A bipartisan group of House lawmakers reintroduced a bill aimed at addressing foreign influence on U.S. telecom infrastructure. Members of the House Armed Services Committee reintroduced the Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency, or FACT Act.
The FACT Act would require the FCC to publish a list of companies that hold FCC licenses or authorizations and are owned by or have sufficient ties to “foreign adversarial governments, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba,” according to sponsors. They are: Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI).
“Allowing companies owned by China and our other foreign adversaries to have access to our critical infrastructure is playing with fire, and we must have transparency over the influence they can have over the lives of American citizens,” Stefanik said. Khanna called the measure “a common-sense bipartisan bill to help us get the facts about which companies operating here in America are owned in part by countries like China.”
The FCC banned the sale of equipment from Huawei and ZTE in November 2022 over national security concerns. However, the legislation seeks to add transparency to the U.S.’s telecommunications infrastructure and expand scrutiny beyond these companies.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr supports the legislation. He said: It’s vital “that we provide a full and transparent accounting of every entity with ties back into the [Chinese Communist Party]—and the governments of other authoritarian regimes—that are operating inside America’s tech and telecom markets, yet there has never been a public disclosure when it comes to those networks of relationships. This only makes it more difficult for the public and private sector alike to assess the likelihood that those connections can be leveraged to harm America’s national security interests.”
The bill was introduced in the 117th session of Congress, but didn’t make it out of committee, according to NextGov.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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