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Trump security team sees building U.S. 5G network as option
President Donald Trump's national security team is looking at options to counter the threat of China spying on U.S. phone calls that include the government building a super-fast 5G wireless network, a senior administration official said on Sunday. The official, confirming the gist of a report from Axios.com, said the option was being debated at a low level in the administration and was six to eight months away from being considered by the president himself.
The 5G network concept is aimed at addressing what officials see as China's threat to U.S. cyber security and economic security. [...] "We want to build a network so the Chinese can't listen to your calls," the senior official told Reuters. "We have to have a secure network that doesn't allow bad actors to get in. We also have to ensure the Chinese don't take over the market and put every non-5G network out of business."
[...] Major wireless carriers have spent billions of dollars buying spectrum to launch 5G networks, and it is unclear if the U.S. government would have enough spectrum to build its own 5G network. [...] Another option includes having a 5G network built by a consortium of wireless carriers, the U.S. official said. "We want to build a secure 5G network and we have to work with industry to figure out the best way to do it," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Axios published documents it said were from a presentation from a National Security Council official. If the government built the network, it would rent access to carriers, Axios said.
Will it include "responsible encryption"?
Related: U.S. Lawmakers Urge AT&T to Cut Ties With Huawei
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 30 2018, @11:00AM (3 children)
So does it really mean the 5G devices will communicate using encryption without a backdoor?
Or will they let NSA have their thing with them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday January 30 2018, @11:29AM
And I betcha all the hardware will be made in China... along with all the design specs.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:51PM
You are missing the point.
This is a SECURE network. And a national network.
Therefore you won't need to use encryption any longer for domestic communications. This makes life much simpler.
The concern about encryption backdoors becomes moot.
It's a brilliant idea conceived in the mind of like a stable genius.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @05:48PM
"Or will they let NSA have their thing with them?"
Well, this is to be a government built 5G network apparently, so no back door will be necessary.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday January 30 2018, @11:56AM (4 children)
The NSA, FBI and other 3-letter agencies would just love for the government to run a network like that. But don't worry, it won't ever happen. In absolute the best case, the government is too slow and bureaucratic: they might have a network half-deployed (at 10x the cost) by the time the industry has already finished 6G deployment.
If you want a current example, look at the F-35. Prototypes flew in the previous century, so the design was basically defined when the program started in 2001. The first plane (production test) flew 5 years later in 2006. Nine years later, in 2015, production was finally, actually limping along, at 3 planes/month. We've all heard of the real-world problems - less than 50% availability, etc.. The program is a mess, and by the time it's finally fixed (at astronomical final cost), the planes will be obsolete.
The US government is simply not capable (perhaps never has been capable) of handling projects on this scale, in any sort of timely and cost-effective fashion. Bureaucracy, politics, over-regulation, frankly corruption - just not possible. I used to work in government procurement on major defense contracts. I've seen the ugliness.
What would happen is this: The government would commission plans. Request bids. Bids would be selected, there would be protests, adaptations, new rounds of bids. In the background, every Congresscritter will want to bring home the pork, meaning that the contracts will have to be split into subcontracts and sub-subcontracts and sub-sub-subcontracts. Major contracts might be in place in 3 years.
Each contract and subcontract, of course, brings its own layer of bureaucracy and government oversight on the one side, and additional employees on the other side, whose job is solely to keep the bureaucrats happen. Most of the budget will be expended just setting up the contracting structures. Oh, and there's a whole layer of shell-companies to be created. There probably aren't enough handicapped/female/black/muslim/transgender/fruitarian/whatever business owners in the various areas where subcontracts will be written. So the companies doing the actual work arrange for shell-companies to pass through the contracts (another layer of contracts and profit-skimming).
Should something actually manage to get produced, the sheer number of subcontracts will lead to system integration nightmares. Need we mention that the requirements will change numerous times along the way? First test deployment, maybe in five years. Problems will be found, more requirements changes...
Meanwhile, what about industry? Will the government prohibit them from deploying anything competitive? Or better? I'm serious about 6G - it will be old, by the time the government has finished setting fire to piles of money on a project like this.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @12:38PM (1 child)
"by the time it's finally fixed (at astronomical final cost), the planes will be obsolete."
The F-35 is already obsolete.
The MiG-35 can fly rings around it, the Su-57 will make it a practice target, and the S-400 radar can illuminate it quite nicely.
Added to the plane program cost itself is the need for massive forward C3i, SEAD, and ECM support to make this turkey even remotely survivable in an area-denial environment.
The F-35 will be relegated to being another stand-off weapons carrier, a role the B-1B can do B-52H better and cheaper, while the F-22 remains our only decent modern fighter. The old F-15 just can't keep up any more, except over medieval desert shitholes.
The F-35 is a giant boondoggle masquerading as an airplane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @09:51AM
The MiG-35 is almost as much of a boondoggle as the F-35. It must be the number 35. The MiG-35 is really just a rehash of the MiG-29, which is basically equivalent to an F-18. Most of the high-tech features it was supposed to have ended up not working. At best, it's the equal of the Super Hornet. The Su-57 will probably equal the F-22... if it ever gets built. The Russians probably won't even have as many of those as we do of the F-22, and they certainly won't have enough to export them.
The real competition for the F-35 is the Chinese J-20. The F-35 tries to do too many different things. The Navy, Marines, and Air Force (and the NATO equivalents) all have different requirements and they pull in different directions. The F-35 is like trying to produce bacon and chicken breasts from the same animal. You just get a pig that can't fly. The Chinese don't have that problem. The J-20 is simply a land-based multi-role fighter, the same thing people have been building since the 1960s, designed and built with the latest technology. It doesn't spend space and weight carrying around provisions for lift fans and carrier landing gear that it doesn't really need. It is a better fighter, and it costs less, and it's going to be available in greater numbers. American pilots may still be better trained, but that's no comfort to export customers. The F-35 should have been cancelled the moment it became obvious that combining every single possible mission into one airplane was not going to work. Which should have been about five seconds after someone first had the idea, but as soon as the design studies were finished would have been good enough.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday January 30 2018, @12:42PM (1 child)
But of course will be 10x the cost, they'll need to use US components.
Want it cheaper? Go fab the components in China.
What it built faster? Go to peopleperhour or whatever hourly-job sites operates in US and you'll get something kept together with duct-tape but done by evening.
No, it wasn't always like this.
But people like Hyman G. Rickover [wikipedia.org] aren't tolerated [wikipedia.org] any more - today, money speak louder than engineering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:03PM
God bless NAVSEA 08. May he enjoy green grapes in the Celestial EOS forever.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @12:22PM
Down with duh EFF CEE CEE.
Up with duh EEE EFF EFF.
Soystain freedumbs foreverz!
Kill the millennials!! Pour their blood into my retirement portfolio!!!
- Every Soylent Boomer
(Score: 4, Informative) by Snospar on Tuesday January 30 2018, @02:04PM
There are plenty of ways to send fully encrypted communications over existing "open" networks that are magnitudes cheaper to implement properly than trying to build your own "secure network" based on radio transmission. 5G is just another step on the LTE roadmap and is being used and abused to hype up any old story - this one is pure nonsense from start to finish.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:02PM (2 children)
There is an inconsistency here.
When talking about net neutrality I heard multiple calls for massive investments in nationwide broadband infrastructure. When 'the government' talks about doing that with 5g, the logical technology to build it, the entire internet panics.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:42PM
The reasons given for doing this don't make a sense.
That said, if the government builds and leases a huge 5G network or parts of one, users could use their own
responsibleend-to-end encryption to stay relatively secure from any built-in govt snooping.[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:53PM
Because 5G is not the wired (fiber) broadband we need. Only proprietary, user-subjugating, locked-down devices will connect to 5G. How many of those devices will support tethering? None? Also remember that the FCC is now dictating binary blobs because everybody uses software-defined radios.
The cell phone is Orwell's telescreen.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:47PM (3 children)
If Mexico is going to pay for the wall, then China should pay for our national 5G network.
Maybe China can also provide much of the equipment for the network infrastructure.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:02PM (2 children)
I fully expect they'd be happy to do that. I mean, if I were the Chinese, there's no way I'd even dream about becoming the lowest bidder on supply contracts for the brand new super-secure American network, and use that as a way to install bugs at American expense.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:09PM (1 child)
The Chinese would never install bugs!
(they're features!)
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday January 31 2018, @02:47AM
No, they'd be taps.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by leftover on Tuesday January 30 2018, @05:48PM (1 child)
It is clear, at least to me, that the Fed simply could not actually field a 5G network. A preferable, again to me, option would be for the Fed to specify the comprehensive standard for 5G and require all 'our' wireless utility operators to use that standard without variances. They even have an organization to do this! NIST used to do things just like this before regulatory capture and government by pork.
As an aside, the 5G standard should include an interface to the sibling fiberoptic broadband standard, similarly required as a condition of operating a public utility.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @06:37PM
The right way to do it is to allow the market to keep iterating solutions, and then carve out of the results a small system that meets explicit needs, and that will be automatically easy to implement with existing technology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @06:51PM
Let's see the list of gov officials with financial ties to the companies that will be awarded the contracts. It's all BS...as others have already said, end-to-end encryption can protect transmissions over existing networks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:57PM
It sounds like they want their own dedicated network, and not be part of the public network.
A non story really.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @09:55AM
It doesn't seem that different from the pressure the government is putting on phone companies not to sell phones from Huawei. They do this sort of thing all the time. "Build things the way we want, or we'll step in and bring our guns." That's how we got TV and movie and video game ratings, and six strikes copyright, and a zillion other regulations that are actually enforced by private organizations like UL. The computer industry keeps refusing to play ball with encryption, which must be incredibly frustrating, but for most other stuff industry just goes along with it, and there is nothing wrong with it most of the time.