Cruz Says Biden-Era DOD Pressured Contractors to Lobby Against Spectrum Legislation

Cruz has been ramping up his battle with DOD over military officials’ vehement opposition to any airwaves bill that would mandate reallocation of Pentagon-controlled bands (see 2502190068). Cruz urged Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday to investigate whether the Chinese Communist Party “or its affiliated entities might be conducting or furthering a campaign to oppose” spectrum legislation (see 2503250055).

Cruz told Hegseth that Senate Commerce learned that “multiple Pentagon officials and career staff during the Biden administration engaged directly with members of the United States defense industrial base and encouraged, and potentially pressured, them to lobby the Congress in opposition to” a spectrum legislative package that would restore the FCC’s lapsed auction authority. “This kind of jawboning is corrosive to the trust between elected lawmakers and Pentagon officials and is precisely why Congress outlawed direct lobbying by executive branch agencies in the first place,” Cruz said.

The lawmaker noted that in 2023 then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo “endorsed federal legislation that would have allowed for the auction of 5G-friendly airwaves held by the Pentagon,” but he said then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley “opposed allowing the President to decide whether to allow for an auction, according to a leaked Pentagon memo.” Milley’s “leaked non-concurrence memo is particularly curious” given Hegseth’s decision to revoke his security clearance and order "an investigation into his conduct,” Cruz said.

Lockheed Martin and three other major defense contractors collectively spent slightly less than $172 million on lobbying during the Biden administration, including “to maintain an unacceptable status quo” on spectrum policy, Cruz said. He sought relevant DOD documents by April 8, including all “communications between or among officials, employees, or consultants of the DOD and employees of any third-party organizations” on spectrum and wireless issues. DOD didn’t immediately comment.

Senators Incredulous

Senate Armed Services Committee member Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a leading GOP opponent of repurposing parts of the DOD-controlled 3.1-3.45 GHz band, told us he hadn't seen Cruz’s letter, but “if he's got some evidence that [illegal lobbying] was occurring, I'd like to see it.” Rounds questioned why “any contractor who works with different parts of the spectrum [would] want to” lobby against Cruz’s push for reallocating DOD bands, which would force military incumbents “to move to other parts of the spectrum, which would clearly be an advantage for any military contractor to be a part of creating a harder series of radar systems.”

“Everything that we've said has been based on just the fact that we don't think that moving away from these particular parts is advantageous to [DOD] because of the unique locations of where these radars are located,” Rounds said. “And everybody who looks at radar understands that the Chinese understand it. That's the reason why the Chinese have been lobbying a lot of the commercial interests to use” the lower 3 GHz band “for expansion purposes, because they know how good the radar capabilities are and the unique physics of that part of the spectrum,” Rounds said.

Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said she hadn't seen Cruz’s letter, but she was unaware of DOD-directed action on spectrum during the Biden administration beyond secure briefings with members of that panel and Armed Services. She's still pushing for a follow-up briefing for Commerce and Armed Services members on DOD concerns after a late February hearing on spectrum legislative issues. Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., wouldn't comment on Cruz’s claims until he had read the letter.

Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday night that the FCC’s May 5 effective date for its order expanding the parts of the 6 GHz band where new very-low-power devices are permitted to operate without coordination (see 2412110040) is “less than” the Congressional Review Act’s 60-day delay threshold after a major rule’s publication. GAO said the FCC published the rule in the Federal Register on March 6, and Congress received it March 7. GAO noted the FCC “stated that because any changes to the design of very low power (VLP) devices will be voluntary for device manufacturers, the rule does not have net cost implications for the existing unlicensed devices ecosystem.”