Dive Brief:

• Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced Thursday the launch of a Council on National Security, designed to counter growing cyber threats from foreign adversaries against the U.S. telecommunications sector. 
• The council will leverage the full range of regulatory, investigatory and enforcement authorities to help promote national security in the face of growing threats, particularly those linked to the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to the FCC. 
• “Today the country faces a persistent and constant threat from foreign adversaries, particularly the CCP,” Carr said in a statement. “These bad actors are always exploring ways to breach our networks, devices and technology ecosystem.”

Dive Insight:

The launch of the national security unit follows a series of sophisticated hacks into U.S. telecom firms, which have been attributed to a China-linked threat group called Salt Typhoon. 

The hacks were seen as part of a larger espionage campaign against the U.S., where state-linked hackers were able to gain access to calls and other sensitive data as well as intercept the communications of U.S. officials involved in sensitive political and diplomatic work. 

The council will include representatives from eight different bureaus and offices within the FCC. Carr named Adam Chan, who serves as national security council at the FCC, as the director of the newly formed unit. 

The council will have three main goals: 

• Reduce the dependence of U.S. telecom and technology sectors’ trade and supply chain dependence on foreign adversaries.
• Mitigate vulnerabilities linked to cyberattacks, espionage and surveillance from foreign adversaries. 
• Help ensure the U.S. wins the strategic competition with China over critical technologies, including 5G, satellites, quantum computing, IoT and robotics.

National security and cyber analysts said the FCC unit highlights the severe risks facing the U.S. to secure its digital supply chain as well as the need to counter threats from such sophisticated adversaries. 

“The telecommunications industry has long been hailed as one of the more cyber mature industries, and yet China was able to penetrate their networks and remain undetected for far too long,” Annie Fixler, director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said via email.

Salt Typhoon has continued targeting the U.S. telecom sector, as recently as February, according to Allie Mellen, principal analyst, security and risk at Forrester. The FCC has taken a number of measures in recent months to strengthen the industry’s security posture, but the formation of the council is a natural next step. 

“We hope that this new council will be a guiding but not punitive force to secure and strengthen telecommunications infrastructure,” Mellen said via email.