Trump Admin Considers Nationalizing 5G Mobile Network To Fight Chinese Hackers

• A leaked presentation has revealed plans by the US Government to nationalize the upcoming 5G network in order to guard against Chinese hackers, reports Axios.
• The presentation, provided by a senior National Security Council official also mentions an alternative plan to let wireless providers build their own 5G networks which compete with each other.
• 5G will eat 4G’s dinner in terms of speed and latency – at around 10-20 gigabytes per second.

Axios is out with an exclusive report that Trump Admin national security officials are considering an unprecedented federal takeover of the upcoming 5G wireless network in order to protect against China and evil 400 lb hackers alike. The takeover has been likened to “the 21st century equivalent of the Eisenhower National Highway System,” which would create a “new paradigm” for the wireless industry by the end of Trump’s first term.

Via Axios:

The main points: The documents say America needs a centralized nationwide 5G network within three years. There’ll be a fierce debate inside the Trump administration — and an outcry from the industry — over the next 6-8 months over how such a network is built and paid for.

Two options laid out by the documents:

1. The U.S. government pays for and builds the single network — which would be an unprecedented nationalization of a historically private infrastructure.
2. An alternative plan where wireless providers build their own 5G networks that compete with one another — though the document says the downside is it could take longer and cost more. It argues that one of the “pros” of that plan is that it would cause “less commercial disruption” to the wireless industry than the government building a network.

An industry expert who spoke with Axios says the second option is not really an option – as a single centralized network is required to “protect America against China and other bad actors.”

“The source said the internal White House debate will be over whether the U.S. government owns and builds the network or whether the carriers bind together in a consortium to build the network, an idea that would require them to put aside their business models to serve the country’s greater good,” according to Axios.

The document also points to an “AI Arms Race,” in which “China has assembled the basic components required for winning the AI arms race,” adding that “Data is the oil of the 21st century and China has built the world’s first strategic reserve.”

Complete elimination of privacy standards combined with a strong firewall has enabled China to transform its “great firewall” into a “great ocean” of data. The current algorithm battles are slowly drifting in China’s favor as companies like Google build AI research centers inside China’s information sphere and world class data scientists mine the data (ours and theirs) without restraint…

…Building a nationwide secure 5G network sets the condition for future success in the information domain. Not building the network puts us at a permanent disadvantage to China in the information domain.

Read the full leaked document HERE

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