2023-12-09 Why Undermining Local Resilience Will Jeopardize National Security
While the attention of the country and the world is absorbed by a host of international and domestic crises, some members of Congress are intensifying their efforts to sponsor, promote, and pass over 50 bills that would give the wireless industry carte blanche to blanket every inch of the country in antennas – whether urban or rural, on both private and public land. Proponents claim these bills will help to close the Digital Divide by delivering high-speed Internet access. On first glance this appears a reasonable goal.
The problem is that it’s a canard. In fact, these bills will perpetuate the Digital Divide and the market failures that led to it in the first place. What proponents euphemistically call “streamlining” deployment actually means big government in Washington trampling on state’s’ rights and the ability of local governments to make their own decisions.
Worse still, these bills will sow the seeds of further crises of national security. In this brief opinion we urge that:
Overreliance and dependence on wireless broadband will undermine local resilience and capacity to adapt to immediate serious challenges, especially when local communities are already prime targets of cyberattack.
Weakening local community resilience will impair national resilience.
Impaired national resilience and adaptability constitutes a serious risk to national security in an increasingly chaotic and dangerous world.
We offer a practical remedy.
Integral Resilience-- a National and Local Priority
The cornerstone and central purpose of the 2022 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is to promote national, state, and local adaptability and resilience. The term “resilience” is used 150 times in the Act. The federal government is allocating $1.2 trillion over 5 years in a wide range of programs at all levels to encourage resilience. The eye of the storm that will undermine local resilience is HR 3557,the misleadingly-named American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023. This bill will effectively cut the public out of the process, strip away local protections by accelerating non-discretionary rubberstamping of wireless cell tower permits, batching of permits, and illegally expand the powers of federal bureaucrats. Due process of public notice and hearings will be set aside and the fundamental balance of authority between the federal government and the states guaranteed by the Tenth and other constitutional amendments will be shifted, potentially forever.
There is a reasonable chance that HR 3557 will soon become law. It is being inconspicuously inserted as a rider in the reauthorization of NTIA in HR 4510. And there are other bills—for example, HR 1338 streamlining hundreds of thousands of satellite deployments, under relaxed cybersecurity; and HR 1339 and HR 6142 (S.2542) promoting precision agriculture, which presents unassessed risks to the nation’s food supply. and to crop yields. Taken together these bills, if passed, will significantly undermine both local and national resilience.
Local Communities Are Already Highly Vulnerable
Local communities are a prime target of cyberattacks. Water treatment plants, hospitals, police departments and even the automated systems that run cities have recently been hit by hackers, at times with disastrous consequences. A cyberattack can also disable local emergency fire response capability, as fire departments require reliable data to make informed decisions and deploy assets like fire engines and equipment effectively and safely.
How Impairing Resilience of Local Communications/Information Infrastructure Can Jeopardize National Security
Some legislators will dismiss the serious threats to local resilience as matters that must solely concern these local communities. This view ignores the reality that impaired local resilience can rapidly implicate and jeopardize national security.
Homogeneity of infrastructure: once a hacker uncovers a generic point of vulnerability, every town in America becomes susceptible.
Exponential rise in number of wireless nodes: increases the “attack surface”, or points of vulnerability in the network.
Increasing reliance on infrastructure with single points of failure: if thousands of towns rely on Starlink’s satellite constellations, and the network suffers a software error, millions of connections go dark.
Economic Impact: Local infrastructure is integral to the national economy. Disruptions can lead to significant economic losses, affecting not just the local economy but also having ripple effects on the national and even global economies.
Compromised National Security Communications: Local communication networks are tightly coupled with and often form part of a broader national security infrastructure. Any impairment can compromise secure communication channels, interfering with national defense and intelligence operations.
Prudent Next Steps
Here are some wise next steps members of Congress can take to address the situation:
Vote against HR 3557 in any form, and any bill it may be inserted into, such as HR 4510 (NTIA reauthorization).
Call for Joint Hearings by the Commerce, Homeland Security, and Armed Services Committees in the House or Senate to consider:
Implementing a 180 Day Pause on the 50+ bills that will increase reliance on wireless infrastructure, providing time for a comprehensive assessment of the national security risks resulting from the overreliance and overdependence on wireless technologies as the cornerstone of Critical National Communications/Information Infrastructure, as proposed in HR 3557 and related bills.
Adopting wired infrastructure as a faster, more cybersecure, safer, more energy efficient alternatives to overreliance and overdependence on wireless infrastructure.
Assessing cases like Chattanooga, Tennessee that are closing the Digital Divide, while delivering sustainable economic growth and well-paying jobs in cybersecure environments.
Commissioning the GAO and/or a private independent think tank to conduct such an assessment and issue a public report to the Congress within 180 days.
Conclusion
Members of Congress are busy. These days everyone has become very busy—so busy we fail to pay attention and lose our capacity to spot mortal dangers even when they are staring us in the face. Some well-meaning efforts present serious unexamined risks that do not rise to public attention. The imminent compromise of critical national infrastructure is one of them. The situation is under the radar, because it involves a complex set of policy and technical issues. We are unused to dealing effectively with complexity by adopting whole systems perspectives. Fortunately, a few sensible steps can be taken as outlined above. Future generations will thank us for taking the time to do so.
© Copyright, Julian Gresser, Broadband International Legal Action Network (BBILAN) November 2023