House Armed Services Adds Anti-Ligado Language to FY21 NDAA

The House Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday to include in its FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (HR-6395) two amendments aimed at hindering the FCC’s approval of Ligado’s L-band plan, as expected (see 2006260051). The Senate continued to consider its Armed Services Committee-cleared NDAA version (S-4049) with anti-Ligado language intact (see 2006110026). Senate Armed Services Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., attempted but failed to advance by unanimous consent a manager’s amendment to S-4049 containing additional telecom and tech language.

House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee ranking member Mike Turner, R-Ohio, offered both anti-Ligado amendments. One would bar DOD from using its funding to “retrofit any [GPS] device or system, or network that uses” GPS “to mitigate interference” from Ligado’s planned “commercial terrestrial operations” on the L band. The language wouldn't bar the department from “conducting technical or information exchanges” with Ligado or any other entity that conducts commercial operations on the frequency. The proposal would exempt DOD actions “seeking compensation for interference” from Ligado or GPS “receiver upgrades needed to address other resiliency requirements.”

The other amendment would bar the Pentagon from signing, extending or renewing a contract “with an entity that engages in commercial terrestrial operations” on the L band unless the secretary of defense “has certified to the congressional defense committees that such operations do not cause harmful interference” to DOD GPS devices. Turner didn’t speak about his proposals, which Strategic Forces Chairman Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., offered as part of a package.

House Homeland Security Committee ranking member Mike Rogers, R-Ala., also an Armed Services member, backed Turner’s proposals during the markup, citing the Ligado plan’s potential impact to commercial satellite operations. “We’re pushing the DOD to use more commercial satellite services,” which is “just another reason the decision by the FCC was wrong,” he said. The FCC and Ligado didn’t comment.

“We’ll wait and see” how future talks affect anti-Ligado language in HR-6395 and S-4049, House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chair Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said in an interview shortly after House Armed Services adopted Turner’s amendments. “We always thought the FCC should go through their process and decide,” she said: “The fact it’s taken so long has made” the entire situation “awfully complicated.”

House Armed Services also adopted several other telecom and tech amendments into HR-6395, including the text of the Spectrum IT Modernization Act. HR-7310 and Senate version S-3717 would require NTIA to develop a plan for modernizing its IT systems. It would make NTIA develop “a time-based automated mechanism” to “share Federal spectrum between covered agencies” (see 2005140057). S-3717’s language is also included in S-4049.

Rep. Kendra Horn, D-Okla., successfully attached language from the National AI Initiative Act. HR-6216 would create a set of National Science Foundation-coordinated AI institutes aimed at accelerating artificial intelligence research focused on an economic sector, social sector or on a cross-cutting AI challenge. It also would formalize interagency coordination and strategic planning on AI research and standards via the Office of Science and Technology Policy and an Interagency committee.

Language from Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., would direct GAO to assess DOD management of cyber incidents and efforts to mitigate future ones. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., proposed requiring DOD to provide a briefing to House Armed Services by Feb. 1 on the range of options available to the department to encourage secure hosting environments for defense industrial base companies.

Senate

Inhofe failed to convince Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to allow UC approval of a manager’s amendment to S-4049 that includes language from the Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things (Digit) Act (S-1611) and Deepfake Report Act (S-2065). S-1611 would convene a working group of federal entities and stakeholders to recommend to Congress how to facilitate growth of IoT technologies. S-2065 would direct a Department of Homeland Security deepfake study (see 2006250071).

The manager’s amendment includes language from the Harvesting American Cybersecurity Knowledge through Education (Hacked) Act. S-2775 would create an OSTP group to coordinate federal cybersecurity workforce training programs within the departments of Homeland Security and Transportation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA and NSF (see 1911050061).

Language from Inhofe and Senate Armed Services ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., included in the manager’s amendment would make the Air Force secretary “responsible for the procurement of commercial satellite communications services for” DOD. Other language would require the president to “develop and maintain a plan to restore” the U.S. economy “in response to a significant event,” including identifying “critical distribution mechanisms for each economic sector that should be prioritized for operation during a significant event,” including for “national and international communications networks, data-hosting services” and cloud services.

There’s language in the amendment, largely via Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, that would implement March recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission (see 2003110076), which he co-chairs. The underlying S-4049 also includes language implementing some of the commission’s recommendations, as does HR-6395.

An earlier version of Inhofe’s manager’s amendment included modified text from the Utilizing Strategic Allied (USA) Telecommunications Act, as expected (see 2006300078). HR-6624/S-3189 would require the FCC direct at least $750 million, or up to 5% of annual spectrum auction proceeds, to create an NTIA-managed open radio access network R&D fund (see 2001140067). The modified text substantially reduces the amount of required federal investment. A spokesperson for Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., noted an “eleventh-hour” change in the bill’s language would have required $1.5 billion in discretionary appropriations sans language to pay for it.

Inhofe originally proposed including the Open Technology Fund Authorization Act. HR-6621/S-3820 would establish the Open Technology Fund as an independent grantee of the U.S. Agency for Global Media charged with “countering internet censorship and repressive surveillance and protecting the internet as a platform for the free exchange of ideas.” Senators had filed several other amendments, including to insert the text of the Reliable Emergency Alert Distribution Improvement (READI) Act. HR-6096/S-2693 would in part eliminate the option to opt out of certain federal alerts on cellphones and require active White House and Federal Emergency Management Agency alerts be repeated.

Senate leaders “hope” to “lock in a series of amendment votes” for later Wednesday into Thursday, setting up likely final consideration of S-4049 when the chamber reconvenes the week of July 20, after a two-week recess, an aide told us. Senate leaders are wrangling over votes on other amendments, including one from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to insert the text of the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (Chips) for America Act. S-3933 would allocate $10 billion to match state and local incentives to encourage semiconductor manufacturing and direct the Commerce Department to establish a $3 billion grant program.