The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has launched an investigation into firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The investigations follow FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s creation of a Council on National Security.
The FCC has “launched a sweeping investigation into the ongoing U.S. operations of CCP-aligned businesses whose equipment or services the FCC previously placed on its Covered List based on determinations that those equipment or services pose unacceptable risks to America’s national security,” the agency announced. “Despite being placed on the FCC’s Covered List, some or all of those entities may still be operating in the U.S.—either because they do not believe the FCC’s Covered List prohibits particular types of operations or otherwise.”
To move forward with the investigations, the FCC sent letters and at least one subpoena to the companies being probed.
“The FCC has taken concrete actions to address the threats posed by Huawei, ZTE, China Telecom, and many other entities that pose an unacceptable risk to America’s national security, including by doing Communist China’s bidding,” Carr said in a statement. “To safeguard our networks, the FCC has placed those CCP-aligned entities on our Covered List, and we have revoked many of the FCC authorizations that they had been operating under.”
“We have reason to believe that, despite those actions, some or all of these Covered List entities are trying to make an end run around those FCC prohibitions by continuing to do business in America on a private or ‘unregulated’ basis. We are not going to just look the other way,” Carr continued. “The FCC, working through our new Council on National Security and in coordination with partners across the Federal government, will identify the scope of their ongoing activities and move quickly to close any loopholes that have permitted untrustworthy, foreign adversary state-backed actors to skirt our rules.”
The entities under investigation include Huawei Technologies Company, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications Corporation, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company, Dahua Technology Company, China Mobile International USA Inc., China Telecom (Americas) Corp., Pacifica Networks Corp./ComNet (USA) LLC, and China Unicom (Americas) Operations Ltd.
