Federal Communications Commission	FCC 22-84


STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER NATHAN SIMINGTON

Re: 	Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain through the Equipment Authorization Program; Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain through the Competitive Bidding Program, ET Docket No. 21-232, EA Docket No. 21-233, Report and Order, Order, and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 
I’m proud to vote to approve the implementation of the Secure Equipment Act, banning untrustworthy equipment from our country’s networks. This is the culmination of a bipartisan effort spanning multiple presidential and FCC administrations, and it will help make Americans more secure by preventing hostile governments from using their technology exports to establish footholds in our networks.
I want to thank the FCC staff for their especially hard work on this item.  The Secure Equipment Act is a complex law, and they succeeded in the challenging task of turning it into an effective regulatory scheme. They should be proud.
But as we celebrate this victory, we cannot forget that our work to secure our country from insecure and untrustworthy equipment is only just beginning. In addition to banning equipment from untrustworthy state-controlled companies, as we have done here, we need to address the proliferation of insecure devices more generally. Hundreds of millions of actively used wireless devices in our country are susceptible to security vulnerabilities for which they will never be patched. This is a ticking time bomb for the security of our wireless networks and devices, and a disincentive to building more, because the public will have justified, low expectations of their security.
We all know the risks of attackers gaining access to sensitive consumer, business, and government data and controls through insecure wireless devices. But we also need to think about distributed signal jamming attacks and the other new vulnerabilities that wireless technologies expose for spoofing, sniffing, and jamming attacks. If we are to fulfill our mission to increase the adoption of sophisticated communications services while managing the use of spectrum to the public benefit, we must ensure that the public can have total confidence in signal security. I hope the FCC takes strong action to defend against these threats and to anticipate them before they manifest as crises.