Cantwell Presses Case Against Senate Commerce GOP's Spectrum Reconciliation Proposal
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., continued Thursday to criticize panel Republicans’ proposed spectrum language for the chamber’s budget reconciliation package (see 2506060029). She argued during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event that the spectrum proposal would leave DOD and aviation stakeholders more vulnerable to China and other malicious actors. House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui of California and 30 other chamber Democrats also urged Senate leaders to jettison language from the reconciliation package that would require governments receiving funding from the $42.5 billion BEAD program to pause enforcing state-level AI rules.
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Meanwhile, the House voted 214-212 to pass the 2025 Rescissions Act (HR-4) with language clawing back $1.1 billion of CPB's advance funding for FY 2026 and FY 2027 (see 2506090036). Chamber Democrats unsuccessfully attempted to strip out the CPB language from HR-4 ahead of floor consideration (see 2506110031). Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron quickly criticized House passage of HR-4, saying in a statement that lawmakers have “endangered the future of public broadcasting in America. The Senate must listen to the public and put a stop to this attack on essential educational programming, invaluable accountability journalism and lifesaving public information.”
During the CSIS event, Cantwell said she wishes Democrats “were involved in the negotiations [on the spectrum reconciliation language], because I would definitely go to the White House and say to [President Donald Trump], ‘You have a vision of what you want to do to make the U.S. more secure with Golden Dome and all of these ideas.”
“But I got news for you,” Cantwell said. “This is about disarming, and you are basically going to hand the Chinese a victory.’” Cantwell in part argues the Senate Commerce proposal’s carve-out excluding the 3.1-3.45 GHz band is inadequate. The proposal would obligate an 800 MHz spectrum pipeline and renew the FCC’s lapsed auction mandate through Sept. 30, 2034.
The telecom sector is “saying, ‘Well, we just need it, because we want more [5G] and 6G,’” Cantwell said. “But you're basically saying, ‘I'm going to open up critical defense infrastructure to the infiltration by a lot of people to come in and interfere.’” She said she understands that wireless companies “want to sell more cellphones and sell more policies, [but] I think we see" from the 2024 Chinese government-affiliated Salt Typhoon hacking incident (see 2411190073) that "they’ve got their own” problems. “Not all of them, but some of them, basically didn't even understand the attack,” Cantwell said. “We as Americans should take this personally, because it's attacking our information. It released a ton of information on us. So you have to build more secure networks, telecom sector.”
Cantwell followed up the CSIS event by pressing AT&T and Verizon for information on potential ongoing vulnerabilities in their networks related to Salt Typhoon. “Current and former government experts continue to indicate that Salt Typhoon may remain active in U.S. networks,” Cantwell said in letters to AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. “They have explained how telecommunications networks are complex and full of hardware and software vulnerabilities Salt Typhoon can exploit to create multiple pathways to reenter the network.” Given the risks to national security, critical infrastructure, and privacy, AT&T and Verizon “must make every effort to protect their customers against these highly sophisticated foreign adversaries -- and be fully transparent about such efforts,” Cantwell said.
Cantwell said during the CSIS event that DOD “in the past has been very clear” in its opposition to repurposing military-controlled spectrum, but “I'm not sure what's happening of late. I'm not sure [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth understands this technology. I think that's really a big thing that's going on.” She isn’t “sure a lot of these people understand the technology at all, [because] if they did, they wouldn't be advocating for this level of … openness to a system that should be more secure.”
Matsui and other House Democrats echoed concerns that Cantwell previously raised about the Senate Commerce AI language (see 2506110052) in a letter to Cantwell, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “Congress created BEAD as the product of thoughtful, bipartisan deliberations to expand affordable broadband access to every American,” the lawmakers said. “In contrast, the reconciliation text’s AI moratorium provision represents a reckless and dangerous attempt to force states to forfeit their ability to protect the public from the rapidly escalating risks of unregulated AI and automated decision systems. It is textbook federal overreach.”
“Rather than hold the administration accountable for betraying BEAD’s commitment to connectivity, the AI moratorium provision would destabilize BEAD further by allowing the administration to claw back long awarded funding from states unwilling to relinquish their role in ensuring safe and responsible AI innovation,” the House Democrats said.