Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

The Federal Communications Commission began collecting information from telecommunications carriers on the use of Huawei and ZTE equipment and services in their networks. This follows the FCC’s adoption of a rule barring the use of Universal Service funds to purchase equipment and services from companies posing a national security threat. The FCC has proposed requiring carriers receiving Universal Service funds to remove and replace existing equipment and services from such companies.

The Justice Department has essentially given up hope that tech companies will voluntarily build into their products a special way for law enforcement to access encrypted communications to help track terrorists and criminals. Instead, the department is focusing on getting legislation that forces companies to cooperate –  and is hoping encryption-limiting laws in Australia and the United Kingdom will ease the path for a similar law in the US, said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. “If there were a proposal from tech companies or a desire to talk about this issue t

President Donald Trump says he wants America to win the race to the fast new wireless future. He took it seriously enough to sign a presidential memorandum setting a deadline of July 2019 for a new national strategy on allocating the airwaves. That deadline came and went with no strategy in sight. In September, a Commerce Department undersecretary promised that the strategy was still on the way, telling a gathering of government officials that it would be released in the fall. A Commerce official said that the department did indeed deliver a draft to the White House.

A Q&A with Robert Blair, senior advisor to the White House Chief of Staff. His new challenge: help further Trump’s global aims on 5G, including an ongoing campaign to prevent America’s allies from relying on Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. “One of the messages that I want to bring to people is: Take a breath,” Blair says. “The Chinese are not winning this race.”

It’ll be years before most people have 5G phones and a super-fast network to connect them, but the future of mobile technology is shaping up right now. Behind the promises lie some big government decisions about what to prioritize, how to compete, and how fast to move. As citizens and consumers, whether they know it or not, people are being asked to weigh convenience against privacy, national competitiveness against national security, and speed against price.

Inrupt, the start-up company founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to redesign the way the web works, is expanding its operational team and launching pilot projects in its quest to develop a “massively scalable, production-quality technology platform.” Berners-Lee said there had been a “rush of interest” from open source developers, entrepreneurs, tech company executives, and government officials to support Inrupt’s mission to decentralise the web and hand power back to users. But Inrupt now had to focus on the complexities of turning its underlying Solid technology into a scalable platform.

Back in 2011 Marc Andreesen famously observed, “Software is eating the world.” Fifth-generation wireless technology is part of that evolution. Amidst all the hype about 5G, what makes it different is the simple reality that it uses software to virtualize activities that were once performed by function-specific pieces of hardware. Huawei would be disadvantaged if telecommunications networks threw off their old ways and began to think like Google and other digital-age companies.

US officials say Huawei can covertly access mobile-phone networks around the world through “back doors” designed for use by law enforcement, as Washington tries to persuade allies to exclude the Chinese company from their networks. Intelligence shows Huawei has had this secret capability for more than a decade, US officials said. Huawei rejected the allegations. The US kept the intelligence highly classified until late 2019, when American officials provided details to allies including the United Kingdom and Germany, apparently.

The US 5G Leadership Act of 2019 (S 1625) would establish a program, administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to reimburse certain US communications providers for the cost of removing and replacing any equipment made by Chinese companies, other companies subject to extrajudicial direction from a foreign government, or entities deemed to pose a national security risk to the US. Under the bill, recipients of federal funding would be prohibited from using US funds to purchase communications equipment from any of those entities.