Leveraging robust information sharing about cyber threats and vulnerabilities is critically important across all of the nation’s telecommunications systems, said U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), chair of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology.
This includes greater intelligence swapping “about the supply chain of hardware and software that make up our communications networks,” Rep. Blackburn said during the subcommittee’s May 16 hearing entitled, “Telecommunications, Global Competitiveness and National Security.”
The hearing provided subcommittee members with a better understanding about cybersecurity threats to competition and national security, as well as how the federal government and industry respond to such threats.
U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, said such a thorough approach to the issues is needed “before committees in Congress, and different federal agencies, launch solutions to this complex challenge without proper coordination and investigation.”
Subcommittee Vice Chairman Leonard Lance (R-NJ) pointed out the importance of securing America’s telecom networks.
“Just yesterday, the nominee to head the National Counterintelligence and Security Center testified that Chinese Intelligence uses Chinese firms, such as ZTE, as a resource and he would never use a ZTE phone,” said Rep. Lance during the hearing. “I am concerned about the national security implications of lessening the punishments against ZTE in a trade deal with China.”
The United States must proceed with caution regarding China, though, advised Samm Sacks, senior fellow in the technology policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The challenge is that U.S. and Chinese technology development, supply chains, and commercial markets are tightly intertwined,” testified Sacks, adding that the use of a potential unilateral approach by the United States that would isolate it also would undermine U.S. economic prosperity, technological leadership and innovation capacity.
“In confronting China,” she said, “we must have a clear understanding about the consequences of our actions, and where there will be costs to ourselves.”
In discussing supply chain risk management, Charles Clancy, director and professor at the Hume Center for National Security and Technology at Virginia Tech, testified that “any determined adversary, with enough time and resources, is going to be able to penetrate a target network.”
Clancy advised that the most sensitive parts of a network be identifiable and that the government “be able to fortify those as much as possible against those risks, whether it be a supply chain risk or an active cyberattack risk.”
Clete Johnson, a partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP, said the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plays an important role in mitigating threats to the nation’s telecom supply chain and infrastructure.
“Perhaps the most important of recent actions is the FCC proposal to prevent government funds from purchasing technology or services from companies that pose a national security threat to the U.S. communications infrastructure,” Johnson testified.
Under the new rule, which the FCC proposed in April, monies from the FCC Universal Service Fund — which subsidizes broadband and telephone access for low-income Americans — could not be used to buy products or services from companies or countries that pose security threats or cybersecurity risks to the United States’ communications networks. The FCC didn’t specify which countries posed such threats.
Johnson said the proposal “will advance the policy discourse on these difficult issues and can be a lever to move the whole government, and the market, in the right direction.”