About
Tom Wheeler, senior fellow. GS
Expert

Tom Wheeler

Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a businessman, author, and was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2013 to 2017. 

For over four decades, Wheeler has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services. At the FCC he led the efforts that resulted in the adoption of net neutrality, privacy protections for consumers, and increased cybersecurity, among other policies. As an entrepreneur, he started or helped start multiple companies offering innovative cable, wireless, and video communications services. He is the only person to be selected to both the Cable Television Hall of Fame and the Wireless Hall of Fame, a fact President Obama joked made him “the Bo Jackson of telecom.”  

Filmmaker Ken Burns described Wheeler as “one of the foremost explainers of technology and its effects throughout our history.” His most recent book is “TECHLASH: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?(Brookings Press, 2023). He is also the author of “From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future” (Brookings Press, 2019), updated and reissued in paperback as “From Gutenberg to Google and On to AI (Brookings Press 2024), as well as “Take Command: Leadership Lessons from the Civil War” (Doubleday, 2000), and “Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War” (HarperCollins, 2006).  

Affiliations and external activities

  • Actility, S.A. – Board Member
  • Gerson Lehrman Group – Consultant 
  • Global Counsel – Senior Advisor
  • RapidSOS – Advisory Board
  • Third Bridge – Consultant
  • Harvard Kennedy School – Senior Research Fellow
  • Past Positions

    • Chairman, FCC
    • President and CEO, Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA)
    • President and CEO, NCTA
  • Education

    • The Ohio State University

Media Coverage

Newsweek April 28, 2025

Tom Wheeler published an op-ed titled “Former FCC chairs: In the name of the First Amendment, Trump’s FCC attacks its principles,” in which he provides historical context on the FCC’s...

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Bloomberg April 1, 2025

Tom Wheeler spoke to Bloomberg Technology about how the Trump administration’s approach to tariffs could shake up the relationship between the U.S. and Europe.

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CNN March 26, 2025

[FCC Chairman Brendan Carr] is exercising rogue power to personalize just what the public interest is. This is a get-right with the chairman. And he never defines what get-right means.

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The Hill October 22, 2024

If Elon Musk is that dependent on the decisions of government, he either needs to totally divest in order to do anything in government, or not take the kind of positions that have been..."

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