Motivation Quote by Steve Largent

There’s a particular kind of innocence that only works when it’s strategic: the casual rhetorical question that pretends the debate is already settled. “Where is the harm in the wireless industry?” sounds like a sincere request for evidence, but its real muscle is framing. It doesn’t ask whether harm exists; it implies that harm is either invisible, exaggerated, or the product of paranoia. By putting “harm” on trial, the speaker positions the industry as the reasonable default and critics as people chasing ghosts.

Coming from Steve Largent - a Hall of Fame wide receiver turned politician - the line carries the polish of someone fluent in public persuasion. It’s not technical, it’s not data-driven, and that’s the point. The question is designed for a hearing room and a headline: simple enough to repeat, broad enough to absorb any answer, and slippery enough to dodge specifics. If you respond with nuanced concerns (health studies, infrastructure siting, monopoly power, privacy, labor practices), you’ve already conceded the premise that you must prove damage before regulation is justified.

The context is the long American romance with “innovation” as a moral good, especially in telecom: faster, freer, more connected. Largent’s subtext is deregulatory: don’t obstruct a booming sector with precautionary rules. It’s also a cultural tell from the early wireless era, when convenience and economic growth were treated as the only metrics that mattered, and externalities were easier to wave away than to measure.