Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Greg Pence, R-Ind., led refiling Monday of the Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act in a bid to expand the federal government’s effort to encourage U.S. chip manufacturing. The measure, which the Senate Commerce Committee first advanced in 2021 (see 2112090058), would direct the Commerce Department’s SelectUSA program to work with state-level economic development organizations to develop strategies to attract investment in U.S. semiconductor manufacturers and supply chains. “Semiconductor shortages made it abundantly clear that we cannot continue to depend on Communist China for critical materials for manufacturing and producing American products,” Blackburn said in a statement. “We need to build on the Chips and Science Act to continue advancing efforts that will lower the cost of goods and strengthen our economic competitiveness, supply chains and national security,” Peters said. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is a lead co-sponsor. “The Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act strengthens semiconductor supply chains by requiring federal and state government programs to develop strategies to attract investment in semiconductor manufacturing,” Eshoo said. The U.S. “learned the hard way that we simply cannot rely on foreign nations to secure semiconductor chips -- and that doing so jeopardizes America’s economic and national security," Pence said.
Exports to China
As long as TikTok is subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party, the popular Chinese-owned social media app will remain a national security issue, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., told us Thursday. He said he shares concerns of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Dell’Oro Group reported a general slowing in momentum in the radio access network market in Q4. The report downgraded its short-term revenue outlook, now expected to be flat in 2023, “as surging investments in India” are offset by a slowdown in North America and China. “The results in the quarter further validate the reduced growth scenario we have discussed now for some time,” said Stefan Pongratz, Dell’Oro vice president. “At the same time, even if the gap between the early adopters and the laggards is generally smaller with 5G than it was with LTE, the state of 5G still varies significantly across the globe.” The firm said Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung were the top RAN suppliers in 2022, with Nokia and Samsung showing the most growth.
The idea of a voluntary moratorium on destructive anti-satellite (ASAT) testing has growing momentum internationally, with 10 nations so far having followed the U.S.' moratorium announced in April (see 2204190057), Secure World Foundation Program Planning Director Brian Weeden said Wednesday. In a webinar, Weeden said that support also was shown in more than 150 nations voting in December at the U.N. General Assembly for a moratorium. One hurdle to adoption by nations like Russia, China and India -- all of which developed and tested destructive ASAT capabilities -- is that they're developing those capabilities for different reasons, so no one argument works for all of them, Weeden said. Another challenge is defining what a space weapon is, since a light-detection and ranging sensor on a satellite for docking purposes also could be employed as a weapon. How to verify compliance with a voluntary moratorium or treaty is also an open question, he said.
House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said Wednesday she believes lawmakers need to “reach an agreement as soon as possible” on spectrum legislative items currently tied up with renewing the FCC’s auction authority. Congress extended the FCC’s auction authority through March 9 as part of the FY 2023 appropriations omnibus package, but leaders on the House and Senate Commerce committees hope they can agree on a broader spectrum bill, after a legislative deal they hoped to attach to the omnibus fell through in December (see 2212280044).
Documents show Facebook knew as early as 2018 that hundreds of thousands of developers across China, Russia, North Korea and Iran had access to user data that could potentially be used in espionage, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and ranking member Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wrote Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday. The documents were released as part of ongoing litigation against Meta on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, they said. According to newly released documents, Facebook told Congress in 2018 that it gave access to application programming interfaces to device-makers in China, including Huawei, OPPO and TCL: “In the wake of those disclosures, Facebook met repeatedly with the staffs of both senators and the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss access to this data and what controls Facebook was putting in place to protect user data in the future.” Internal documentation shows access extended to some 90,000 developers in China, 42,000 developers in Russia and thousands of developers in Iran and North Korea. “We have grave concerns about the extent to which this access could have enabled foreign intelligence service activity, ranging from foreign malign influence to targeting and counter-intelligence activity,” they wrote. Meta said in a statement Tuesday: "These documents are an artifact from a different product at a different time. Many years ago, we made substantive changes to our platform, shutting down developers’ access to key types of data on Facebook while reviewing and approving all apps that request access to sensitive information."
House Commerce Committee Republicans skipped regular order, considering several TikTok bills at a subcommittee markup Tuesday, ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said during the proceeding. The bills address problems worthy of committee consideration, but Republicans haven’t held proper legislative hearings on several of the bills, so they haven’t gotten proper stakeholder review, he said.
Republicans’ return to a House majority is unlikely to mean a big shift in the chamber’s approach to space policy and legislative priorities since those matters have generally been an area of bipartisan cooperation, policy experts said in interviews. The House Commerce Committee made its first foray into space matters for this Congress Thursday via a Communications Subcommittee hearing (see 2301270076) that lobbyists saw as a precursor to panel leaders’ plans to prioritize advancing legislation to revamp the FCC’s satellite licensing rules. House Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., staked the panel's claim to a role in space policy, saying during the hearing it has "been far too long since Congress reassessed the role of satellite technology in the communications marketplace and whether or not our regulatory environment encourages investment and innovation in the space economy, or hampers it."
Apple and Google should remove TikTok from “their app stores immediately given its unacceptable risk to U.S. national security,” Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., wrote Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai Thursday. The Chinese-owned app is unlike other social media platforms because China requires parent company ByteDance to “support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work,” Bennet said. “No company subject to CCP dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr made the same request in June (see 2207150064). The company said in a statement that Bennet's letter “relies almost exclusively on misleading reporting.” The letter also “ignores the considerable investment we have made through Project Texas -- a plan negotiated with our country's top national security experts -- to provide additional assurances to our community about their data security and the integrity of the TikTok platform." Apple and Google didn’t comment.
The House Commerce Committee is talking to Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and incoming ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to advance privacy legislation negotiations, House Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., told us Wednesday.