Security News > 2021 > January > Outgoing FCC Chair Issues Final Security Salvo Against China

Outgoing Federal Communications Chair Ajit Pai has issued a final warning about Chinese telcos at the end of a tenure spent cracking down on companies like Huawei, ZTE and China Telecom.

Pai, a former telecommunications industry lobbyist and in-house counsel for Verizon, told Reuters that managing security threats against U.S. networks from Chinese espionage will be the "Biggest national security issue that regulators will face in the next four years."

Pai has spent a significant amount of time and energy at the FCC trying to block Chinese telecommunications companies from selling their hardware into communications networks in America - including devices, switches and routers.

Further, Pai's FCC designated ZTE and Huawei national security threats, forbid any U.S. provider from doing business with the Chinese companies and even got Congress to approve $1.9 billion for providers to rip out and replace existing Chinese telecom equipment on their networks.

"The telecom industry is strategic to all of our economies, and I think it's a major trade chip that's being used," Gordon Smith, CEO of Sagent telecom told The Hill in the wake of the FCC's 2019 sanctions against Chinese telecom companies told The Hill.

It's still unclear whether the new Biden administration and its new FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel will take the same hawkish stance with China, but she very publicly broke with Pai on Trump's 2019 tariffs on Chinese goods, warning they would stall the rollout of 5G in the U.S. "The administration's trade war with China threatens to increase the costs of wireless infrastructure by hundreds of millions of dollars at a critical moment in the race to 5G," Rosenworcel, then an FCC board member said in a Politico op-ed.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/outgoing-fcc-chair-security-china/163318/