Lapse of FCC Auction Authority a Blow to Competition With China: CSIS Expert

The March expiration of the FCC’s spectrum auction authority threatens U.S. competitiveness with China, Clete Johnson, Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow-strategic technologies, warned during a Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy webcast Wednesday. Johnson is the author of a new CSIS paper arguing for reallocating more federal airwaves for commercial use.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told us she and other congressional leaders are “inches away” from a deal on a package that would restore the FCC’s mandate and address a range of other spectrum policy priorities. She acknowledged “several issues” that she's still trying to work through with committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other lawmakers prevented “four-corners agreement” so far this year (see 2306120058). Cruz objects to the House Commerce Committee-cleared Spectrum Auction Reauthorization Act (HR-3565) partly because of some of the priorities the bill proposes funding using a portion of future spectrum sales revenue (see 2306130040).

“I genuinely believe that this is an existential issue for the United States -- I don’t say that lightly,” Johnson said of broader competition. “Can we and our allies survive as market democracies if China dominates 21st Century technology?” he asked. Johnson, a partner at Wilkinson Barker, was previously senior adviser-cybersecurity and technology at the Department of Commerce and the FCC’s chief counsel-cybersecurity.

The lapse of auction authority is “an urgent, hair-on-fire crisis,” Johnson said. Auctions are a good way to ensure efficient use of the airwaves because when carriers spend billions of dollars on spectrum “they’re going to make good use of it,” he said. Efforts stalled in Congress to reauthorize FCC authority (see 2306210076).

“The processes … of different agencies who touch spectrum have really broken down over the past many years,” said Carolyn Brandon, senior fellow at the Georgetown center, also on the webinar. Lapse of auction authority is “part of overall dysfunction” in Washington, she said. Auction authority was a nonpartisan issue “for many, many years,” she said.

The U.S. remains “for now” ahead of China on 5G, Johnson said. “We are severely behind in allocating in the spectrum pipeline more mid-band spectrum for licensed 5G,” he said. The major carriers will deploy C-band and other spectrum from recent auctions over the next few years, he said. “The challenge is there’s no pipeline for spectrum after that,” he said. That mid-band pipeline “won’t run dry” for China, he said.

“It is China’s intent to dominate the 21st Century technology environment,” Johnson said. “5G is a big part of that” though “it’s much more than 5G,” he said. 5G is about more than better cellphones, he said. It’s about “ubiquitous connectivity” through the IoT and sensors, connected vehicles and warehouses, connected logistics and precision agriculture and a world where everything will be connected, he said.

The Chinese Communist Party wants to make a “police state approach to society the norm,” Johnson said. “The more data you have, the more AI and information operations you can run, and then on the military side the more cyber operations and quantum computing,” he said.

Johnson said CSIS will host a spectrum security event July 25, which is expected to include FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. She also addressed security during a January CSIS event (see 2301170068).

The new CSIS paper follows a June paper arguing spectrum allocation decisions are critical to competitiveness with China (see 2306080042). “Misguided policy decisions could surrender any U.S. lead in 5G and future generations of network technology,” that paper said.

The U.S. is “becoming vulnerable as a ‘spectrum island’ by not allocating sufficient mid-band spectrum for 5G,” Johnson wrote. He warned of a growing gap with spectrum available for 5G in China. “This gap threatens core U.S. national security interests, and China’s spectrum strategy is deliberately seeking to exploit it in order to advance its own interests,” he said.

“Reallocating or otherwise transitioning spectrum for the purpose of achieving the most effective and efficient use of that spectrum will be indispensable for U.S. security interests, as the country needs a vibrant technology economy to counter autocratic governments that seek to undermine free market democratic governance,” the paper said.

CSIS Senior Adviser William Reinsch, meanwhile, applauded U.S. efforts to “rebuild” a relationship with China, though doing so is difficult “because of the continuing string of incidents that make reconstruction difficult,” he said. “The administration has been wise in trying to rebuild a civil dialogue with China, even if that means standing up to congressional China hawks,” Reinsch wrote Monday on the CSIS website: “Senior-level visits have resumed, and we should soon be seeing lower-level follow-ups.”