to stabilize it during emergencies.
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Instead of relying entirely on aging transmission lines and centralized monopoly utilities that repeatedly fail, Americans can build resilience at home and in their neighborhoods. Power generated and stored closer to where it is used means fewer cascading failures, less strain on fragile infrastructure, and a more reliable grid for everyone.
In other words, instead of waiting on distant bureaucracies, Americans can take ownership of their own energy security.
If government can no longer guarantee basic services, it should at least stop blocking the people who can help provide them. Regulators should remove barriers to battery deployment. Market rules that sideline distributed energy should be updated. And Big Tech companies demanding enormous new power loads should help fund home battery programs instead of shifting those costs onto working families.
The resilience America needs will not come from another government task force. It will come from policies that empower the people to secure their own energy future.
This winter delivered the warning. We cannot assume someone else will keep the lights on. But with the right policies, the American people can.
A single man had near-unending influence over the infrastructure of the largest North American cities.
Robert Moses, born in 1888 in New Haven, Connecticut, helped pioneer large-scale urban infrastructure built around cars and commerce. His top-down planning approach later influenced other controlled, master-planned environments, including those created by Walt Disney.
'An extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework.'
Moses held many titles during his time in politics and city/park planning, including secretary of state of New York (1927-1929), the first chairman of New York State Council of Parks (1924-1963), and the first commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (1934-1960).
Moses' influence can be seen all over New York City, and he is predominantly responsible for turning a collection of neighborhoods into the common metropolis that most cities appear as today.
It was Moses' idea to run expressways right through the middle of cities to maximize access to commercial zones. He was responsible for infrastructure projects like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Staten Island Expressway, and the Cross Bronx Expressway. Many bridges that lead into New York City and Manhattan were his doing as well.
FDR Drive, where the United Nations headquarters is located, is also a creation of Moses.
Aside from numerous bridges and expressways, Moses also built nearly 30,000 apartment units by 1939, which is discussed in his biography, "The Power Broker," by Robert Caro.
The book describes Moses as "an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives."
It was that influence and power in New York that led him to becoming the president of the World's Fair in 1964. Which, according to a documentary by Defunctland, led to Moses implementing mass evictions in low-income neighborhoods to make way for road systems.
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Moses planned to make at least half of the fairgrounds permanent and openly said that much of the infrastructure was meant to stay as part of his vision of a futuristic park. This plan mirrored Moses' suggestions for many of the city projects he worked on.
At the same time, the fair was more heavily commercialized than any before it. Moses abandoned the visual and thematic consistency of earlier fairs to maximize profit, allowing companies to design their own exhibits in exchange for high rental and repair fees — services that were allegedly monopolized by a small number of favored contractors.
Moses' success in commercialization was noted by Disney, who wished to replicate his overall design thesis when plotting out Disney World in Florida. The two had worked together on the 1939 World's Fair, for which Disney created a special promo cartoon and even licensed a Donald Duck Day.
The first animatronics were created for the 1964 iteration of the fair as well.
Moses' influence goes far beyond Disney, though. He either directly consulted on, or influenced, the planning of at least a dozen North American cities. He is responsible for the infrastructural theory that cities should be focused on commercial centers, not residential housing.
The idea that cars should move swiftly through cities on expressways took hold in places like Portland, where Moses was hired to help design the freeway network.
In Pittsburgh, Moses put his skills in planning both parkways and parks into practice when he was hired by the Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association to solve congestion issues. He ended up building the Penn-Lincoln Parkway, the Crosstown Boulevard, and the Point State Park.
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Moses acted as a consultant for a "high-speed freeway" in New Orleans in the 1940s and "stressed the benefits of removing vehicle traffic from the crowded streets," according to an article by urban planning expert Jeff Brown.
While most of his suggestions were not taken in New Orleans, they were in Hartford, Connecticut, where he planned another freeway. The city declined his suggestion to build a parking garage in tandem with the expressway, though.
Interestingly, Moses' road was reportedly placed through a slum in order to capitalize on "urban renewal funds" to help pay for the project.
Other cities like Boston, San Francisco, Baltimore, Memphis, Phoenix, and Toronto, Canada, have seen indirect influence from Moses. In the 1940s and 1950s, Moses eventually faced resistance, and many of his highway projects were scaled back or canceled, according to the New World Encyclopedia.
As the desire for Moses' planning skills eventually soured, he and others looked to opportunities in Latin America.
The article "Transforming the modern Latin American city: Robert Moses and the International Basic Economic Corporation" discusses how in 1950, the mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil, hired a commercial corporation headed by Nelson Rockefeller to design the public works for the city.
Moses was appointed director of studies to work in the "Program of Public Improvements" for Sao Paulo and allegedly caused great controversy in Brazil due to his intentions to import American companies to operate in the country.
Moses' influence is still visible in major cities where congestion is chronic and housing is scarce. Disney World succeeded for a simpler reason: It was designed entirely around consumerism, without the complications of cars, housing, or civic life.
In that sense, Disney World represents a kind of Robert Moses ideal — an urban space devoted purely to consumption, perfectly controlled, and freed from the democratic friction and human needs that constrained Moses in the real world.
A recent bridge collapse in China was an obvious design failure, according to experts.
The Hongqi Bridge in China's southwestern province of Sichuan crumbled on Tuesday, just months after opening; it linked a national highway with Tibet.
'Efforts should have focused on slope management.'
According to Reuters, police in the city of Maerkang had closed the bridge to all traffic the day before when significant cracking appeared on nearby slopes, which eventually led to landslide.
The 758-meter-long bridge collapse was captured on video and caught the eye of several experts, including Casey Jones, a geotechnical engineer with over 35 years under his belt while being licensed in six states.
"I could just tell you almost certainly that this is a design failure," Jones stated in a review of the incident.
The design likely did not account for the orientation of the bedding planes for the underlying rock, Jones said, adding, "Whether they had planned to do any stabilization efforts like rock bolts and that sort of thing is not clear at this point."
Slope orientation and the surrounding environment was the main cause of concern for most who showed knowledge on the subject, which included an alleged bridge expert cited by Chinese state media. In careful comments, the expert did not offer any words of praise either.
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"If the Hongqi Bridge route is the optimal one, then efforts should have focused on slope management," the expert told Jimu News, a Chinese state-owned outlet, per the Straits Times.
The expert said that typically a geological survey should be done to select the proper sites for bridge construction and measure if an area is prone to landslides. Bridge sites must avoid these types of potential environmental hazards, the expert reportedly added.
Christopher Blume, who posted a viral take on the bridge collapse citing his experience with failing Chinese infrastructure, told Return that he was a professor at Peking University in Beijing for nine years, having moved to China due to his wife's architecture work.
"I think in general the idea of Chinese infrastructure being poor quality is true," Blume explained.
As simple examples, he pointed to a lack of p-traps in bathroom plumbing, which act as a water barrier against harmful and odorous gases coming back up through the pipes. Apartments are also poorly constructed, he claimed, with his own having near half-inch gaps around the windows; his wife fixed this with duct tape, he said.
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"In China, price is everything. So whether it is corruption, cutting corners on safety, etc., you name it, the ethos was always build it, and don't worry about the details," Blume continued. "Yeah, the bridge was obviously built in an area with landslide risk, but a) if that's the case, it should never have been built there with such obvious landslide risk, and b) it clearly was not built to deal with any serious natural disaster risk."
Colloquially, many more blamed the bridge collapse on a lack of fortification and neglect when it comes to the placement of abutments.
Other X users pointed to possible serious flaws in structural integrity.
According to Blume, a lack of skilled tradesmen is a common issue, with safety violations rampant as workers are pulled in from the countryside.
According to China, though, there is an alleged abundance of skilled labor. As reported by Xinhua News, the country boasts more than 200 million skilled workers as of May 2024, which includes "over 60 million highly skilled professionals."
The World Economic Forum stated in 2021 that high-skilled personnel are defined as being capable of "performing complicated tasks" while being able to "adapt quickly to technology changes."
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When America completed its first nationwide railway in 1869, it did more than link two coasts. It united a nation. Railroads carried goods, materials, and people across vast distances at unprecedented speed, sparking an economic boom that forged a stronger, more unified country.
A century and a half later, the United States faces a new test. Globalization, supply-chain fragility, and inflation have exposed how dependent America has become on foreign systems and vulnerable networks. To meet these challenges, the nation must again invest in its own strength — beginning with its railroads.
Trucking currently dominates US freight, providing flexibility but at a steep cost in lives and highway damage. Railroads, by contrast, build and maintain their own infrastructure.
The proposed merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, announced in July, offers that opportunity. The combined company would create America’s first coast-to-coast rail network under a single U.S. carrier, spanning more than 50,000 route miles and linking 100 ports across 43 states.
A unified system means fewer handoffs between fragmented regional networks, faster delivery, and lower costs. Streamlined routes would eliminate the bureaucratic friction that slows commerce and adds uncertainty to shipping. For farmers, manufacturers, and consumers, that translates into stronger supply chains, lower prices, and renewed confidence in the American economy.
Trucking currently dominates U.S. freight, providing flexibility but at a steep cost. Federal data show that heavy trucks were involved in more than 150,000 crashes and 4,500 deaths in 2024. A single tractor-trailer inflicts the same highway damage as 9,600 cars — a massive public expense that taxpayers absorb.
Railroads, by contrast, build and maintain their own infrastructure. They reinvest billions each year without federal subsidies, move more goods with less fuel, and emit fewer pollutants. When uninterrupted by carrier transfers, rail shipping can be up to 60% more cost-efficient per ton than trucking.
A transcontinental system would amplify those advantages. Freight could move directly from origin to destination without costly delays. Lower transportation costs in agriculture, manufacturing, housing, and retail would ripple through the economy, easing inflation and boosting competitiveness for U.S. producers.
The merger also complements the Trump administration’s effort to reshore manufacturing and rebuild domestic supply chains. With access to 100 ports and 10 international interchanges, a unified Union Pacific system would give U.S. manufacturers cheaper, more reliable routes for sourcing materials and delivering finished goods.
Expanded rail operations would also protect and grow good-paying union jobs in an industry that has powered America’s growth for more than a century. These are stable careers with benefits — the kind of work that anchors communities and sustains middle-class families.
Critics of rail mergers often warn of reduced competition or service quality. Those concerns deserve review. But in this case, the overlap between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern is minimal. Rather than suppressing competition, the merger would strengthen it by enabling U.S. carriers to compete more effectively against trucking, air freight, and Canadian railroads — which have enjoyed uninterrupted transcontinental systems for decades.
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When the first cross-country railroad opened in 1869, it helped knit together a divided nation, fueled commerce, and launched America into the industrial age. The proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger represents a similar moment of promise.
By creating the first true coast-to-coast rail network in U.S. history, this partnership could help reshore manufacturing, fortify supply chains, and make American transportation safer and more efficient.
Rebuilding American prosperity begins with reconnecting America itself. The next great chapter of that story could once again be written on steel rails.
For months, Silicon Valley insisted the artificial-intelligence boom wasn’t another government-fueled bubble. Now the same companies are begging Washington for “help” while pretending it isn’t a bailout.
Any technology that truly meets consumer demand doesn’t need taxpayer favors to survive and thrive — least of all trillion-dollar corporations. Yet the entire AI buildout depends on subsidies, tax breaks, and cheap credit. The push to cover America’s landscape with power-hungry data centers has never been viable in a free market. And the industry knows it.
The AI bubble isn’t about innovation — it’s about insulation. The same elites who inflated the market with easy money are now preparing to dump the risk on taxpayers.
Last week, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar let the truth slip. In a CNBC interview, she admitted the company needs a “backstop” — a government-supported guarantee — to secure the massive loans propping up its data-center empire.
“We’re looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental ... the ways governments can come to bear,” Friar said. When asked whether that meant a federal subsidy, she added, “The guarantee that allows the financing to happen ... that can drop the cost of financing, increase the loan-to-value ... an equity portion for some federal backstop. Exactly, and I think we’re seeing that. I think the U.S. government in particular has been incredibly forward-leaning.”
Translation: OpenAI’s debt-to-revenue ratio looks like a Ponzi scheme, and the government is already “forward-leaning” in keeping it afloat. Oracle — one of OpenAI’s key partners — carries a debt-to-equity ratio of 453%. Both companies want to privatize profits and socialize losses.
After public backlash, Friar tried to walk it back, claiming “backstop” was the wrong word. Then on LinkedIn, she used different words to describe the same thing: “American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part.”
When government “plays its part,” taxpayers pay the bill. Yet no one remembers the federal government “doing its part” for Apple or Motorola when the smartphone revolution took off — because those products sold just fine without subsidies.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly followed with a 1,500-word denial: “We do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI datacenters.” Then he conceded they’re seeking loan guarantees for infrastructure — just not for software.
That distinction exposes the scam. Software revolutions scale cheaply. Data-center revolutions depend on state-sponsored power, water, and land. If this industry were self-sustaining, Trump wouldn’t need to tout Stargate — his administration’s marquee AI-infrastructure initiative — as a national project. Federal involvement is baked in, from subsidized energy to public land giveaways.
Altman’s own words confirm it. In an October interview with podcaster Tyler Cowen, released a day before his denial, Altman said, “When something gets sufficiently huge ... the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort.” He wasn’t talking about nuclear policy — he meant the financial side.
Anyone paying attention can see the rot. Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, and Meta are all entangled in a debt-driven accounting loop that would make Enron blush. This speculative bubble is inflating not because AI is transforming productivity, but because Wall Street and Washington are colluding to prop up stock prices and GDP growth.
When the crash comes — and it will — Washington will step in, exactly as it did with the banks in 2008 and the automakers in 2009. The “insurer of last resort” is already on standby.
A leaked 11-page letter from OpenAI to the White House makes the scheme explicit. In the October 27 document addressed to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Christopher Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, urged the government to provide “grants, cost-sharing agreements, loans, or loan guarantees” to help build America’s AI industrial base — all “to compete with China.”
Altman can tweet denials all he wants — his own company’s correspondence tells a different story. The pitch mirrors China’s state-capitalist model, except Beijing at least owns its industrial output. In America’s version, taxpayers absorb the risk while private firms pocket the reward.
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Meanwhile, the data-center race is driving up electricity and water costs nationwide. The United States is building roughly 10 times as many hyper-scale data centers as China — and footing the bill through inflated utility rates and public subsidies.
When investor Brad Gerstner recently asked Altman how a company with $13 billion in revenue could possibly afford $1.4 trillion in commitments, Altman sneered, “Happy to find a buyer for your shares.” He can afford that arrogance because he knows who the buyer of last resort will be: the federal government.
The AI bubble isn’t about innovation — it’s about insulation. The same elites who inflated the market with easy money are now preparing to dump the risk on taxpayers.
And when the collapse comes, they’ll call it “national security.”
Imagine calling 911 and no one answers. A hospital loses internet access mid-surgery and your child is the patient. You can’t work, access your bank, or contact your doctor — all because a few thieves ripped copper wiring from the ground to sell for scrap.
These aren’t distant hypotheticals. They’re happening across the country right now. In recent weeks alone, copper wire thefts darkened 5,500 streetlights in Tucson, shut down Denver’s A-Line train, and caused $1.25 million in losses in Bakersfield, California, where thieves stripped wiring from electric-vehicle charging stations.
Broadband is critical infrastructure — the digital lifeline of daily American life. Protecting it is not a corporate issue but a consumer one.
The problem isn’t slowing down. Two new reports reveal a stunning rise in theft and vandalism against America’s broadband and wireless networks. Between June 2024 and June 2025, more than 15,000 incidents disrupted service for over 9.5 million customers nationwide. In just the first half of 2025, incidents nearly doubled from the previous six months.
Hospitals, schools, 911 dispatch centers, even military bases have been hit — exposing a growing national vulnerability.
The cost of stolen wire is trivial compared with the damage it causes. Between June and December 2024, theft-related outages cost society between $38 million and $188 million in losses. California and Texas took the biggest hits — $29.3 million and $18.1 million — while smaller states like Kentucky suffered millions too. Every cut cable ripples outward, silencing entire communities.
These aren’t weekend thieves looking for beer money. They’re organized, brazen, and increasingly strategic. Some know exactly which copper or fiber-optic lines to hit. Others destroy fiber cables by mistake, assuming they contain metal. Either way, the result is the same: chaos, cost, and danger.
Consumers pay the price. Each attack disrupts 911 access, paralyzes small businesses, and stalls health care, banking, and remote work. Broadband expansion — especially in rural and underserved areas — slows to a crawl.
Some of these attacks are so severe that investigators now treat them as potential acts of domestic terrorism. Charter Communications reports a 200% increase in felony attacks on its Missouri fiber network this year. In Van Nuys, California, vandals cut 13 fiber lines in one night, knocking out 911 dispatch, a military base, and hospitals for 30 hours. These were no petty crimes. They were coordinated strikes that endangered lives.
Businesses, taxpayers, and consumers have invested billions to build these networks. Letting criminals dismantle them for pocket change is unacceptable.
Yet under current federal law, destroying broadband infrastructure isn’t punished like attacks on pipelines, railways, or power grids. In many states, penalties are outdated or nonexistent — effectively giving vandals a free pass to cripple critical systems.
Congress has begun to respond. Reps. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) and Marc Veasey (D-Texas) have introduced H.R. 2784, the bipartisan Stopping the Theft and Destruction of Broadband Act. The bill would amend federal law to explicitly criminalize the destruction of broadband infrastructure, giving law enforcement the tools needed to act.
Adding broadband systems to the list of protected critical assets under Title 18 of the U.S. Code would send a clear message: This isn’t scrap-metal scavenging — it’s sabotage, and it will be prosecuted as such.
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To defend consumers and our connected economy, lawmakers must:
States like Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina have already moved to deter these crimes. Congress should follow their lead.
Broadband is critical infrastructure — the digital lifeline of daily American life. Protecting it is not a corporate issue but a consumer one. Americans shouldn’t have to wonder whether their connection will work when they need it most.
We built the connected economy. Now we must defend it — before the vandals win.
Non-domiciled CDL licenses should expire when the license holder’s time in the U.S. expires. PennDOT extended the dates, U.S. DOT says.
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