2026-01-15 Comments re: FCC NPRM 25-276 Rulemaking & Suggested Remedies
BBILAN files Comments Warning of the National Security Risks of the FCC’s NPRM 25-276: “Build America: Eliminating Barriers to Wireless Deployments”
Below are the essential elements of BBILAN’s Comments filed on December 28, 2025. The full text can be found here. The FCC’s NPRM 25-276 constitutes an illegal administrative overreach that violates the 10th Amendment among other Constitutional provisions, as well as various federal statutes, and undermines Presidential Executive Orders and policies, most prominently President Trump’s March 19, 2025 Executive Order calling for the preparation of a National Resilience Strategy within 180 days.
The FCC’s NPRM, if adopted, especially in combination with the FCC’s recission of its own cybersecurity regulations (November 13, 2025), greatly increases the cyber-attack surface, hence cyber-vulnerability of local communities. The FCC’s misguided and badly timed action creates a national security risk for the following reasons, among others:
Local communities, especially their wireless infrastructure, are already prime targets for cyberattacks. Open wireless mobile networks to be proliferated by the FCC’s misguided policy are already inherently cyber-insecure.
A prime target and point of vulnerability is the edge where open mobile meets telecommunications equipment.
Local cyberattacks have the significant potential to cascade into national catastrophes.
The prepositioning of Chinese attack assets and agents, as described by Shedd and Badger in their 2025 book, The Great Heist, will dramatically increase the above risks.
The terrestrial risk is augmented by the FCC’s policy of blanket-licensing satellite constellations that are tightly coupled to mobile wireless earth stations.
Remedies: Toward a National Resilience Strategy
The accelerated delivery of optical fiber to the premises at the last quarter mile will reduce local cyber vulnerability, build resilience, and simultaneously entail other benefits, including significant reduction of public and environmental health injuries, energy efficiencies from reducing wasteful energy usage necessitated by wireless; faster, more reliable, durable, robust, and low latency fiber infrastructure.
Focusing optical fiber on the edge will deliver compounding cybersecurity benefits. This is technically feasible today.
Local governments have at hand options to enhance cybersecurity by replacing wireless with optical fiber in dense populations, while relying on wireless where human populations are scarce—the very opposite of current FCC policy. The new field of Ethical/Wisdom AI can play an important role in identifying these effective options and avoiding the tragic choice the FCC is about to implement.
The Comments recommend that the FCC table the NPRM 25-276 for 180 days and withdraw its recission of cybersecurity regulations to the extent that they protect local communities. During the proposed 180 day moratorium, the Comments recommend organizing an interagency National Resilience Strategy Advisory Group on the lines of the State Department’s Japan Industrial Policy Group (JIPG) during the Carter Administration.
The Advisory Task Force should adopt a proven process, the Single Negotiation Text, that is being successfully used in public disputes mediation. It would gather diverse perspectives and expertise from within the government (White House, National Security Advisor, Homeland Security, DOD, CISA, other agencies, the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus and Congress), and leading private sector experts. The Task Force would produce an Action Plan, thereby fulfilling the mandate in President Trump’s March 19, 2025 Executive Order.
Within 180 days the country would have in place a National Resilience Strategy, which would address the national security risks identified in the Comments. The Administration will also have created a framework to address other complex strategic policy challenges, including deploying AI for wise and ethical applications in public policy formulation and implementation.
As part of its mission, the Advisory Group report should include a commissioned analysis of the national cost savings and economic benefits of delivering a National Resilience Strategy and Action Plan as mandated in President Trump’s March 19, 2025 Executive Order.
False Choice Masquerading as a Tragic Choice
The FCC's ostensible tragic choice is in fact a false choice, masquerading as a tragic choice. It is based on incorrect and false assumptions on the necessity of subordinating national security, public and environmental health, privacy, and efficiency to the narrow interests of maximizing profits of one powerful industry. Meanwhile, the interests of consumers in easy and efficient use of cell phones can be well supported by the hybrid optical fiber-mobile wireless solutions proposed. When confronted by a decision having potentially irreversible disastrous consequences, the wise course for the FCC and the Administration is to pause and to examine carefully available, less costly, innovative alternatives.
Next Steps
If you are interested in supporting BBILAN’s implementation of the strategy presented above, especially in the establishment of an Advisory Group and the launch of a Single Negotiating Text process, please reach out to us.