China is ahead of the U.S. on many fronts in its plans to emerge as the world leader in 5G, and eventually 6G, experts warned Wednesday during a webcast by the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. The group released a paper urging that the U.S. reassert leadership in wireless technology.
Exports to China
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China-based Hikvision USA asked the FCC to “move forward in a timely manner to review and approve” its proposed plan for compliance with agency rules (see 2308070047). Hikvision representatives spoke with staff from the Office of General Counsel and Public Safety Bureau, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 21-232. The company is on the FCC’s covered list of organizations that pose a threat to U.S. security. “At present, Hikvision and its affiliates are unable to obtain equipment authorizations on any of its equipment, including non-covered equipment, due to both a lack of clarity as to the scope of ‘video surveillance’ and ‘telecommunications equipment’ that is covered and the lack of an approved compliance plan,” the company said.
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, didn’t mention broadband or other telecom issues in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday evening. However, she promised global leadership on “space and artificial intelligence.” Harris said she would ensure “that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st Century.” She also called out her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, over “his explicit intent to jail journalists” and political opponents. Trump has repeatedly called for FCC action against media companies for their "fake" reporting (see 2401170050). Harris also mentioned the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan: “We know what a second Trump term would look like. It’s all laid out in Project 2025, written by his closest advisers.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is identified as the principal author of the FCC chapter in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, the book laying out Project 2025’s plan for a second Trump administration. Commissioner Nathan Simington is credited as a contributor. Trump has repeatedly disavowed connection to Project 2025, though he has also publicly embraced Heritage's effort. In a Truth Social post during Harris’ speech he wrote: “LYING AGAIN ABOUT PROJECT 2025, WHICH SHE KNOWS, AND SO DO ALL DEMOCRATS, THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH!”
Wi-Fi advocates and wireless carriers offered the NTIA different versions of the 6G world in some of the first comments made public in response to a May request for comment on the state of 6G development (see 2405230010). Comments were due Wednesday. NTIA is expected to eventually post them.
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Any incoming presidential administration must “be ready to implement a reindustrialization plan" and change financial rules to resurrect American manufacturing and compete with China, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington wrote in China is Winning, Now What?, an essay in the fall issue of the journal American Affairs. The essay doesn’t mention the FCC, and it only touches on tech policy. Instead, it focuses on China’s superior manufacturing capacity and on the global dependency on Chinese products. “It would have been unthinkable for Cold War America to source key components in logistics and telecommunications from the Warsaw Pact,” Simington wrote. “And yet, our long history of peaceful relations with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has led us to sleepwalk into exactly this unacceptable state of dependency.” Simington noted that the rise of electric vehicles has positioned China as a global competitor to the U.S. auto industry and said a collapse of American carmakers would deeply injure America. Should China become the dominant international automaker, it could “normalize the presence of hundreds of millions of vehicles packed with sensors, radios, and firmware on every road in the world,” Simington added. “The intelligence benefits alone are incalculable, but control of such markets will in addition weaken countries that the PRC routinely calls its geopolitical adversaries.” To address the matter, the U.S. should “use tariffs and waivers as precision tools for strategic products and industries” but it must also “address larger questions of tax, accounting, and finance rules that have contributed to an anti-industry investment environment,” Simington wrote. Federal spending should be reallocated “to promote world peace through American strength.” He added, “The social costs of failure, here and abroad, will blight the lives of generations yet unborn.”
Communications Litigation Today is tracking the below lawsuits involving appeals of FCC actions.
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, criticized the Department of Transportation Thursday night for seeking to zero federal funding for the Maritime Administration’s Cable Security Fleet program in its FY 2025 appropriations request. Congress allocated $10 million for the program in FY 2024. “Congress created the CSF Program through the” FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act “to ensure a domestic capability to maintain and repair undersea cables,” Cruz said in a letter to Maritime Administration head Rear Admiral Ann Phillips. He said the program requires the administration to contract with privately owned U.S.-flagged cable vessels in “times of national emergency. The security of undersea cables depends on having access to these ‘trusted’ ships for maintenance and repair of cables, rather than relying on foreign-flagged repair ships sometimes owned by foreign adversaries, which may be recalled to their home countries or otherwise pose risks and reliability concerns during conflict.” The “request to zero out the CSF program is puzzling considering the uptick in threats to undersea cables,” including from China and Russia, Cruz said: “U.S. officials have raised concerns that foreign cable repair ships -- on which we will further rely absent the CSF program -- pose a security threat because underwater cables are vulnerable to tampering. Specifically, other countries could tap undersea data streams, conduct reconnaissance on U.S. military communication links, or steal valuable intellectual property used in cable equipment.”