Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Nathan Simington issued a warning that Chinese technology remains embedded in rural internet service providers near sensitive military sites, causing a “pain point” for national security, the Daily Caller reported Tuesday.
In an interview with the Daily Caller, Simington said that despite a mandate from Congress to remove hardware from Chinese telecom giant Huawei in 2019, the effort was underfunded until December. The gap has allowed Chinese equipment to remain in place.
“You probably saw last week that we found undisclosed communications equipment in some Chinese-made solar panels,” Simington told the Caller. “The solar panels have the ability to phone home just like E.T.,” a reference to the 1982 movie “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.”
“At a certain point, you have to ask yourself, what isn’t phoning home?” he added.
At issue is that Congress’ “rip and replace” program in 2019 funded the effort to remove Chinese-made Huawei and ZTE equipment and services from U.S. networks at $1.9 billion, falling short of the $5.6 billion needed, Simington said.
“There’s nothing as expensive as a cheap product,” he told the Caller.
Passage of the National Defense Authorization Act in December finally filled in the gap on funding.
Simington told the Daily Caller that Huawei targeted rural providers near U.S. military installations, saying if the U.S. had done that in China, “the executives would have found themselves in shallow graves.”
“I’m not proposing any kind of measures like that against Huawei,” Simington told the Caller. “But it’s really an intolerable situation.”
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