story of his brother, alexander vindman who came to national attention for his testimony before congress on president trump's relationship with ukraine. >> i was lieutenant colonel assigned to the white house on detail, deputy legal advisor on the national security council staff, the chief ethics official on the national security council staff. i worked right across the hall from my twin brother, and he had the portfolio of russia, ukraine, belarus, moldova. he listened to the phone call, he heard the president's attempt at extortion and he reported directly to me. >> watch members of congress all this week starting at 9:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> up next, a hearing on how american broadcast frequencies or spectrum are managed and regular for the public.

scholars and analysts also spoke -- testify on the technological race with china. this hearing is about two hours. chair cruz: the senate committee on commerce, science and transportation will come to order. the committee will construe the adoption of the budget for the 119th congress. we will move into the hearing to examine the critical role of spectrum policy in driving the u.s. economy. the budget resolution authorize the expenditures from march 1, 2025 until february 28, 2027. we were given this allocation by the rules committee -- for a two-year budget.

that is the end of my extensive remarks and since this is a ministerial task, that will hopefully be adopted by unanimous consent. i recognize the ranking member for a motion. >> i move that the budget be reported favorably. chair cruz: is there a second? all those in favor say i, all those opposed, the motion is agreed to. this concludes today's votes. all right, we will now move on to the hearing. good morning. auctioning spectrum has been one of the most successful drivers of american innovation, economic growth and global to elegy leadership.

-- global technology leadership. enabling our nation's wireless networks to deliver faster better connectivity, fueling the rise of breakthroughs from the iphone degenerative ai. this has created millions of jobs, spurred industry, positioned america at the forefront of global innovation and improved the lives of american consumers. the next wireless leap, whether it is driverless cars, remote surgeries or air taxis may be just around the corner. but whether americans will reap the benefits, and whether it will be made here or overseas depends on our will to unlock more spectrum. we stand today at a critical juncture. it has been two years since the fcc lost auction authority and three years since the last

meaningful auction of spectrum valuable to american consumers. the dithering and the inaction characteristic of the prior administration yielded nothing. meanwhile, our spectrum innovation lags the rest of the world, as china, an adversarial surveillance state threatens to control worldwide communications networks. thanks to this new congress and the historic election of president trump, we have an opportunity to build better and faster networks to create tens of thousands of high paying jobs and to secure america's global technological lead. the spectrum pipeline act which leader thune, senator black earn and i introduced last year, would restore fcc auction authority and end our spectrum drought. through a clear pipeline,

american companies will have the certainty they need to invest billions in their networks and lead the world in revolutionary innovation. certain special interests aligned with adversaries like huawei have falsely portrayed a spectrum pipeline as a blunt instrument to deprive the defense department of the spectrum it needs to engage in 21st century warfare. our bill ensures both consumer interests and defense capabilities are protected. the bill has a generous timeframe for performing the necessary feasibility studies so federal missions are not degraded and it uses the existing deliberative process which is carried out by technical experts across the federal government, including dod to begin auctioning a fraction of underutilized federal spectrum. but studies are not enough to

spur action. we need clear goals. for years now, u.s. government incumbents, particularly bureaucrats in the pentagon under the direction of general mark milley have insisted that they are using every single megahertz as efficiently as possible and must maintain absolute control of their vest holdings. i am more than open to compromise on what the aggregate pipeline target should be. zero is objectively unreasonable, and no institution should be afforded blind deference, especially not one that can't even pass an audit and claim that leaving billions of tanks and helicopters and weapons in afghanistan was more efficient than bringing them home but don't just take it from me. military analysts with first-hand expertise agree that we are falling behind.

both in terms of its effective usage and in the development of intellectual property and wireless capabilities. further, the pentagon is not the only user of the airwaves globally. many of the bands used by dod currently are also used commercially in countries like taiwan and japan and korea. if dod is technically unable to operate alongside wireless carriers using these bands domestically, how on earth could we expect to prevail in a pacific conflict? it is simply not credible. there are also significant opportunity costs for our national defense and delaying spectrum auctions. a pipeline would be lucrative, raising $100 billion or more that could go directly to rebuilding our military, funding border security, and the financing coast guard polar ice breakers.

that is incredibly valuable offset for the reconciliation process we are undergoing right now. the risk of doing nothing is broader than lost revenue. we are fighting a global technology race against communist china. if we do not catch up and lead, it will be huawei that creates the backbone of tomorrow's global communications network, through which much of the world's economic traffic and our own government's traffic will flow. chinese infiltrations like the recent salt typhoon attack and the release of deepseek are but a small preview of a future where chinese equipment sets the standard and dominates global networks. negative ripple effects cascade indefinitely from there, handicapping our efforts and other adjacent technologies like ai, quantum, and semi conductors, and threatening to

make america the loser in the 21st century technology race. we cannot allow that to happen. now is the time. i will make a final point. the commerce committee, as we take up reconciliation, will move forward on spectrum. it would be an abdication of our responsibility to do anything otherwise. we must move quickly and together to preserve the promethian flame of american technology and bolster our national security. we must prevail in the race against china. i recognize the ranking member. sen. cantwell: thanks for convening this important hearing. i look forward to hearing all of our witnesses and your expert testimony on the subject and i look forward to working with the chairman and all of my colleagues in any way possible

to resolve our previous conflicts on these issues. last congress the committee work to expand spectrum access while protecting critical department of defense and federal system infrastructure and i think we can all agree on two facts. the commercial industry needs access to more spectrum to innovate and bring new technologies to market, but second the vital national security -- aviation security and essential federal capabilities that rely on spectrum must be protected. one of our witnesses characterized it best and in his testimony said the u.s. military will need to operate in additional areas of electromagnetic spectrum to address the increasing challenges of the threat environment. to overcome its numerical and geographic disadvantages to china. i cannot agree more. during the last congress i work to try to balance those access issues with national security

efforts and many of my colleagues have directed the department of commerce to have a larger role in trying to define the issues of agency overlap in this area of spectrum. that led to the department of commerce and the joint chiefs of staff agreeing on the legislation we put forward that would open up more spectrum for commercial use and study how we could work together on spectrum sharing. i want to continue to focus on how we get this right. we need to ensure our global leadership and advanced wireless technology against china is there. we need legislation and leadership that does not abandon our national security goals. i know it is easy to say this is what i want to do but i am convinced when looking at the past history here the only thing that is going to work is the collaborative hard-working efforts and probably test vetting of technology that will

allow us to get this right for the future. in 2019 the fcc auction 24 gigahertz band, endangering our ability to track and predict hurricanes. in 2020 the fcc approved a petition to use satellite spectrum for 5g and risk severely disrupting essential gps service. u.s. government is now facing a 39 billion dollar lawsuit because of that debacle, and in 2020 the fcc also rushed to option the band adjacent to airline all to matters. concerns with those flights nearly caused the faa to ground all flights. it also put $81 billion worth of private investment by the wireless industry at risk, significantly delayed lead appointment of 5g in the united states. in early 2000 congress had to spend about $1 billion replacing the radar system on the b-2 stealth bomber because of uncoordinated changes to spectrum allocations.

this is exactly what i am talking about when we say we need to work together. we cannot continue to have this play out in a way where we are not thinking about our military capabilities. in ukraine we are seeing how central spectrum is every day. the russians are jamming ukraine drones, communications, satellites. this shows that our military is to be nobler and more flexible if we are going to succeed in our operations that kind of congestion environment -- and that kind of spectrum environment. today our warfare does depend on spectrum enable communications. as one brigadier general said, " spectrum is no longer just an enabler of the warfare, it is the warfare." today's victories and battles

will depend on us getting this right. if we lose the spectrum more we lose the war. today's hearing is about how we keep the u.s. globally competitive while china and russia and other foreign adversaries are making inroads. i would like to work with my colleagues on legislation that would help us get this right and continue to move forward. i will also note that president trump has a line "the most challenging driver of u.s. spectrum policy access will be the trump administration's initiative to establish a comprehensive missile architecture for the united states." while i don't know how we can do that if we get the spectrum away. i look forward to today's hearing and i thank my colleagues in the chairman for this important hearing. chair cruz: thank you. i'll now introduce the

distinguished panel of experts we have testifying. joining us is dr. thomas hayes let, professor -- thomas hazlet t, professor of economics at clemson university. he served on the fcc and is -- his book "the political spectrum" chronicles the history of spectrum legislation and how spectrum reforms, jenna evaded explosive technological innovation and economic growth. our second witness is dr. charles baylis, a professional of electric and computer engineering at baylor university , the oldest continuing operating university in the great state of texas. dr. baylis serves as director of smart hub, a dod spectrum innovation center that organizes research efforts among 25 researchers across 15 universities to revolutionize the increasingly crowded spectrum used by dod and nonmilitary users. our third witness is matt pearl,

director of the strategic technologies program at the center for strategic and international studies. mr. pearl has more than 14 years of government service, including most recently as advisor to the national security council. prior to that he served as associate bureau chief of the wireless telecommunications bureau at the fcc where he helped transition the use of dod spectrum to include commercial wireless use in multiple bands. our final witness, brian clark, is a senior fellow and director for the center of defense concepts and technology at the hudson institute. from 1982 to 2013 he served in a variety of roles in the united states navy. while in the navy mr. clark received the department of navy superior service medal and the legion of merit. we will start with dr. hazlett, you are recognized. dr. hazlett: thanks very much

and i thank everyone for their kind invitation to participate in today's discussion. radio spectrum is a vital component of the modern economy yet artificial scarcity has been imposed by public policies that prevent entrepreneurs from moving underutilized spectrum resources into their highest valued uses. such impediments have long been a problem, dating to the 1927 radioactive facets of the law required mother may i. the term describes the slow process in which idle bandwidth is discovered and then transitioned to productive employments. needless permissions and redtape too often limit markets and impede america's economic growth. bands have been reserved for maritime communications in utah. the forestry service has enjoyed exclusive frequency rights in new york city and today 35 channels from the tv allocation table of 1952 are still reserved

for terrestrial over the air broadcasting. i love lucy may have benefited from this arrangement. we now have more efficient means to deliver video using cable, satellites, and broadband internet. these long lags continue to plague entrepreneurial ventures, reduce competition, and frustrate wireless consumers desiring more bandwidth for enhanced communications. yet the good news is that u.s. policy has not been static. american regulators have taken corrective actions to promote liberalization, in particular, market-oriented policies of relaxed mandates for how spectrum must be utilized. in granting users and licensees wider discretion via flexible use spectrum rights, enormously valuable new competitive forms have been unleashed. today, over 10 times as much bandwidth is available for mobile wireless than in the mid-1990s.

vast mobile ecosystems have, as a result, bloomed. in addition, competitive bidding auctions assign such rights, replacing arbitrary distributions. recent decades have brought experiments with new methods and even the once-hidebound fcc has innovated. in the early 1990s, the instruction -- excuse me, the introduction of what became known as second generation cellular or 2g wireless was held up for some years by protests registered by holders of microwave allotments. these incumbents claimed catastrophe would result from any change in band access rights. as is often the case, such claims were overwrought. the situation was put into clearer focus and resolved by a clever fcc policy, an overlay. this approach granted emerging 2g networks the right to utilize vacant frequencies in the microwave band under flexible use. further, the overlays granted

the new licensee secondary rights over spectrum occupied by the microwave transmissions. this protected incumbents, but gave life to entrants by defining the spectrum access rights needed for bargains to be struck. investors in 2g networks were able to pay incumbents to move aside, using alternative technologies or other frequencies, so as to free up bandwidth for higher-valued services. the holdup ended. airwaves became available, and the u.s., then lagging eu countries in digital wireless, began to innovate and forge global leadership in emerging network services. the overlay policy has since been used in numerous contexts by u.s. regulators. the 500 -- excuse me, overlays were modified in auction 107, held in 2020, 2021. the 500 megahertz allocated there had appeared crowded, congested, and unavailable to entrants. in fact, with incentive

payments, the entrants relocated. winning bidders paid $94 billion for the new licenses. of that, some $13 billion was passed through to the incumbents. the reconfiguration of the band took less than four years, lightning fast in spectrum regulation time. such mechanisms have improved incentives for cooperation in the process of radio spectrum reallocation. many more targets of opportunity for efficient reforms in radio spectrum await. thank you very much. chair cruz: thank you. dr. bayliss. mr. baylis: thank you and good morning. we'll try that again. and good morning. my name is dr. charlie baylis, and i serve as professor of

electrical and computer engineering at baylor university and director of smarthub, the department of defense spectrum innovation center. smart stands for spectrum management with adaptive and reconfigurable technology, and smartup consists of 25 u.s. citizen researchers across 15 universities in 13 states. our unified mission is to make spectrum usage adaptive and reconfigurable from policy all the way through circuits. we have been established through congressional appropriation support and commissioned through the army research laboratory. we are not a typical collection of academicians. we do not desire merely to publish papers on technology that will stagnate in a laboratory, but to quickly put superior technologies into the hands of our war fighters and into the hands of consumers. we want to put america first in spectrum, arguably the most important dimension of battle and a very valuable natural resource. as a center, we are creating adaptive and reconfigurable technologies that will provide a win-win for military dominance and economic growth. by adapting, we aim to provide flexible opportunistic spectrum capabilities to military systems and 5g and 6g commercial

wireless systema performance in whatever band they operate. we can also simultaneously enable the construction of the iron dome for america. two weeks ago we demonstrated our initial technologies for the pentagon, congress, and the defense industry right here in arlington. as an example of some of our innovations, we have developed sense react and avoid, sense predict and avoid, and metacognitive techniques to choose the best available spectrum for operation in real time and are looking to ai to speed spectrum selection. we are building a dynamic spectrum management system, or dsms, that will include live interference reports to inform the real-time coordination of spectrum. we are working on reconfigurable plasma circuits and antennas capable of handling high-transmission power levels that allow us to maximize radar range in under a millisecond after changing frequencies to avoid wireless communications. we are pioneering a novel measurement module that when placed inside a transmitter chain, will allow us to assess what we are transmitting to avoid interference and improve

our system performance on the fly. these techniques will allow both incumbent government systems and commercial wireless systems to have the functionality to work around each other. technology innovation will convert congestion into opportunity. many attempts to organize spectrum have been limited to regulation and re-regulation. but adaptive and reconfigurable technology will revolutionize spectrum use. it will allow us to both provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. as the developer of adaptive and reconfigurable technology, the united states will gain an enormous international advantage both economically and tactically. u.s. industries will develop these systems and sell their technology worldwide. china will have to buy the technology from us. commercial wireless systems will realize heretofore uncomprehensible bandwidths, and our military systems will be the strongest, most agile in the world, dominating in the most important dimension of battle, the spectrum. how do we get to this situation

from where we are today? this is a question that i as the director of a congressionally funded spectrum innovation center spent a lot of time considering and mapping to direct our research, innovation, and workforce development. if spectrum coexistence is like driving a car down a highway with other vehicles, we must develop adaptive and cognitive techniques to maneuver devices through a congested spectrum. in less congested environments, device-to-device interaction can be used to coexist, just as cars can pass each other autonomously on uncrowded highways. in more congested environments like a traffic light, a dynamic spectrum management system will be useful for coordinating. so how do we grow into this paradigm from where we are today? you can't expect a kindergartner to drive a car, and we cannot expect rigid wireless technologies to coexist adaptively. in both cases, maturation and development is needed. we are mapping a technology development trajectory using bloom's taxonomy, widely used by educators in cognitive development. bloom's taxonomy shows the progression from knowledge,

which is the simple memorization of facts, to evaluation, the mature, cognitive, and adaptive approach to life. in elementary, middle, and high school, educators carefully plot the course of these students and subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics, science, and physical education to develop the cognitive and physical skills that children will need to eventually get behind the wheel of a car and drive the car down the road adaptively. in a similar manner, we must move quickly toward evaluation, cognitive and adaptive use of the spectrum. in conclusion, in the race for spectrum superiority, america needs to win. the opportunity is now, and we must seize it or be left behind. there are 25 patriot scholars in smart hub with their u.s. citizen students that are determined to work hard to see this happen. with god's enablement and provision, we look forward to continuing to partner with congress, our president, and our nation to ensure american superiority. thank you for the opportunity to testify, and i look forward to answering questions that you have.

chair cruz: thank you. mr. pearl. mr. pearl: chairman cruz, ranking member cantwell, distinguished members of the committee, it's an honor to appear before you to discuss spectrum policy. the center for strategic and international studies does not take policy positions, so the views expressed here are my own. in my testimony, i will explain the importance of establishing u.s. leadership and spectrum policy, draw attention to recent developments that undermine such leadership, and urge congress and the administration to act to improve the u.s.'s position. u.s. leadership in spectrum is critical because the people's republic of china is spending tens of billions of dollars to subsidize huawei in an effort to control the future of this strategically vital technology. the u.s. is not and should not take the prc's approach of massively subsidizing a single company. however, the u.s. should make

available its other policy levers to counter the prc, and spectrum is particularly critical. until recently, our country was at the forefront of spectrum policy. since congress authorized the fcc to conduct auctions in 1993, it held 100 auctions that generated $233 billion for the treasury. in addition, congress repeatedly provided clearing targets for making spectrum available for commercial use. these actions were critical to economic growth, economic security, and national security. during the period of 4g, for instance, u.s. networks supported 20 million jobs and were responsible for 10% of gdp growth. further, spectrum has played a critical role in fostering a stable, resilient u.s. economy. while we take it for granted

that u.s. companies top the app store on our phones, spectrum played a decisive role in enabling that to happen. in 2008, we were the first country to auction the 700 mhz band, giving us a head start in building high-power 4g networks. as a result, u.s. innovators were able to develop the first mobile apps. while i have focused on auction spectrum, i must also highlight the importance of unlicensed and satellite use. we were the first country to adopt unlicensed use, leading to the development of ubiquitous low-power technologies such as wi-fi. the u.s. has also been a leader in satellite spectrum, enabling u.s. companies to launch massive low earth orbit constellations. while the u.s. has traditionally played a leadership role in spectrum, we are now at risk of falling behind. in march 2023, the fcc's authority to hold spectrum auctions lapsed. in addition, many countries have launched 5g in prime midband

spectrum that the u.s. has not made available. it is critical for congress to restore fcc auction authority and to establish ambitious clearing targets. another threat to u.s. leadership involves lengthy delays in acting on requests for satellite. -- satellite licenses, which is another threat to our leadership. finally, i will address the relationship between spectrum and national security. i have strong views on this question because during my first service at the national security council, one of the areas that i oversaw was electronic warfare. some have taken the position that making spectrum available for commercial use is undesirable because dod uses the remaining bands. i agree that it is critical for dod to maintain the capabilities it needs to accomplish its mission. however, we have an opportunity to expand those capabilities while creating opportunities for commercial use.

there is also a misunderstanding about whether congress needs to provide new statutory protections so that spectrum reallocation doesn't threaten national security. as one example, under an existing statutory provision, dod cannot surrender spectrum unless the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs certify that they will maintain essential military capabilities. the biggest misconception we confront is that we only need to ensure that dod has continued access to spectrum to prevail in the electromagnetic domain. the reality is that our military's budget is dwarfed by the commercial sector when it comes to technology, meaning that to prevail over our adversaries, dod will need to leverage commercial innovation. for instance, wireless networks will be critical to the ai race because developing sophisticated ai services will require more data to be sent to and from mobile devices.

dod will need to leverage the most advanced ai technologies, but this won't happen unless we make commercial spectrum available. i look forward to your questions. chair cruz: thank you. mr. clark. mr. clark: chairman cruz, ranking member cantwell, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today to you and to the rest of the committee about spectrum policy. the national security competition between the u.s. and china in the electromagnetic spectrum is not just a commercial one. it's also a military one. and in a lot of ways it's predominantly a military one as we look at the future conflicts we might face with against china and others. if you look at the invasion of ukraine and how the electromagnetic spectrum has played out as the centerpiece essentially of that war, early on, russia had a lot of problems in its initial push toward kyiv. in part that was because of a lack of spectrum management on

its part, the inability to use the spectrum effectively. later, we see today now that both sides are using sophisticated electromagnetic warfare against each other, as ranking member cantwell talked about. they're using jamming against gps. they're using jamming against communications. the recent offensive that ukrainian forces mounted into kursk was enabled in large part by their ability to gain superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum, so operating in parts of the spectrum where the russians were trying to operate and operating outside their own, putting their own comms in parts of the spectrum where the russians were unable to jam them. so the spectrum is increasingly where wars are going to be won and lost. against china, the u.s. faces a much more powerful competitor in general and also in the spectrum than russia poses. to overcome its geographic and numerical disadvantages when you're fighting as the away team against china, u.s. forces are going to have to rely on a lot of what we would call counter isr or counter surveillance and reconnaissance, counter

communication capabilities to degrade the ability of china's reconnaissance intelligence network to be able to target and attack u.s. forces. if we can't operate inside frequencies where the chinese operate and outside of our normal frequencies so we can deceive them, hide our forces, and degrade their targeting ability, we're not going to be able to mask the number of forces successfully to defeat them in an invasion of taiwan. so really fundamentally, winning that invasion of taiwan comes down to the ability to control the spectrum in that western pacific region. we need to be able to build the capabilities for that and train with them here in the united states before we go overseas. and in a lot of ways that deception campaign has to start here, meaning we're operating in parts of the spectrum that we would not normally operate in as part of an effort to begin that deception against the chinese forces. in addition, as we mentioned earlier, the iron dome for america is going to create new demands for electromagnetic spectrum to protect the united states from missile attack. obviously, there's opportunities to use new technologies to be able to more efficiently use the spectrum and more effectively

manage that surveillance network we need to protect the united states, but requirements for terminal missile defense and for airborne moving target indication from space are both going to create demands on s and x band frequencies that we currently want to make available to commercial users. so the needs for the dod in the spectrum are becoming larger and more complex, but that does not preclude that we would be able to share that spectrum between military and commercial users. it does mean we need to bring new technologies to bear, we need to bring new policies to bear, and there will be some deliberative process so that we can figure out which parts of the spectrum can be made available and which ones really cannot because of physics and because of the number of systems you might need to be able to conduct the operation. examples like cbrs, the citizens band radio service, and ambit are good examples of where in the past we've been able to deconflict users in the spectrum between federal and commercial users or share spectrum by taking advantage of new technologies for detection and

relocation of spectrum users. but we need to be able to take the time and the analysis necessary to make those mechanisms feasible in the united states to support both the operations we need to do for things like iron dome, but as well as the training and preparation necessary to get our forces ready to go overseas and fight in a war where they're going to need the spectrum to make up the difference between their lack of mass as the away team and the large mass that's available to the chinese as the home team. so we shouldn't fall victim to getting into a symmetrical competition with china over who's giving more of a particular part of the spectrum to the commercial users, and we should not unilaterally disarm our military capabilities in the spectrum. we need to work out ways so that both military and commercial uses can be taken advantage of our spectrum resources so we can compete on both battlefields. with that, i'll be looking forward to your questions. thank you. chair cruz: thank you to all the witnesses for your helpful testimony. we'll now move to questions.

dr. hazlett, i want to start with you. what are the specific economic benefits that putting more spectrum into the commercial marketplace would produce, and how would my spectrum pipeline legislation, which requires some full-power spectrum to be made available to the commercial sector, benefit everyday americans and american businesses? can you turn your microphone on? mr. hazlett: mr. hazlett: additional spectrum, particularly of the flexible-use variety, has been found extremely important to increasing american productivity. it allows more things to be done with wireless wireless applications and wireless networks. and in fact, the reverse is also true. when we've had these delays that have come into the system, we have actually taken the vital inputs out of the sector and the progress has been stymied.

so in fact, getting more spectrum into the marketplace, allowing entrepreneurs and competitors to get access to expand, that explains not only the wireless revolution that we've seen with so much changing in terms of new innovations, but it explains why going forward we have to keep our eye on the ball and make sure that there is a pipeline, there is a spectrum pouring into the market to be used in efficient ways, not not in the old, locked-in, rigid definitions of old. chair cruz: thank you. mr. pearl, would you agree that making more spectrum available to the private sector would result in billions in new investment and thousands of new jobs? mr. pearl: yes, absolutely. chair cruz: and history demonstrates that. mr. pearl: yeah, no, consistently you make the spectrum available, and particularly as i mentioned with the example of the app economy, being first really matters in that because then you have innovators that take advantage of the capabilities that they can use in that spectrum. chair cruz: and does my pipeline

bill preclude the department of defense from accessing the spectrum it needs to accomplish critical missions, or are there ways full-power commercial license use can accommodate the needs of dod? mr. pearl: so your bill allows for both the possibility of exclusive use as well as shared use. and so in terms of dod being able to continue to use some or most of the bands in order to maintain their capabilities, it absolutely creates that opening. chair cruz: now, mr. pearl, we've also heard concerns that reinstating auction authority could make it -- could hinder president trump's initiative to create an american iron dome. i am a strong and passionate supporter of missile defense and have been advocating for an american iron dome for some time. based on your experience at both the national security council and in the fcc auction room, do you believe those concerns are well founded, that having an auction would prevent missile defense here at home? mr. pearl: no, absolutely not.

as long as we have the proper interagency process and we make sure that the engineers work together, we can absolutely ensure we have iron dome as well as increased commercial use. chair cruz: and could an iron dome system coexist with commercial 5g use subject to geographical or location carveouts like in the ambit process? mr. pearl: potentially it could. we do have some cases of countries that are using iron dome like the czech republic that are using it quite close to 5g, quite close to those systems of iron dome. and so that's one possibility. and there are some other ways that you could design iron dome so that you could have potential coexistence. chair cruz: so we're told by some in the defense department that if if any of the vast spectrum that they currently have use of goes to the private sector, that it will cripple the military's ability to defend our nation.

the facts make that claim highly dubious. right now today, about 50 nations across the globe operate commercial licensed 5g networks in the 3.3 to 3.45 gigahertz band. to take an example close to home, mexico's 5g networks operate on frequencies between 3.35 and 3.45 gigahertz at full power, less than 30 miles away from fort bliss in texas, where the u.s. operates ground-based radar systems in the lower third band. likewise, japan, south korea, taiwan, and the philippines also have 5g networks that operate between the 3.3 and the 3.45 gigahertz band. now, given the fact that on much of the rest of the world there are commercial players operating in those bands, is it

credible that our military cannot operate in the pacific and we cannot operate if the commercial sector is operating in those bands? mr. pearl: as long as the process is done responsibly, absolutely not. it will not cripple the military. chair cruz: let me ask you finally, what would the consequences to national security be if china wins the race for 5g and 6g and if the global telecommunication network is huawei and chinese-based? is that good or bad for national security? and if bad, how bad? mr. pearl: it's catastrophic for national security as well as both dod and the intelligence community, because we will not have access to advanced trusted secure technology. it's true that the u.s. will still ban huawei, but the rest of the world will use huawei. it will become more advanced, and it's not only telecommunications networks, which are obviously very important, but the plan the prc

has with huawei is to leverage its control over telecom up the technology stack to be able to control other technologies. so i would say it's absolutely catastrophic risk. chair cruz: and soldiers use cell phones. mr. pearl: yes, and absolutely, and that's something that we've discovered in ukraine, is that a lot of these mobile technologies can be incredibly valuable. they've been used to triangulate drone attacks. they've been used to create accurate geographic maps of the combat zones. and so we're already seeing how these cell phones are -- and mobile technology is critical. chair cruz: ranking member cantwell. sen. cantwell: thank you, mr. chairman, and again, thanks for this hearing. i actually so appreciate the panel of witnesses. dr. hazlett, i think lots of members of this committee could give a critique of the fcc, and it would probably mirror yours

in the issues of challenges of that agency in addressing our most urgent needs. and probably the fact of good broadband mapping lacking, and even when microsoft produced one by zip code, they still didn't use it. so there's a long line of concern here about the current fcc structure. dr. baylis, love that you are training the next generation of young people to understand this dynamic because we will need it. there's a reason that the information age is just sucking up everybody out of college that now that you can produce, so keep producing them. mr. pearl, thank you for this crystallization of -- i think your exact words are "ensuring that we preserve critical military spectrumba capabilities while creating opportunities for commercial access to spectrum." so that's it. that's what we're trying to do. that's what we tried to do in the bill that dod and ntia and the department of commerce agreed to.

so the challenge becomes -- and thank you, mr. clark, for your football analogy because of the away game, because i do think that really does give you a picture of what war fighters face when -- but the one thing i struggle with is, if you could, i feel like people misunderstand where we are. it's like, i'm not saying we're playing a peewee league, but let's say we're playing at the k-12 league right now, but this shift in the dynamics and capabilities of the warfare that's going to take place based on spectrum, it's going to be -- you're not gonna be in k-12 football, you're gonna be in a super bowl. and how do we get people here to understand -- as you said, you can't unilaterally disarm if the ascending technical capabilities and challenges -- and i wonder if you could address whitespace. a lot of people talk about, oh well, we can just, you know, have dynamic spectrum sharing

and you could easily -- but there's lots of ways that right now that that is really detrimental to our efforts. mr. clark: right. yes, senator cantwell, so a couple of things on that. one is that the military is going to have much more dynamic in its use of the spectrum, so we're going to maneuver a lot more in the spectrum to avoid where our adversaries are looking for us or to get to where our adversaries are so we can jam them. using some of the technologies that dr. baylis is developing, we will eventually be able to both do those operations as well as maintain some ability to have commercial users operate on that same spectrum. but we're not there yet. those technologies are not fielded yet. the reason being that our opponents, like we see in ukraine, it's a constant cat and mouse game in the electromagnetic spectrum. and so you operate in one part of the spectrum, you quickly get detected and jammed. you have to maneuver to another part in order to be able to continue to communicate with your allies, be able to continue sensing targets and attacking your enemies. so this cat and mouse game in the spectrum requires you to be maneuvering back and forth, and you can't be isolated to a very narrow band of spectrum.

during operations, we have to train to be able to conduct those same types of operations. sen. cantwell: we're going to grow in complexity here, right? we're just at a very elementary level, and now it's going to grow in complexity. so i don't think -- mr. pearl, you're not suggesting that we mandate auctions before we do all those technical feasibility studies, are you? mr. pearl: no, i mean, i think we need to mandate clearing targets and then do the analysis, but certainly before you hold the auction, you need to do the work of making sure that we're not going to interfere with essential military capabilities. sen. cantwell: which is what i think dod was requesting of us and why they supported the legislation. but mr. clark, back to this work, hard work like ambit and cbrs, how do we go forward here with those ideas? because in the one case it's navy spectrum, right, and we hear a lot of great things about this, but there are paths forward, but do we have to test bed? what is it that we have to do to

get this right, and how do we do as mr. pearl is suggesting, this more collaborative effort on the innovation that the private sector can drive? mr. clark: well, there's a lot of new modeling and simulation tools, and obviously test-bedding these capabilities is going to be really important. so there is a path forward to be able to identify the opportunities for spectrum sharing. but physics comes into it also because certain parts of the spectrum aren't going to lend themselves to things like missile defense or to electronic warfare. i have to jam an opponent where his system operates, so we'll be limited by physics and being able to just maneuver anywhere in the spectrum to avoid the commercial users. but within those spaces where we can use the spectrum effectively in the military, we need to figure out if there's a way we can, you know, coexist or -- sen. cantwell: and the chinese just falsely kick them out. everything. i mean, i guess you could have

that hierarchy. mr. clark: as opposed to spectrum management is they have pla personnel embedded inside the radio management centers and in industry who then maneuver the commercial users out of the spectrum whenever the military wants to conduct routine training operations, development, testing -- sen. cantwell: that's our competitor, and that's why we have to beat them. and so we have to figure out how to take care of this defense issue. thank you, mr. chairman. chair cruz: thank you. senator wicker. sen. wicker: before we auction, we've still got to do the work. what could you briefly explain what that means and how long will that take? mr. pearl: i think it's important to have clearing targets in the legislation of how much we're intending to make available. i think that that really focuses the process, but doing the work occurs at several different levels. the most important level is the engineers from the different agencies, right? the laws of physics are not political or partisan. the laws of physics are what they are, and you need engineers who are going to share information and work together,

and i've seen just the most brilliant solutions come out of that in some of these bands that we've talked about. sen. wicker: including engineers from dod. mr. pearl: yeah, absolutely, including engineers from dod, but you need the white house leadership to work with the heads of the departments and agencies so that the engineers know to share information, to be cooperative, to work together, because what you don't want is a situation where -- and there have been examples -- where there isn't that collaboration, and as a result, you know, oftentimes decisions get made by the fcc or others that are less than optimal. sen. wicker: ok, you don't speak for csis. you're giving us your own views. are there persons, learned persons within cis, csis, who take the position, the same position as the admirals and generals from the defense department, that is just

absolutely no way this can be shared? colleagues who believe that? mr. pearl: so i think that clayton swoop, who does a lot of our work on the defense side, would certainly advocate for some of the defense equities, although i wouldn't necessarily say that he takes their side on everything. sen. wicker: so you're saying that -- and we could perhaps get him here or i could call him -- but perhaps he would even say there is some scenario in which some of the spectrum could be shared and not hoarded. mr. pearl: yeah, i think that there's a willingness on the part through csis to find those practical solutions so that we can accomplish that. sen. wicker: mr. baylis, do you speak for smart hub, or for yourself today? mr. baylis: that's a good

question. i believe i have have really tried to consult my team. sen. wicker: is there a minority view there that does not agree with you? mr. baylis: i do not believe so. i believe we are unified in the sense that we're trying to develop adapt and adaptive and reconfigurable technology to solve the very spectrum crisis. sen. wicker: would it be helpful if you had somebody inside the team who was the devil's advocate and could bounce these absolute objections against your -- mr. baylis: devil's advocate as to what? sen. wicker: i'll tell you, when we get the military and the skiff, i'm not giving away any secrets. just is absolutely impossible. we can't give an inch, and anything that the chairman might advocate would be detrimental to national security. am i pretty much correct that that's their testimony? mr. baylis: i believe we have objective people on our team that would give me devil -- and do gives me, you know, contrasting views when when they need to be given. i think we've got a team that is working to try to get the best technological solution to the

problem, and i think that's our sole goal. sen. wicker: mr. clark, tell us about the idea of finding a solution by compression, and compare and contrast that to relocating. mr. clark: yeah, so -- great point, senator. so compression or spectral efficiency is looking at ways to use digital technology to narrow the beam width or bandwidth that a sensor needs for, for example, a radar, to be able to put enough energy down range to be able to detect a target and track it. so using new digital technologies, we're able to reduce the amount of spectrum that a sensor might need to be effective. sen. wicker: and there's a history to this. mr. clark: the dod has done this -- yes, so over time that the dod has done this with different sensor technologies as we replace and recapitalize the new generation of radars that's coming into dod right now, they are more spectrally efficient. sen. wicker: to supplement your

answer on that, can you briefly talk about mr. baylis's reference to live interference notices? mr. clark: yeah, so the idea would be can you in real time be able to get a notification -- instead of normally what happens when you try to deconflict spectrum is you just detect the other user out there and then you have to respond to that. you'd want to augment that with a notification that comes from that other user to automatically tell you i'm going to use the spectrum now and here's the level and power and the frequency i'm going to be at, and then the systems can coordinate between themselves. so instead of simply responding to what they see in the environment, they're communicating with each other to coordinate their use of the spectrum in real time. sen. wicker: do you subscribe to his point of view in that regard? mr. clark: i think definitely that technology is certainly viable. the challenge will be getting it implemented into the defense systems that are multiple generations in some cases old. sen. wicker: just quickly, if dr. hazlett and mr. pearl could respond and perhaps supplement on the record as to that

question? mr. hazlett: sure, this is an ongoing problem of a general order, and it's having an unpriced asset and at a zero price if opportunity costs are not considered, of course there's going to be overconsumption and no give. but the fact is there are social costs. there are economic costs. there are also technology costs in terms of taking the trade-offs for compression, better radios, better training, better software. there are other alternatives here that everybody in the room should have the incentives to pursue, and that's where there has been some progress and there have been real good allocations made that really do bring efficiency. but to say that we're not going to look at efficiency, yet we

need more, and more and more, you're undermining the quest for efficiency. that's undermining both civilian and military applications. sen. wicker: -- mr. chairman, i realize i'm way over time. chair cruz: thank you. senator fischer. sen. fischer: thank you, mr. chairman, and thank the panel for being here today. we know the context of this hearing is about whether and how to use spectrum in a reconciliation bill. one key focus i'm hearing is on revenues from the new spectrum pipeline that's only for exclusive commercial use. i want to stress for my colleagues that we must also weigh the cost and the timelines to relocate existing users for this type of pipeline. the department of defense is one of the users, with missile defense radars and satellite constellations providing critical capabilities. dod losing access to its spectrum bands entirely, which is what vacating or clearing

spectrum means, comes with huge risks and will end up costing us more. replacing national security systems, if that is even possible, would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and we all know it would take decades to be able to finish. so a pipeline estimated to raise by cbo, based on current proposals, between $10 billion and $15 billion in a 10-year budget window, may actually take 20 years to transition. i agree there are technologies that could make sharing spectrum possible, but dod must have a seat at the table when its spectrum bands are studied and tested. otherwise we lose them. we risk losing access to this finite resource forever. mr. clark, what specific military capabilities could we lose if lawmakers on this

committee do not fully consider these realities before pressing ahead? mr. pearl: well, senator, i think you know the key capability would be sensing technologies needed for air and missile defense. so in the lower s band, lower x band, could you explain what s -- sen. fischer: to do explain -- could you explain what s -- mr. clark: right, the lower part of the 3 gigahertz range in the s band is really important for air missile defense because it gives you that combination of resolution and range that allows a radar to be pretty effective at tracking incoming targets. and then we need radars that operate up in the x-band, which is the 8 to 12 gigahertz range, but the lower part of that generally, to be able to differentiate small targets and be able to target them and be able to direct an interceptor like a patriot missile to go hit them and shoot them down. sen. fischer: so we have to see them and identify? mr. clark: right, so you need to both see them and then target them and track them, and that

requires essentially two different sensor technologies to be either combined in the same radar or be in different radars. that's how the patriot system works. that's how the eis system works that the navy has. so if we were to relocate out of those parts of the spectrum, you'll lose the physics that allows those sensors to work effectively, and we'd have to either have more sensors that come up with a different approach. so that's why sharing might be an effective alternative, but relocating them entirely may not be feasible. because of the physics. sen. fischer: you know, mr. clark, i have concerns about the role that china has played in influencing our spectrum policy in this country. we're being told that we have to keep up with china, that they have far more mid-band spectrum available, that their carriers can use the lower 3 for mobile networks, and that there have been no negative impacts to china's national security. well, you know, in reality, china only has 10 more megahertz of midband spectrum available for mobile networks. china also recently imposed

restrictions in its lower 3 band, limiting commercial access to that low power which is indoor use. and yet we still hear the china comparison from carriers and their effort to gain exclusive use of these bands, which are needed for our radar systems. if the u.s. blinds its radars purely for economic reasons, that only helps foreign adversaries like china. do you share my concerns? mr. clark: i do. i think, you know, china could be playing a very sophisticated game here where they're looking to get us to vacate parts of the spectrum that we need for our military sensors while they retain that access. and so we unilaterally disarm while they're able to retain their capabilities, because as i said before, they have the ability to move commercial users out of the spectrum basically whenever they need to for their routine government purposes. sen. fischer: thank you. mr. chairman, i would like to

submit some questions for the record to mr. clark about spectrum management and how that also impacts what we're talking about today. thank you. chair cruz: thank you. senator klobuchar. sen. klobuchar: thank you. thank you, chairman. thank you to ranking member catwell for this important hearing. we know there's been a good discussion about spectrum. i had a judiciary hearing at the same time, but this is specifically important to our 911 systems. i co-chair the nextgen 911 caucus with senator budd, and we are dedicated to expanding and improving emergency communications infrastructure. yet the fcc spectrum authority expired in march 2023, as we all know, for the first time in nearly 30 years, and i'm concerned about this lapse in spectrum authority with the increasing needs for emergency authority. an estimated 240 million calls are made to 911 centers annually. however, this critical public

service relies on outdated technologies. i've led legislation with senator cortez masto to modernize americans' 911 system to help enable 911 call centers to better handle text messages, pictures, videos, and modern communications. dr. baylis, can you give an example of an innovation at your lab that could help make our 911 system stronger and more resilient? mr. baylis: so i think this depends on what types of interference or the 911 systems are receiving, but an innovation that we're finding in our lab that could really be helpful -- well, there's two of them. one is we've got reconfigurable circuitry that can reconfigure within under a millisecond. and that would allow us to actually change frequencies and then optimize our performance at a new frequency. what happens is your circuit's designed to operate the old frequency, and so if you change frequencies, you may not -- you may drain your battery because you don't have any efficiency.

you may not get the transmit power you need. so that's an example of one thing we're doing, is reconfigurable circuitry. and then i think that the dynamic spectrum management system innovations we're working on, as well as our in-situ measurement capability which would allow us to actually see when we're causing interference and change our transmissions and be able to plug ai in through that. those would help 911 systems as well as any system that's trying to reconfigure -- sen. klobuchar: ok, thank you. you know, just recently in the aftermath of hurricane helene, many affected areas experienced local communications blackouts because the flooding was severe enough to override the internet providers' disaster contingency plans. how could we leverage innovation and spectrum management to ensure that our wireless broadband networks are more resilient when things happen like natural disasters? mr. baylis: i'm not aware of this particular -- i didn't didn't research this. i would have to go in and see exactly what the problem was in terms of the technical lapse and then try to be able to bring a team to solve it. if it was an interference issue

or frequencies not being available, then i think our team has the solutions we could deal with it. sen. klobuchar: and getting this spectrum thing set would be helpful if we had more? mr. baylis: i think in the sense that technology is behind regulation right now, technology needs to be developed, and i think that's where our lapse is really. i really believe that investment needs to be made in technology rather than just reregulating and reregulating because we just -- we're slicing the bread thinner and thinner and thinner till it crumbles. sen. klobuchar: thank you. mr. pearl and mr. clark, during president trump's first administration, there were administration administration, there were, -- president trump's first administration, there were interagency disputes regarding spectrum. we've seen these interagency disputes through democratic

administrations as well, recognizing the importance of providing more order. the national spectrum strategy was released in november of 2023. and its implementation plan in march of 2024. mr. pearl, can you discuss why it's important to continue to improve planning and coordination? and then, mr. clark, how can this administration cultivate more agency buy-in to avoid the sorts of disputes that have arisen, especially when it comes to the department of defense? mr. pearl: you can't work out these issues on an engineering level unless you have the proper interagency coordination, and that has to come from the white house really demanding that the agencies work together and participate in a robust way, and have the right engineers who are there to work out the problems and really mandate that they share information. that's something that we've run into in the past, where an agency that wants to continue to use the spectrum isn't willing to play ball and share information so they can work together collaboratively. and then you need a really healthy interagency process where it starts at the at the lower levels and eventually escalates if you can't resolve problems.

that's incredibly helpful because if you just have the white house weigh in without having all the information and having that refined skill set of issues that comes from the interagency process, then in some cases the right decisions don't get made. sen. klobuchar: yeah, we're experiencing a little bit of that right now, but i'm not going to go there. ok, mr. clark -- mr. clark: and it requires leadership both in the white house but also in the departments. my discussion with the leadership of the current, you know, team in the defense department showed that they are very willing to engage in this interagency deliberation to figure out the best way to use the spectrum. and there's a lot of modeling and simulation tools that dr. baylis and others have that could help us to figure out what are the opportunities for sharing and even coexistence in adjacent spectra. sen. klobuchar: ok, thank you. thank you, chairman. chair cruz: thank you. senator blackburn. sen. blackburn: thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for this

hearing. i think it is one of the things we need to be focused on, is what is our leadership going to be as a nation in this area. so one of my concerns, and i've talked about this with the chairman, is what i see as spectrum squatting with our federal agencies. they control most of the spectrum assets, and they are failing to optimize this. and i have for years advocated that we do a good inventory so we know who is using what spectrum where and then be able to recoup it, because it does not matter what project is being worked on. whether it is wireless, whether it is the muos system, whether it is leo, everybody in the dod is working with the private sector, because they are leading the innovation. and for federal agencies, mr. chairman, to squat on this

spectrum and to not use it and to not want to yield it back and not want anybody to know what they've got, it disadvantages us as a nation. and we know that recouping it, going through the auction process, would yield billions and billions of dollars, as much as $100 billion. and we need that, because we are in a race with china when it comes to leading in this area, and we don't have time to waste and we don't have time for squatters to bicker with what they're going to do with with this spectrum. mr. pearl, let me come to you. this last world radio conference was a hot mess for the u.s. we were unprepared. we had not done our homework. and if we're going to continue to be a world leader, we are going to have to be prepared.

you mentioned this in your testimony, and i appreciated that you did because i think it was embarrassing that we were unprepared for the leadership role. so i want to hear from you, and if you want to submit this in writing, i would appreciate that. but the lessons we should have learned from this last one and the steps that we should be taking to prepare for the 2017 wrc. mr. pearl: yeah, so i think one of the lessons we learned is, so -- so the next work is work 27, and that's tomorrow in real terms, which is the preparatory process is incredibly quick and arriving at positions is going to give you a huge advantage vis a vis china. and so i think that it's just important to have congress, when it reauthorizes the fcc auction authority, as well as the white house to make sure that these issues are resolved early and that you don't have the u.s.

coming in late with positions. i also think that it's important that -- sen. blackburn: i think that we know what those positions are rather than squishing through the whole thing. that'd be helpful. mr. pearl: yep. sen. blackburn: ok, homework for each of you. you know, there are disputes in agency disputes about how to use spectrum. so each of you have touched on this, but in writing i want from you what your recommendation would be to resolve these disputes. we have to recoup the spectrum. we have got to look at how we slice these bands and put more, mr. clark, as you were saying, into that bandwidth. so help us with your best thoughts on that. mr. pearl, i want to come back to you on ai, because when we talk about ai and quantum and the utilizations that are there,

we know more spectrum is needed, and in tennessee we have -- i repeatedly hear from innovators, whether they're working logistics, they're working on something for doe or dod or healthcare, they talk a good bit about this. but with ai, i think it's important to get on the record how spectrum constraints would actually hamper ai development and deployment. mr. pearl: yeah, i'm absolutely happy to submit that on the record. i think one of the important points is it would hamper things not only on the commercial side but also on the dod side of things, where, you know, there are really interesting ai applications for first responders in terrorist attacks and things like that, and leveraging it to make the right

decisions. and that is something that's directly applicable to what dod does in the battlefield. you know, another example is, you know, we've talked about spectrum, but to really advance what we need ai to do is to be able to take all the sources of information, spectrum, osec, cyberspace, thermal imaging, just all of these things, and generate real, actionable insights. and we can't do that unless we have those commercial technologies and we're winning the ai race with china. sen. blackburn: now add to that the satellite systems. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. chair cruz: thank you. senator rosen. sen. rosen: thank you, chair cruz, ranking member cantwell. thank you to the witnesses for all of your work, your education, what you bring to the table here, because our nation's spectrum we know is one of our nation's most important resources, so spectrum policy must be thoughtful it has to be deliberative, and unlocking innovation while protecting our national security.

so i share some of my colleagues' concerns that this administration and some of the majority want to sidestep having a deliberative fact-based process, instead advanced spectrum proposals merely to raise as much revenue as possible to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires. so we must instead take our time to find the right policy that ensures that revenues from spectrum sales actually lower costs for the american people. and last congress, this committee advanced legislation to use spectrum proceeds, of course, to lower my state of nevada, nevada's internet bills to help our first responders. it's so important. and invest in the r&d that we need to share spectrum safely with the department of defense. that is the foundation we can and should build upon. and we know there are key challenges between the dod, commercial operations. one thing that's particularly concerning that i've been thinking a lot about is dynamic spectrum sharing and where we're at with that.

so mr. clark and mr. baylis, where are we really at in reality with our capabilities on dynamic spectrum sharing, and how can we deploy when we get there dynamic spectrum sharing to ensure that efforts to expand access do not undermine military access? we still want to unlock possibilities, but is it still a concept? are we testing it? where are we at in the dynamic spectrum sharing world, please? mr. clark: yes, senator. so dynamic spectrum sharing is a relatively mature technology at this point. i mean, it's being used in place or in applications like the citizens band radio service. we're along the coast. we have dynamic spectrum sharing between navy radars that use the spectrum and then also 5g providers that operate in that same spectrum. there's obviously new technologies that are being employed that dr. baylis has done a lot of work in to get to make it even more sophisticated in terms of how that spectrum sharing happens -- sen. rosen: more nimble. mr. clark: and how seamless it can be, right, and how you can start to do that in much

narrower parts of spectrum because it gives the ability for both users to jump around into different parts of the spectrum much more agilely, you know, than they could today. the challenge is always the implementation, because now i've got to take those new technologies and i've got to bake them into, in the case of the military, military systems that span multiple generations of technology. so we have analog radars still in service and analog communication systems that don't lend themselves -- sen. rosen: we would need a they -- we would need a bridge to get there. mr. clark: we've got to get we're going through this recapitalization of the us military's spectrum dependent systems that will over time make them better able to take advantage of these technologies. and the question is how quickly can we accelerate that in order to make dynamic spectrum sharing more of a reality. sen. rosen: thank you. mr. baylis: so thanks for the question. incumbent dod systems need technology development, and i think i want to focus on that

for a minute, because in the research question a lot of times we're very focused on helping the commercial wireless systems be more adaptive. smarthub has really taken what i think is a very unique focus in looking at the incumbent systems. actually, how do we improve the dod systems? given where the dod systems are today, we want to see those move to an adaptive and reconfigurable model. and so we're working on flexible circuitry. we're working on flexible communication strategies. we are trying to figure out how can we put ai into actually predicting the spectrum so these incumbent systems we can hopefully and with our industry partnerships, we've got a quick pathway to put technology into the hands of the dod to facilitate the types of economic growth that our nation needs from from the spectral bands. so hopefully the technology development is a game changer where we can have our cake and eat it, too. sen. rosen: well, to your point, then, what are the risks associated with mandating the movement of certain bands or the alteration of certain bands prior to having first done these studies about what we can and can't do and how we need maybe a measured approach to get some of these

legacy systems on where they can be nimble and more adaptive? mr. baylis: technology development is the -- i think, the big elephant in the room, and we need to address it because if we don't, we can do a lot of things to posture, but we're not going to make improvements because we're just slicing the bread thinner and thinner. by having adaptive and reconfigurable technology, what congress needs to do is to fund work going forward with entities like smarthub because we're going to bring this and we're going to bring it to the dod quickly and that will be a game changer. we won't have to have these discussions anymore because the technology will supersede what we -- way supersede what we have today that's available, and it can be done in a reasonably short period of time. sen. rosen: so investing in smart, more things that you're doing at smart hub. thank you very much. appreciate it. chair cruz: thank you. senator budd. sen. budd: thank you, chairman. and again, thank the panel for

being here. this is a fascinating testimony. i think we're all trying to find the both-and here. i mean, how do we find the revenues from the spectrum auction that's much needed and how do we secure and protect national defense. dr. baylis, i want to follow up. thanks for your work at smart hub. what is the time -- i didn't hear between mr. clark's answer and then your answer -- what's the timeline for dynamic spectrum sharing? if you saw great promise, how far out before an actual practical implementation of that? in your best estimation? mr. clark: we're in a national crisis right now in terms of spectrum. we really are. and so when you have an emergency you try to solve the problem as quickly as possible. dr. baylis: that's what we're doing. we're trying to work as quickly as possible. i will say that having a center like this where we've convened the nation's top 25 spectrum researchers in my opinion to solve a problem, you've got everybody reading off the same

sheet of music, working together. you've got policy and economics experts alongside circuit experts. that's really going to peed it up. that's going to give you a three-time speedup. i can say we can really accelerate it. me being able to say a time scale, as quickly as possible. i don't want to give you an exact number because i don't know what that number is but at our six-month demo we showed tremendous progress. mr. clark: to get these systems or get these technologies incorporated into the military systems that need them, it would take 10 to 20 years. because you're going to take these ships offline, there's aircraft offline, these raiders offline to upgrade them and we can't have them all do it at once obviously. so it takes time to run them all through the process of being upgraded. sen. budd: thank you. mr. baylis, you mentioned that congress needs to fund some more research on this. do you have a dollar amount? is there something you're particularly asking for to do more research in dynamic

spectrum sharing? dr. baylis: that's for asking. smart hub is annually funded by an appropriation right now. we've gotten one so far and we're in this bill coming from the house side with mr. sessions. and we're asking for $5 million. for this year. we've been working off of $5 million budget -- sen. budd: should industry also bear some of the burden of this? dr. baylis: our technology transfer model is going to line up investors early on in the process. and also industry, we're building industry partnerships quickly. so that essentially investors will start pouring their funds in when they see the technology and we're already building d.o.d. contractor pipelines that will not only put the technology in the hands of the war fighter, but through this pipeline, we'll fund more research. we've got an ecosystem that just needs a runway to get the plane taking off. and we're not going to be hopefully coming to you infinitely for money. that's not my goal. the reason for me not stating a year isn't for me to say, hey, we have to continue this infinitely. with support. i think i just want to be cautious about promising anything and not delivering on it.

sen. budd: you didn't give us a year but you did give me a dollar so thawf very much. mr. pearl, a question for you. i appreciate your statement that spectrum is critical to economic security. and i'm quoit quoting you, because it provides a foundational or a foundation for u.s. companies to innovate. so what is your assessment of when innovation might be stifled given the increasing data traffic? mr. pearl: i think that it hasn't happened yet because we had some recent auctions in the last administration. but i would say probably in the next two years we would see some real impacts. although i would say congress has to act much sooner than that. because it takes time once auction authority is restored to have the auctions. but in terms of when you'll really have an impact on our ability to -- of our networks to handle the loads, i think it could be in the next year or two. sen. budd: would upgrades to existing 5-g, would that buy us time?

mr. pearl: it could but there are some fiscal constraints on that which is that the company spent $190 billion so far upgrading their networks for 5-g. and that's been great, that got us through covid, we have all these wonderful fixed networks. so just their ability to do that might be constrained and it could be that spectrum is the only solution at this particular time. sen. budd: thank you. continuing, in your experience in the federal spectrum management, how important is white house leadership on this and do we need more and more clear leadership from the white house than we had in the previous administration on this issue? mr. pearl: so white house leadership is absolutely critical. although i would say that in my view it does start with congress in terms of establishing some clearing targets and some guidance, that really strengthens the hand of the white house. and working with the agencies. but yeah, without having from the president on down and having the willingness from people like

the national security advisor, director of national economic council, actually spend time on these issues and prioritize them with everything else that's going on, because that's ultimately how you get things done and have -- ensure that everyone in the inner agency has their marching orders of how to make progress. >> thank you. dr. baylis, you told senator budd a second ago, you said we are facing a national crisis in spectrum. sen. cruz: could you articulate explicitly what you mean by that, what national crisis we're facing? dr. baylis: we have applications that need to have spectrum real estate so to speak and we don't have enough bandwidth for all of them. so the way we're currently doing spectrum, by fixed allocations of spectrum, isn't just -- it's just not going to work moving forward. so we need technology to support the movement of devices in real-time between spectral bands. and it's just -- it's a paradigm shift. we really need a paradigm shift badly or we've got too much

trying to use too little. sen. cruz: thank you. senator schmidt. mr. schmidt: thank you, mr. chairman. i really do believe that over the last three years the u.s. has ceded a lot of leadership in spectrum policy and 5-g innovation, both domestically and internationaly. that's not good news. under the first trump administration, we went from stagnation to global leadership. congress passed the secure and trusted networks act. sen. schmitt: in the last four years the biden administration's failure to act understand the focus on divisive things like d.e.i. has really set us back. i am one of the members that serves both on armed services, senator budd also, and the commerce committee and so there's a bit of a balancing act i think that goes with this and while i think d.o.d. should have a voice in this process, i

strongly believe that congress has already established the ntia as the primary authority for spectrum allocation. and it must lead rather than act as a rubber stamp for d.o.d. that's one of the issues. national security has been heard today, it's very multifaceted, economic security is national security. and china's coming for our lunch in more than one way. i wanted to ask just a few questions and i won't -- i'll try not to ask questions that have already been asked but it's possible i might. but dr. baylis, when we talk about spectrum management and enhancing the ability of commercial and defense users to sort of co-exist in those share bands, what role and how far have we come and how far do we have to go for that to be really effective with a.i.? as these advancements proceed? dr. baylis: so it's interesting, a.i. can be used in multiple levels in the new spectrum sharing or the new adaptive and

reconfigure paradigm. one level is to assess or predict the spectrum that's going to be available for our use and having this technology in the d.o.d. hands is very useful. the second is inside the devices themselves, to be able to optimize their performance. to make sure a radar transmitter can reconfigure its circuitry. we can use a.i. to help us reconfigure the circuits quickly and take measurements onboard the device. a lot of our technology developments actually plug in with a.i. we have one of the world's a.i. experts who has written great books on a.i. that congress actually is on the recommended reading list. he's part of smart hub and has been working with us to infuse a.i. into our decision making for our spectrum adaptive and reconfigurable devices. sen. schmitt: that allows to you maximize the bands of spectrum as opposed to having maybe overutilization in one place and lack of utilization somewhere else? it's a predictive modeling.

dr. baylis: it really could. i think a.i. has tremendous power and we need to marshall it for being able to use the spectrum efficiently and to adapt our technologies to where the spectrum is maximally being shared. sen. schmitt: i'll throw it open for any one of the four. one of the things on a topic like this, to try to ask the question, for back home. i actually think that this is one of those topics that it just doesn't come up in a town hall. it doesn't come up on the stump. but it is of critical importance for our country. and so it's with those kind of topics then, how do you, if you were in our position, how would you sort of crystallize why this issue is so important for the american people? i open it up to any one of you. dr. baylis: i'll take this quickly. i have to go out and tell people what we're doing and one of the things that i say is, spectrum's

the most important dimension of battle. if you can dominate the spectrum, you're going to win the war. so from the d.o.d. side, it's unquestionable. in fact, the space force, we're talking with space force people now. the space force, the only dimension of battle is spectrum. there are no tanks, there are no soldiers on the ground. it's just spectrum. and we're going to have to be dominant in spectrum. from the d.o.d. side that's really important. i think from the commercial side, we are more connected than we've ever been through spectrum. we learned that during the pandemic. because we had to use the wireless spectrum to connect with loved ones, you know, and other things. so i think our society certainly sees the need for wireless devices. sen. schmitt: anybody else? >> i think the challenge comes into play where we have to afford the military the ability to be agile and maneuver and keep our adversaries off balance. mr. clark: which some of the technologies that dr. baylis is

developing could help us to do. so if we were to field those, it would make our military more agile when it comes to sharing spectrum at home. also more agile when it comes to creating problems for our enemies overseas. so that's really important. it will take time to get to the point where those technologies can be incorporated into our military systems. until then we're going to have to have some hybrid approach. sen. schmitt: thank you, mr. chairman. sen. cruz: thank you. >> thank you, mr. chair. thank you all for being here. appreciate how busy you all are. i think this is one of the key discussions we're going to have here all year. spectrum relocation fund, let me start with that. provides funding to federal agencies to research the feasibility of modifying and if necessary upgrazing the systems that use spectrum. sen. hickenlooper: so s.r.f., at least as we see it, seems limited by only reimbursing a federal agency for necessary costs to update a system of

quote-unquote comparable capability. so not the next level, the comparable capability. many federal agencies have stated that the s.r.f. limits their ability to upgrade their systems that use spectrum, just to be able to continue fulfilling their missions. so mr. pearl, i'll start with you. do you believe s.r.f. could be reformed to better incentivize agencies to share or reallocate spectrum? why or why is not mr. pearl: yeah. and i think i would put it stronger and say that s.r.f. must be reformed if we're going to resolve these issues. sen. hickenlooper: i was trying to say that myself but i was being generous. mr. pearl: but i think you identified one of the key issues which is that the agencies need to be able to receive upgrades and have more advanced systems. some of these capabilities we're talking about could be paid for with auction funds. i think it's also necessary to give ntia the authority to do -- to get funding in order to do studies. right now only the agencies can get s.r.f. money to do studies.

but as several senators have said, it's really important and the ntia engineers are really looking at this from an honest broker perspective in trying to get to the right answer. and so allowing that -- them to do that would be really helpful. and then i think the last thing is that there's a technical panel under the legislation, ntia, obviously comb, and they have proved what the agency's going to do when they do this study but they need more oversight of the process after that. because when things go off the rails and the study isn't going to be useful, you need ability for the other agencies and the other engineers to weigh in and get things back on track. sen. hickenlooper: absolutely. couldn't agree more. dr. baylis, your testimony underscores how collaboration in the academic community and within government and the academic community helps enhance spectrum innovation center you lead. you see firsthand how our universities educate and create

that workforce pipeline that we need to maintain our leadership. in all stem fields. computer science to enhance cybersecurity of the wireless networks, radio frequency engineers to develop new technologies for sharing spectrum and getting more efficient usage. as we debate, as congress debates how to you toedy and share and -- how to study and share and reallocate spectrum and try to be as fair and look at the greatest good for the greatest number of people, how do you highlight the importance of ensuring that the u.s. grows a trained spectrum and cyber workforce? dr. baylis: thank you. i appreciate the question. workforce development's one of the important things we do. and i think it starts with the fact that our faculty, our staff researchers, our students that are on this project are all u.s. citizens. you won't find that in many academic centers but we're a bunch of patriots because we

want to see this country succeed and we want to see this country be the best in wireless technology. so it starts there. i think we have to develop an american pipeline of students that is going to be able to work on the future spectrum paradigm. so we've been doing a lot of efforts. one in which the national science foundation is currently funding, where we actually have undergraduate students from around the country apply to and get the opportunity to come to a four-day residential workshop on one of our campuses and we'll be holding four of them this summer. actually one in your state at colorado state university. is one of our universities and we'll be holding one there so you're welcome to come and check it out if you'd like. sen. hickenlooper: i'll do that. dr. baylis: we also are involved with the army research laboratory who we've been commissioned through. we have an a.r.l. fellow -- i'm sorry, a smart hub fellow program where we place students at the lab working with some of our brightest minds in the laboratory and working with each other so that they can build cross disciplinary expertise in spectrum and we're expanding that to some other agencies now also. so we're definitely -- that is a

big part of bringing in the new adaptive and reconfigurable paradigm. thank you. sen. hickenlooper: i appreciate that. i'm kind of out of time. mr. clarke, i just -- i'll leave this, you can answer very, very concisely. this partnership between the federal government and the auctions around how spectrum gets divvied up. how do you look when you're evaluating spectrum use for federal emission, how important is it for the agencies to have a meaningful and collaborative role in that feasibility study? mr. clark: it's really important because the physics matter. i think fundamentally, no matter how much spectrum sharing or division of the spectrum into more efficient bands comes, you still have to deal with the physics of certain bands are going to be useful for certain operations and you can't just move to another part of the spectrum. so physics matter and i think that's fundamentally what it comes down to. sen. hickenlooper: thank you so much. i yield back to the chair. sen. cruz: thank you. senator curtis.

sen. curtis: i support the department of defense. when it comes to spectrum debate, the d.o.d. and the commercial interest have been at stalemate for decades. after years of discussions it seems unclear to me why something can't be worked out. it feels as if there's something i don't know. i know the d.o.d. is not here today but i suspect they're listening and i would challenge them to better articulate just specifically what it is that they're not telling us. perhapses it needs to be classified and if so, i'm game for that briefing. but i think it's fair to say that i don't see it and i think it's important that as a member of congress we better understand just exactly why we can't come to this consensus. mr. hazlett, the united states won the 4-g race, which led to considerable investment and innovation that resulted in the app economy being developed here in the united states. looking ahead to the future of 5-g and 6-g technologies, i

share a concern that many have that if the u.s. yields its technology dominance to china, future economies may develop abroad instead of at home. can you speak to the importance of the united states being the global leader on 5-g and 6-g technologies? mr. hazlett: we simply squandered an opportunity to move ahead and to make the economy stronger, have innovation here. by the way it has benefits way beyond the auction revenues. so -- talking about scoring the auction revenues, my economist reaction is, you're leaving out the biggest part of this. which is surging the economy and in fact getting tax revenues over time. these are routinely led on the other side. i'll just quickly say one thing. yes, this debate between civilian and military, it's been going on since before 1920.

sen. curtis: let's figure it out. i had meant to say this question if i had enough time but you brought it up so i'm going to hit it right now. the c.b.o. has consistently misscored the revenue and i understand you're talking about additional revenue that comes from that. how is it that we keep getting to wrong, the value of these? mr. hazlett: good question. i don't have an answer to that. sen. curtis: their score is 51% lower than the average sale. all right. we'll let you off because i have a whole bunch of other questions. mr. baylis, could you explain the difference between full power exclusive use spectrum licenses, versus potential spectrum sharing models? and how those different policy approaches might impact the rollout of the next generation of wireless technologies? dr. baylis: i think what you mean by exclusive full power, that's the only device that gets to use the band. i think you mean by dynamic spectrum sharing that there's some level of interplay. i would say that from my

perspective, as the director of the center that's developing adantive and reconfigurable technology, what we need to do, we're here at your service to build the best technology that we can to help our country succeed. and we're happy to inform you we're the technology -- where the technologies are. in terms of choosing a sign, that game, i prefer not to speak out on that because that's not my lane. i'm really trying to develop technologies that will make us the best. sen. curtis: mr. pearl, did you want to comment? mr. pearl: i would just mention that i would separate a bit in terms of full power versus low power and they both have their benefits and advantages. as we've seen with cellular networks and wi-fi. although full power doesn't necessarily need to be exclusive use. i'm not aware of a federal spectrum transition that is completely exclusive use in the sense that d.o.d. completely cleared out and so i do think there can be -- you can look at it both ways where you're looking at full power, but not necessarily exclusive use and

advice never is a with -- vice versa with low power. sen. curtis: that's helpful. i'll ask you a question. i mentioned d.o.d.'s not here so we'll pick on you. the demand as we all know for midrange spectrum is high and it's not going away. d.o.d. says they can't afford to give up a single part of their spectrum without negative national security consequences. is d.o.d. truly using all of its spectrum with maximizing efficiency and what other considerations are leading d.o.d. to this conclusion? mr. pearl: no. i don't believe they are. if you get into the details with them in many cases, i think that they would concede that. and i think that it's necessary to work with all the right constituencies in d.o.d. one thing i would mention is that you're hearing one thing at the briefings, but there are people in d.o.d. that have a more innovative mindset and see some of the advantages here and i think figuring out how to

empower some of those people and breng them to the table is really helpful. because that's how we can solve some of these problems. sen. curtis: i'm out of time. i would like to close with -- i'm a d.o.d. supporter. i want them to have what they need. but i also think we can work this out. thank you all for your time. thanks, mr. chairman. i yield. sen. kim: we're trying to get a sense of the tradeoffs out there and what we're hearing from d.o.d. and elsewhere. i guess i would ask you, do you think that this committee would benefit from having the classified briefing and conversation with d.o.d. and try to dig into some of those other people that you're talking about, that can try to bring to light some of what this is? i'm just kind of curious your thoughts on that. mr. pearl: i do. i think it would be helpful to work with the right people and bring in some engineers. you know, to that process. because what it really comes down to is not just the high

level briefing, it's getting into here's a critical system and here's the actual impact it would have on performance if it used less spectrum. and getting very precise about that. and then talking about some of the technologies that might be able to avoid that outcome and preserve the d.o.d. capability. but really focusing on some of those, like, a small number of critical systems and getting into those details because just to be told we can't share any, we're using all of it at all times, to me, there are important systems in these bands that are systems that absolutely are essential to our national security. but to say that we can't share any of it and we're using all of it is just not -- that doesn't pass muster. sen. kim: i think you're right. that precision is incredibly important when it comes to these decisions. mr. clark, i ask you the same question. what are your thoughts about us and this committee dive in deeper in a classified way? mr. clark: yes, sir. i think that's absolutely what

needs to happen. to get down to that level of precision, what do the systems do, what frequencies do they operate at, what's the operational -- what's the purpose of the system and how does it work in the war fight? and then how can it operate differently if we were to try to make it more agile in the spectrum? so a lot of these systems, they need a band of spectrum that's available. so they can jump around and avoid enemy detection or avoid enemy jamming. in some cases these systems are not efficient because they have to have more spectrum made available to them so they can do this kind of anti-jam function. but that means they're not using the frequency continuously. so if you had spectrum sharing schemes and dynamic spectrum sharing, you could still do anti-jam operations while being able to free that spectrum up for other users when you're out employing it. mr. pearl: also looping in what are the possible ways that you could accommodate d.o.d. in other parts of the spectrum. so if we talk about, for instance, lower three gigahertz

which is a really critical area of discussion, there's a federal band that goes 400 megahertz below where d.o.d. is using it. so also having a conversation about where could d.o.d. potentially move i think could be really helpful. sen. kim: thank you forthat i agree -- for that. i agree. mr. chair, i guess for your consideration, as one of the newer members here on the committee, i was on armed services on the house, but still a lot here to unpack. so if we could consider whether or not that might be doable for us to engage in a classified way, that might be able to make sure that we're all really trying to understand this and especially what dr. pearl said about the precision that's necessary here. because so much is at stake. just in my final time here. dr. pearl, i guess i just wanted to ask you in your testimony you talked about how critical it is for the u.s. to advance our position in wireless innovation technology. especially when it comes to the strategic competition that we face with the p.r.c. i guess i would like you to just

expand. can you explain to us how the spectrum auction authority fits into that goal? how is that embedded within that broader ability for us to advance our position? mr. pearl: i would characterize spectrum auctions as the first step in a chain reaction that reverberates through the global economy. meaning that the auction is something that, other than us insiders, no one is aware of. raises some money for the treasury. but that is the opportunity for mobile operators to upgrade their networks. otherwise it's too expensive. there's no reason to do it. it's once they've obtained new spectrum that they launch new services, expand their use of it, and then from there it reverberates into the app economy, into tech companies, into what you can use all that bandwidth for. and then ultimately that creates an ecosystem and we want a technology ecosystem outside the p.r.c. that's the most advanced

and robust. so it's a key component in terms of building that overall tech ecosystem that's going to be able to outcompete or outinnovate. sen. kim: that helps us be able to try to export that and be able to get market share around the world, is that what you're saying? mr. pearl: absolutely. other countries are going to make decisions about what spectrum bands they use, what wireless networks they procure from. and so having that ecosystem that's attractive to them means that they'll choose the u.s. over the p.r.c. sen. kim: thank you. i yield back. sen. cruz: thank you. senator moreno. sen. moreno: even though a point has been made, it hasn't been made by everybody. i will break that tradition and thank the four of you for your testimony. i thought the exchange was fantastic. we learned a lot and with that i yield my time.

sen. cruz: very good. you may win the prize for brevity. [laughter] i must say, i'm not sure you're going to make it as a senator. [laughter] i'm not going to follow that line. there are several things i want to revisit. there was a claim mentioned earlier that it would take 20 years to develop advanced sharing technologies. mr. pearl, did it take 20 years to develop the am bit process? mr. pearl: no. i think that was a matter of the study was done in about six months and it was completed in 12 to 18 months if i remember correctly. sen. cruz: mr. clark, are geographic carve-outs another way to share? mr. clark: yes, sir, they are. absolutely.

and on the point about 20 years, i was just saying, it would take 20 years potentially to upgrade all the systems with the new technology. the new technology would be available more quickly obviously. sen. cruz: was the ambit process successfully in enabling d.o.d. and commercial 5-g co-existence? mr. clark: it did, yes, sir. sen. cruz: some of my colleagues have also discussed low-power spectrum sharing or cbrs. mr. pearl, do you think cbrs is a panacea or do we also need full power spectrum? mr. pearl: we need full power spectrum as well. cbrs was the first really serious effort to do dynamic spectrum sharing, in a band where it was really difficult. but you need both those high-powered uses to really utilize the ability to penetrate buildings, walls, to really have the capital investment that the carriers need. in order to offer a lot of those services. and so you need those high-power services, you need low-power

services which we have in six gigahertz and elsewhere. and both are important, absolutely. sen. cruz: i've heard concerns that cbrs has been underutilized because providers lack the certainty they need to invest in their cbrs spectrum. do you share these concerns? mr. hazlett: well, there are some problems as the f.c.c. is acknowledging and it's gone back to try to see how it can fix it. the claims were that that was the solution. that that was going to really have what is called sharing. i'll just mention the fact that all spectrum is shared. what's called exclusive use is not exclusive at all. you have networks in the united states with 100 million subscribers and they share these aggregations of band width and in fact there's all kinds of models that have developed between firms, between providers, when you do get the incentives to come together and make deals.

and so in terms of, yes, people coming in from the private sector dealing with government assignments, the fact is that paying to share, in other words, paying to separate the allocations between the new users and the existing users, that's a very effective form of sharing. so it's really not just science. it's incentives to come together. that's why things like overlays are so important. it's why a better system of audit, which has been talked about, this has been suggested 25 years ago to the f.c.c. to in fact have, by auction or assignment, have private firms come in and actually audit spectrum that's being used by government agencies to see if there are opportunities there for sharing. but maybe it's money coming to the agency in and improved version of the spectrum relocation process to get that

out there. sen. cruz: mr. clark, we heard from my colleague, senator fischer, that a pipeline bill would require exclusive licensed use of and vacating or clearing d.o.d. out of bands. now, as you know, the spectrum pipeline act that i've authored requires a paip line of full power -- a pipeline of full power, not of exclusive use, and does not identify any specific bandses. mr. clark, is there anything in that bill that is inconsistent with your testimony or senator fischer's concerns? mr. clark: no. in theory, it isn't. i think the challenge would be implementation. depending on how much your target is to try to clear, it may prove difficult to be able to work out an arrangement so the commercial and military users can both enjoy that spectrum and the option may not be affordable or tractive from the commercial company's perspective because the geographic patchwork they may end up with or the spectrum

sharing requirements are going to be such that maybe it makes it too expensive for them to pursue. sen. cruz: so mr. pearl, we had an exchange with senator fischer and mr. clark where they were discussing the theory that china's public push to lead in wireless technology is just a mind game. that they're somehow baiting the united states with ambitious plans and they're secretly holding back, trying to trick us into giving up spectrum to the commercial sector. i find that a particularly odd conspiracy theory given the actual facts of what we know. first of all, we know that huawei and other chinese manufacturers are actively and successfully pushing worldwide adoption of chinese 6-g equip standards that. wouldn't be possible without china having made its spectrum available for commercial use.

second, china has aggressively targeted our telecommunications industry. has tapped the phones of top officials, including president trump and vice president vance. and prompted this committee to fully fund a multibillion-dollar rip and replace program to remove chinese equipment from american networks. mr. pearl, would american national and economic security be harmed if chinese firms like huawei and z.t.e. set the global standard for 6-g network equipment via this first mover advantage? and how would that affect the global competitiveness of u.s. companies? mr. pearl: so it would have a great deal of harm and i would echo my agreement that i don't think this is a disinformation campaign. i thought battle against huawei and z.t.e. for almost two years and in order for their businesses to be able to sell equipment outside of china, they need to be able to use these bands inside of china. and get those economies of scale. but if they're successful in terms of setting the global

standard, that means that the u.s. will have a siloed market with a few of its allies and partners, where we'll have much worse technology, much worse networks. we'll just have an inferior ecosystem and ultimately that means that we're going to be put at a military disadvantage. because as others have commented in a battle the electromagnetic domain can be absolutely decisive. and we just won't have the technology to prevail in that case. sen. cruz: i want to thank all the witnesses for very helpful testimony. senators will have until the close of business on wednesday, february 26, to submit questions for the record. and then the witnesses will have until the close of business on wednesday, march 12, to respond to those questions. and with that, that concludes today's hearing. the committee stands adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025]

sen. cruz: i think that position is patently unrbl. and this -- unreasonable. and i think at this point it's a political talking point that undermines national security. two of the questions i asked at the opening, the pentagon has no good answer for. is there are 50 nations worldwide who allow commercial use of major portions of the spectrum. and the pentagon's contention that the military can't operate

if the united states allows commercial use of the spectrum is absurd. it suggests that somehow our military can't operate in the pacific. that's objectively false. secondly, i asked the pentagon in the classified briefing and i asked here, what are the consequences to u.s. national security if we lose the race for 6-g? if china wins, if china sets the global standards for 6-g, if china provides the global architecture for telecom and the answer is it's catastrophic. every soldier, sailor, airman and marine carries a cell phone in their pockets. and if china sets the global standards, that has massive negative consequences for our national security. we can and must do both. i spent six years on the senate

armed services committee. i care deeply about ensuring that we can defend this nation and defeat our enemies. but acting like luddites and pretending that global technology will freeze is not a strategy to defending this nation's national security. nor is it a strategy to ensuring our economic leadership. america has led the world with 4-g and 5-g and that has produced hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment and it has produced hundreds of thousands of jobs. and there are very few if any policies that can have a greater positive impact, unleashing jobs in america, than opening up spectrum. and i think we have both an economic imperative and a national security imperative to do just that.

>> thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. vit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 25] announcer: this week, tune in for c-span's new membe congress series. where we talk to both repus and democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families and why they decided toor office. watch new members of congre all week beginning at 9:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. here's a preview. >> it's a company i started right out of college. i incorporated before i graduated my senior year at i.u. what did i learn? i learned everything about business. by taking business from a building and growing it into a portfolio. i went from -- it was wholly owned by me up until the point that i traded it in to a great big public company. and so i had that experience of

small startup business to a midsized regional operator, traded it into a national company. i took a seat on their board of directors. so i learned an extraordinary amount about business. but some of it's pretty simple. you've got to satisfy your customers. you've got to meet your payroll. cover your payments. and do all those things to stay in business. >> well, i'm a long-time trial attorney. i've been practicing law in texas for 33 years. representing people in their times of need when they've had a problem. usually against a corporation or an insurance company or something along those lines. and then i married my wife who is a gastrologist. we have a split household on lawyer and doctor which i think in some contexts is more contentious. i have two sons. nicholas and benjamin. and they're 22 and 24. and working their way up through life. and just really excited to be

here. >> you are the first openly lgbtq member representing texas. >> right. >> ever. what does that mean to you? what do you think it means to others? >> it's a huge honor and it's something -- and a responsibility. you know, there are -- texas has a significant lgbtq population and it's demonstrative that you can win in hard states. and we must win in hard states for our equality to ultimately be achieved. and also, just to put yourself out there. don't shut yourself down because you think you can't win. i did that to myself. i never thought i could win in texas as an lgbtq person. but here i am, i flipped a state house seat in 2018. i'm the first democrat to hold it in 40 years. now i'm a member of congress and i just think it's awesome. announcer: all this week, watch c-span's new members of congress series where we speak with both republicans and democrats about their early lives. previous careers.

families. and why they decided to run for office. tonight at 9:30 p.m. eastern, our interviews include virginia democratic congressman eugene vindman who was born in ukraine, served as a u.s. army officer, and played a role in the story of his brother, alexander vindman, who came to national attention in 2019 for his testimony before congress on president trump's relationship with ukraine. >> i was a lieutenant colonel assigned to the white house on a detail. deputy legal advisor on national security council staff. the chief ethics official on the national security council staff and so i worked right across the hall from my twin brother and he had the portfolio of russia, ukraine, belarus, moldova. he listened to the phone call, he heard the president's attempt at extortion and he reported directly to me. announcer: watch new members of congress all