In recent weeks, Brendan Carr, commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has taken to Twitter to call out the Chinese regime’s propaganda surrounding the pandemic.
Carr said the Chinese regime has embarked on a global campaign to improve its image and deflect attention away from its initial coverup of the CCP virus outbreak that resulted in a global pandemic. This needed to be countered, he said.
“It’s important that we always send a clear signal, whether to our own media here in the U.S. or across the world, that we stand strong for free speech and not having the government interfere with the free flow of information,” Carr said.
Earlier in April, Hua responded to a tweet by U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus about the need for the United States and China to work together to combat the virus. Hua wrote that the U.S. official was “welcome to China anytime and talk to anyone in the streets to enjoy the freedom [sic].“ Carr jumped at the opportunity to expose what ”freedom” under the communist regime looks like.
“The Chinese people are the ones that are most directly and most often brutalized by the communist regime,” Carr said. “And so I think we should all stand up for them when they have the courage to stand up to these brutal communist leaders.”
Hua responded to Carr’s tweet, noting his list of names and adding that he was “welcome to Wuhan to pay respects to the heroic city. But Plz [sic] don’t pretend to be a detective.” The commissioner, in reply, reiterated his request to un-disappear those individuals so he could speak with them.
Securing Our Networks
Outside of Twitter, Carr’s work at the FCC has also focused on making sure telecoms infrastructure in the country is free from security threats posed by the Chinese regime.“What we’re called to do with the FCC, increasingly, is to look at the threat and the potential threat to U.S. telecom networks of entities that may be owned and controlled by the communist regime in China,” Carr said.
For example, “we took action against Huawei and ZTE, two companies that we determined were too tightly controlled by the Communist Party,” he said.
The security concerns surrounding Huawei and other Chinese telecom firms stem from Chinese laws that compel companies to cooperate with Chinese intelligence agencies when asked.
But it’s not only China Mobile receiving more scrutiny; the FCC has also set its sights on all other Chinese companies currently participating in the U.S. telecom network.
5G
Ensuring the security of the country’s next-generation of wireless 5G networks is a core concern of the commission, Carr said.“If our 5G networks are insecure, every single thing that we value in life is going to be insecure,” he said. “And that’s why we’re taking such aggressive action at the FCC looking at Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile, looking at China Telecom, supporting this trend to software-based network to make sure that we have not just the best 5G platform but the most secure platform as well.”
5G will offer internet connectivity at speeds 10 to 100 times faster than 4G. The fast connection is set to revolutionize many industries, including transportation, health care, and manufacturing.
Carr said that four years ago, the United States was at “serious risk” of ceding leadership in 5G to China. But “we’ve engaged in a significant turnaround, and the U.S. now has the strongest 5G platform in the world,” he said.
The FCC has achieved this, Carr said, by cutting red tape to allow 5G cell towers to be constructed faster and by opening up “more spectrum than any other country in the world.”
“That’s one piece of probably a dozen or more spectrum bands that we’ve been getting across the finish line,” Carr said.