Cruz Ramps Up Battle Against DOD Backers Over Spectrum Reconciliation Push

Cruz insisted during the hearing that Senate Commerce, “as we take up reconciliation, will move forward on spectrum.” He told reporters afterward that the Pentagon “for several years has engaged in bureaucratic stonewalling, and their position” that “they can give up no spectrum ever, in any circumstance … is patently unreasonable.” Cruz said he had “extensive” conversations with DOD officials about their concerns on repurposing parts of the 3.1-3.45 GHz band and other military-controlled frequencies, including “a lengthy classified briefing with multiple” top Pentagon officials and some senior Senate Commerce members.

“The Pentagon's contention” in those conversations “that the military can't operate if the [U.S.] allows commercial use of the spectrum is absurd,” Cruz told reporters. He said he cares “deeply about ensuring that we can defend this nation and defeat our enemies, but acting like Luddites and pretending that global technology will freeze is not a strategy to defending this nation's national security.” If “China sets the global standards” for 6G, that will have “massive negative consequences for our national security,” Cruz said.

Clemson University professor Thomas Hazlett and Matt Pearl, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Strategic Technologies Program, were among the witnesses at the hearing who backed Cruz’s Spectrum Pipeline Act, which would require that NTIA identify at least 2,500 MHz of midband spectrum to reallocate within the next five years. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who co-sponsored the 2024 version of the bill, argued that the U.S. doesn’t “have time for squatters to bicker about what they’re going to do” amid the race against China for 5G and 6G leadership. House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Rick Allen, R-Ga., in January filed a 2025 version of the bill (HR-651) that mirrors Cruz’s 2024 iteration (see 2501230064).

Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told reporters she will continue warning Cruz against hastily moving the Spectrum Pipeline Act forward without more consultation with DOD and others. She said she noted multiple instances when “people just acted on their own” on spectrum, “and they ended up in court and ended up in dispute.” Cantwell said those instances included the FCC’s 2020 approval of Ligado's L-band plan and the 2019 interagency conflict on possible 24 GHz band interference risks to weather data collected by federal satellites in the adjacent 23.8 GHz band (see 1908300057).

Classified Briefing?

Cantwell told reporters her Spectrum and National Security Act, which didn’t mandate reallocation of any bands so airwaves studies originated during the Biden administration could proceed, “was a better approach to try to get those people to get together.” The “fact that we had both [the Commerce Department] and DOD saying they supported my bill was a breakthrough,” she said. That measure stalled amid opposition from Cruz and DOD backers (see 2409170066).

Cantwell and Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey were among several Senate Commerce Democrats who pushed for a panel-wide classified briefing to get details that might explain DOD’s concerns about spectrum reallocation. “We had a couple” such briefings during the last Congress, and “another [sensitive compartmented information facility] update probably would be helpful,” Cantwell told reporters. Kim said during the hearing that a briefing would provide lawmakers “very precise” information on the effect that less spectrum would have on a critical system’s performance and “some of the technologies that might be able to avoid that outcome and preserve the DOD capability.”

Fischer, who is also a Senate Armed Services Committee member, urged Republicans to weigh a spectrum reconciliation title’s value as an offset for extending tax cuts against “the cost and the timelines to relocate existing users” of any reallocated band. “DOD losing access to its spectrum bands entirely … comes with huge risks and will end up costing us more,” she said: A pipeline that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would yield $10 billion-$15 billion in license sales revenue over 10 years “may actually take 20 years to transition.” Fischer agreed “there are technologies that could make sharing spectrum possible, but DOD must have a seat at the table” in negotiations.

Fischer raised “concerns about the role that China has played in influencing our spectrum policy in this country. We're being told that we have to keep up with China, that they have far more midband spectrum available.” In “reality, China only has 10 more MHz of midband spectrum available for mobile networks,” she said. Bryan Clark, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, told Fischer that China “could be playing a very sophisticated game here where they're looking to get us to vacate parts of the spectrum that we need for our military sensors, while they retain that access.”

Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi and some other panel members who are also on Commerce appeared more eager for a compromise. “There’s a bit of a balancing act that goes with this,” said dual member Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo. “While I think DOD should have a voice in this process, I strongly believe that Congress has already established the NTIA as the primary authority for spectrum allocation, and it must lead, rather than act as a rubber stamp for the DOD.”