China has equipment that can spy on us in our telecommunications networks. We must remove it now

Due to a shortfall in federal funding for a critical national security program under the Secure and Trusted Communications Act — commonly known as “rip and replace” — US telecommunications networks remain riddled with insecure equipment manufactured by companies beholden to the government of China that can do everything from capture Americans’ data to disrupt critical communications at US Strategic Command. The potential consequences of the widespread infiltration of U.S. networks by Chinese state-connected companies Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corporation have been documented by national security agencies since 2017, and they pose a much more immediate and invasive risk to national security than spy balloons. The findings of the US intelligence and national security community are clear: this equipment provides the Chinese government with an entry point for capturing our conversations and harvesting the troves of data that we transmit over the airwaves each second, whether that data is traveling over a compromised network or another wireless system operating nearby. For the security of every American, Congress must act now to fully fund “rip and replace.”

[Gary C. Peters is a United States Senator in the Democratic Party from Michigan. Geoffrey Starks is a Commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission]