Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

The past few months have underscored a basic truth: full participation in civil society requires an internet connection. Wireless technologies, including emerging 5G technologies, have an important role to play here. That’s why we must do more to make high-quality, affordable broadband, including 5G wireless service, available to everyone. In planning and promoting the deployment of advanced wireless networks, we have an opportunity to promote digital inclusion and combat longstanding inequalities.

The Trump Administration issued a National Strategy to Secure 5G, which we assessed against our 6 key characteristics for effective national strategies. The plan only partially addressed 5 of the 6 characteristics. For example, it didn't say what resources are needed to carry the plan out—which can make it hard to allocate and shift resources appropriately. We recommended that Administration officials ensure the strategy fully addresses all 6 characteristics.

We’ve gathered to discuss 5G security, of course, but I think it’s important to say up front that we can’t let these challenges hold back our efforts to unlock the possibilities of 5G itself. Over the past few years, the Federal Communications Commission has aggressively executed what we call our 5G FAST plan. This strategy for promoting 5G innovation and investment features three key parts: freeing up commercial spectrum, promoting the installation of wireless infrastructure, and encouraging fiber deployment.

For people who spend a lot of time on TikTok, the last few months have been surreal: a president with no presence on the platform has been agitating to ban it on the basis of national security.

The Trump Administration said it would challenge a federal court ruling Sept 20 that temporarily blocked its attempt to curb the use of Chinese messaging and e-commerce app WeChat in the US. WeChat's ban has had a lower profile than TikTok's, but the fate of the app, widely used by Chinese people around the world to stay in touch with family and friends, is at least as consequential. The ruling suggests that WeChat's fate in the US could be decided not only on grounds of national security and commercial regulations but also around freedom of speech principles.

The Trump administration’s campaign to make Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok relocate to the US is the latest example of the global fracturing of the internet. Treating user data as a matter of national security is a notion that has dictated many of the policies Beijing has put in place to control the internet in its country for the past decade. China operates what is called the “Great Firewall,” limiting the services people in the country can use and the information they receive.

China's TikTok sought to tamp down domestic controversy over its deal with Oracle and Walmart, saying that there would be no technology transfer to Oracle, though the US company would be able to check its software for safety. The TikTok deal has been a vivid example of the Trump administration’s policy of reciprocity toward Chinese businesses. Supporters of the approach say it’s only fair to treat Chinese companies by the same standards to which US companies are held in China.

In response to President Trump’s Executive Orders signed August 6, 2020, the Department of Commerce is prohibiting transactions relating to mobile applications WeChat and TikTok to safeguard the national security of the United States. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the US.

The Federal Communications Commission held a ground-breaking, marathon virtual event Sept 14, hosting numerous stakeholders in the wireless ecosystem to discuss open radio access networks (RANs). The main impetus for the event was to promote open RAN technologies for 5G as an alternative to RAN equipment from the Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE. Currently, the choices for telecom equipment are fairly limited to the big vendors Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Huawei.