And infrastructure investments. Good afternoon. Welcome to csis. People dont realize the nature of National Security has changed in the last couple of decades. Its not as imperative as it was. The u. S. In some ways is a little bit behind other countries when it comes to how we think about the spectrum and how we think about 5g. 5g is the core of Economic Growth in the future and how we need the spectrum needs. Let me say that we are grateful for Jessica Rosen morsel chart of the federal Communications Commission has agreed to command a speak on the topic today. She brings over two decades of communications experience, policy experience and service to the fcc. Prior to joining, she was the Senior Communications counsel for the Senate Committee on science and transportation. Under the leadership of John D Rockefeller many admired and senator daniel in a way. Before entering public service, she practiced communications on washington, d. C. A Senior Advisor for cybersecurity and the department of commerce, the fcc first chief counsel for cybersecurity and also a former employee of senator John Rockefeller so with that i should add that as a child in officer in the u. S. Army. We are grateful. Thank you for doing this. If i could ask you to come on out. Thank you to csis and as jim said, when i was a child, out of college i served as a logistics officer in the army. Which formed a lot of my own personal take on these issues of the overlap between commercial strength and National Security. I just really want to thank my former colleague now chairwoman Jessica Rosen morsel who as we will discuss has been one of the leaders or at least indepth participant in essentially every policy to find the early 3g era how do you see the importance of u. S. Leadership on these issues, what differences does it make and what did we talk about in the quarterback affect how does it affect u. S. Technology security commercial interest . First of all, thank you for having us here even though you invited people to do the math on how long ive been working on the spectrum policy. I think its good when you start the discussions to go back to the beginning because it was 50 years ago this april that marty cooper stood on a street in new york city with a 2pound device and made the first wireless call. The legend has it he was not working for motorola and it started with a bit of spite. When we went from there it was tremendous because a decade and a half later for a few thousand dollars you could have one of those devices and a little after that we found ourselves in the Second Generation of devices with voice and texting and then the 3g era where we brought in new internet capabilities that where we kicked into high gear in the United States was in the 4g era because a bunch of things came together. We developed a smart phone here on our shores. We made available lots of spectrum in the 700 megahertz band to make sure the phones connected could go online and watch a video and do lots of things and then the applications economy grew up here. All those things came together and turned the United States into a wireless powerhouse and here we are in the early days of the 5g era, and i think as it is evolving, if we do this right the least interesting thing will be our phones because we will bring wireless functionality into the world at large. So much around us more effective, efficient and the warehouse logistics and Industrial Equipment management, it is divisive that are used for medical and military purposes, all of it and when i think at the wireless transformation, that phone call in new york city, do something everything connected in the world around us, but i want is that innovation to take place on american soil with Democratic Values, because when we do that, we grow our economy here but we also export those values to the rest of the world, and i think that makes us stronger in the National Security. All at once. All at once. You mentioned just for the audiences awareness to hammer home that point, 5g is not just telephones, it is telephones, but its the devices that will provide ubiquitous connectivity throughout the society and not coincidentally will produce and collect more data than has ever existed in history and authoritarian regimes like china are well aware of this. They have a very different approach to data and what it can be used for then we do. One thing i just want to jump into is as we head into the conference coming up later this year, theres a pretty significant gap particularly in licensed made ban spectrum that you might call the arteries of the 5g ecosystem. A very significant gap between with china has allocated domestically, what the u. S. Has allocated domestically and with many even importantly but china is supporting for harmonizations van china is for the global harmonization. Does that matter and if so, why, is there something to be concerned about . The short answer is yes it matters a lot. You dont have to be an engineer to understand this but its a sweet spot for the deployment because it has a mixed propaganda and capacity and thats where we think we will be able to develop all of the services that are beyond. In the United States i think we were a little slow in the last administration to understand just how important the spectrum is for 5g. Our early options were with higher band spectrum, but we pivoted pretty fast and now we have a lot of airwaves weve made available for commercial use and whats happening next we have the world of radio conference which is kind of like the olympics. We are very excited at the federal Communications Commission but its an event where every four years the world comes together to talk about wireless policy and identify where to harmonize the efforts and the United States its going to be challenging because the world has taken note of the success and they are doubling down on the efforts in every country to try to see if they can reproduce some of that success with especially during china and we are challenged in the United States because we are having a harder time identifying how to repurpose the spectrum for new commercial use and that is not the case in other countries. We are also challenged in the United States because for the first time the fcc spectrum option authority which is a tool that we use to distribute these airwaves has lapsed and congress is going to need to renew it. So this conference is going to be more challenging than the ones that came before and i would like us to enter it from a position of strength and that would mean a supporting more mid band spectrum with the United States plans in mind and also have thing that authority. I think if we can have both of these we will have the wind at our backs. I was going to get to the spectrum option authority but as you raise it, can you just give you are very familiar with the proceedings. What does it do for the u. S. Delegation that goes to dubai if they do not have the authority . I think its important to realize the way that we defined definethe spectrum for the comml use for a long time in the country they left it up to regulators like me to say you get some for broadcasting, you get some for other purposes but somewhere along the line congress decided that they would borrow some of the academic ideas and say how about instead we just auction it off. When we identify airwaves we want to push into commercial markets and those have been a big deal. Some of those have won the nobel prize. We have held more than a hundred auctions over the 30 years weve had this authority and weve raised 233 billion, that is billion with a b. We might be in washington but that is still an awful lot of money so we have been managing this in a really efficient and effective way. The world has taken note, so many countries come into the United States and want to learn from the experts how we divvied up and what the policies are so that tool, which has helped us to be a leader in the world, not something we have in our toolkit anymore because on march 9th, Congress Left that authority lapsed. Its absolutely essential that we get it back because it shows that we are committed to continuing this practice of making the airwaves available for the commercial use and using the creative tools to do it. In the lead up in nato and the alliance is the United States, forgive me im a football fan, often the quarterback and you have this quarterback affect where other countries and allies maybe you dont have the capability that we have look to us to kind of lead the way. Is there a similar dynamic in the diplomatic arena . Do partners look to us to be the quarterback . We look at his history look at what we did with 4g technology and how long we have had auctions to distribute these airwaves. There is an understanding that we are created when it comes to these policies. We build industries on top of these airwaves that can go out and change the economy and change the world so there is so much interest. Historically we have been rallying others in the process and then taking advantage of the scale. Bring others in and help grow their sectors back home. A lot of the wireless work has benefited from being in the leadership position. You say quarterback. I would say pied piper, getting other people to follow but that is challenging right now. Theres other countries and they do not have Democratic Values at their core that are organizing very fast to try to get others to follow and use equipment that they develop and work with standards that they develop and leave us on the side and we cannot let that happen. I want to tie that point with Something Else you mentioned you reverted to begin physical infrastructure. In my view im not a spectrum engineer, radio frequency spectrum is inherently abstract. Invisible radio wave. Theres other elements of the Communications Systems to get the importance of the trust and supply chains they get the importance within that within the trust supply chain. One way of saying with this leadership in mind all of the investments that the government has made in secure and trusted and diverse supply chains 50 plus billion dollars for the chips act and 1. 5 billion for the Wireless Innovation Fund administered by an tia a whole host of other political and diplomatic capital, will those efforts work if we run out of spectrum . It seems like it is another part of the equation. Most powerful if we work together. What we did in the act is historic. If we are going to do some advanced industrial planning, semi conductors, little pieces of silicon that help with electrical current and computers and smart phones and so much modern equipment we produce an alarmingly small percentage in this country and we are going to change that. We invested 50 billion to change that and i think that is really smart and it makes sure the supply chain for the devices are not at risk. To try to produce the next did generation that help to power 5g and beyond. All of these things are smart but its going to keep going further, faster if we have spectrum that is available for the new commercial use. The next question has to do with scale and this goes back to the global harmonization. Another initiative the u. S. Government and the fcc under your leadership and predecessors leadership has undertaken enormous steps to push out or mitigate the risk in the commercial ecosystem, the commercial wireless ecosystem in particular. If china is successful in aligning the world around the spectrum bands, does that put that socalled rip and replace and others by initiatives that are aimed at mitigating, does that put that at risk by creating this and other kind of tsunami of new un trusted equipment . We certainly do have those risks. What is amazing in the last administration and the Current Administration is the growing consensus that there are certain equipment vendors whose presence in the networks creates Security Risk and working with National Securities identified some of the vendors including working with congress theyve decided we will help them take it out of the network and pay for replacements. That is a program that we colloquially call. We have the funds to do that but we sent a signal to the world we dont trust this equipment and you shouldnt either. There are definitely other countries that have heard us loud and clear and are also making efforts to restrict the use of this equipment in their network that we can only go so far. To also make sure we clear more spectrum and build more scale and develop software and equipment alternatives so the rest of the world has other places to go when they want to plan for spectrum and by equipment. We are going to have an Industry Panel after this and we will get into the economics and the technical aspects of the future planning. With that in mind this is something ive heard you say before, not to put words in your mouth with longterm planning is very important but we need nearterm action. Why is that, unpack that a little bit. I think because i am inpatient and definitely sitting at the helm of the fcc, i want to get something done right now. Often times in washington we invest in longterm planning at the expense of making Immediate Progress and i dont want to avoid making progress in the here and now so if theres something we can do in the spectrum fast, first get congress to return the Spectrum Authority and a powerful position as we head to the world conference and also theres a lot of studying underway and what we might be able to make available. Im mindful china has proposals for the conference and a portion of the gigahertz band im hoping we will be able to have some discussions about what we can do ahead of the confidence and then i finally once we get that authority back we should look at what kind of inventory we can hold because theres a lot of licenses and different bands that are at the fcc and we might be able to throw them together and produce an auction sooner rather than later and that would allow the carriers to round out there holding and maybe bring more service to more places in the country. One thing that is a sort of unspoken challenge weve talked about is what i see as a fallacy that theres government incumbent spectrum largely or significantly the department of defense and military systems that kept me safe in combat zones on one side and that is previously known as National Security spectrum and then on the other side of this commercial spectrum for companies to make money and consumers to watch cap videos. I personally think that is a fallacy of this. Economy and it is dangerous if we approach the policy from that standpoint but is it doable to take a holistic approach how the United States collectively perceives and m. I. Too optimistic to think we might be able to do that . I think we badly need to do that. You are speaking at this as a former army officer. I think it is in our bones that National Security comes first. Its the duty of every Public Servant to think about Public Safety but this zerosum game we have managed to create is not yielding any benefits at this point and i think we have to recognize we are created when it comes to technology in this country and if we can develop the spectrum policy to support that creativity we are going to build industries, technologies and services that are going to develop and support the civilian economy but also help support the National Security. We see that with the commercial space economy and we should figure out how to develop more of it from here and breaking down that zerosum attitude is probably the first step in doing that. Does it allow for the holistic integration of the economy does that help provide a positive feedback loop for the commercial sector to the government sector and to the Defense Industrial base into the Intelligence Community . Is there a way to kind of turbocharge this with a positive feedback loop of innovation and sharing capabilities. We have to be a little bit more creative across the board. I think weve produced an environment where we talk about it in terms of scarcity we have to ask what policies are making it feel so scarce i think we have to look at more Dynamic Access systems and more opportunities for federal preemption with secondary rights for commercial actors. I think a lot of the spectrums are stuck in this zerosum game and the belief that its yours or theirs and weve got to figure out how to break that down and do it fast because there are others in the country that are eager to exploit. Youve talked a little bit about the steps that you think we can take. On the pipeline act and all of these that you were involved in in writing are there any things that we can do now to shift the focus of the capabilities and turn scarcity into necessity for innovation . One of the things we focused on and ive had a lot of support for my colleagues thinking about the spectrum policy and how we send out a signal we put out a policy statement and the reason that matters is that more efficient receivers can use our airwaves more effectively to prevent the likelihood of likely interference. So much of the Government Procurement into government thinking about the spectrum is focused on the transmitters and i think we missed the opportunity to also focus on the receivers and the receiver efficiency to make sure that its a part of the Government Procurement thinking to help us start being more efficient. Are there any numbers i dont know if that is the right technical term but do we have data on that . I dont know if its been studied well enough but youve got to identify everything we can do differently to make ourselves more effective because if you have receivers that are better built and less likely to bleed into adjacent airwaves. You will be less likely to have problems and i think that the way to change that is to make that something the government thinks about and procurement in the military. That is a grade point. So we talked a little bit about the far end of a expert on anything dealing with telecommunications into the commercial environment focusing on the intelligence side of things. They go into a locked room in a room without details. In the environment now we feel like our own careers have converged where commercial communications and 5g is now inescapably a security issue. I have been in those rooms where the commercial interests are literally outnumbered. How do you see this playing out for instance on the Radio Advisory Committee we jumpstarted this, how do we modernize the approach to security so that all of the equities are literally at the table . I think we need to make sure that its a part of every conversation that we have. We are working on a world where we connected so much around us. Its wireless and wireless devices and all these sensors in the world and all that efficiency is fabulous, all the information that it produces the patterns that we would be able to recognize and artificial intelligence. But theyve introduced so commercial security and National Security are going to go hand in hand. And i think that is true for the government, the private sector, both of us, absolutely. I think that we have reached the time here. I just want to thank you again for everything youve done in your present position in the past position to lead on these issues. You really have helped accelerate this convergence of the understanding of commercial security and National Security and we look forward to what we are doing and we will try to lay out some concrete recommendations for how to get back the zerosum game and advanced u. S. Interest more broadly. We are going to take a two or three minute break for the next panel. For everyones awareness it takes for adults to replace chair rosenworcel but we will be back in about two minutes. Thank you. [applause]