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security threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During that time, the FCC eliminated federal subsidies for telecommunications equipment from Huawei and ZTE, thereby greatly reducing the chances of that equipment finding a way into our nation’s communications networks. The FCC also stood up a program to rip and replace insecure network gear to ensure that it did not remain a threat lurking inside our systems. The FCC revoked or denied the licenses of carriers like China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, which presented unacceptable national security risks. There are, however, additional strong actions that the FCC can and should take to address the CCP’s malign campaign. Specifically:

• Address TikTok’s threat to U.S. national security. As law enforcement officials have made clear, TikTok poses a serious and unacceptable risk to America’s national security.” It also provides Beijing with an opportunity to run a foreign influence campaign by determining the news and information that the app feeds to millions of Americans. As of this writing, the Biden Administration’s Treasury Department has not announced a final decision concerning its long-pending review of TikTok. If that inaction persists, or if the Administration allows TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S., anew Administration should ban the application on national security grounds.

• Expand the FCC’s Covered List. The FCC maintains a list of communications equipment and services that pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States. It is known as the Covered List.”* Huawei is one of the companies on the Covered List, and its inclusion means that the FCC will no longer review or approve new applications from Huawei. Without FCC approval, new Huawei gear cannot be lawfully sold or used in the U.S. However, the FCC must do a better job of ensuring that its Covered List stays up to date and accounts for changes in corporate names and forms. Therefore, a new Administration should create a more regular and timely process for reviewing entities with ties to the CCP’s surveillance state.

• End the unregulated end run. As noted above, China Telecom and similar entities have been banned from operating in the U.S. in a manner that would require an FCC license or authorization because of the national security risks that those entities pose. However, many of these same entities are still operating in the U.S. and offering services very similar to the ones that they are prohibited from providing. China Telecom, for instance, continues to provide services to data centers by offering the services on a private or

“unregulated” basis. Anew Administration should work with the FCC to close this loophole. One way to do so would be for the FCC to prohibit any regulated carrier from interconnecting with an insecure provider.

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Publish a foreign adversary transparency list. As part of the FCC’s ongoing work to secure our networks from entities that would do the bidding of our foreign adversaries, the FCC should do more to shine the light of transparency on the scope of the problem. To this end, the FCC should compile and publish a list of all entities that hold FCC authorizations, licenses, or other grants of authority with more than 10 percent ownership by foreign adversarial governments, including the governments of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, or North Korea. A bipartisan bill that would require

the FCC to publish this type of list has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Ro Khanna (DCA), and Mike Gallagher (R-WI).**

Fully fund the federal “rip and replace” program. In 2019, Congress established a $1.9 billion Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (known colloquially as the “rip and replace” program) to reimburse communications providers for the reasonable expenses they would incur to remove, replace, and dispose of insecure Huawei and ZTE gear. However, $1.9 billion is about $3 billion short of the total amount of funding needed to complete the rip and replace process. A new Administration should ensure that the program is fully funded and should look first at repurposing and applying unused COVID-era emergency funds for this purpose.

Launch a Clean Standards Initiative. During the Trump Administration, the U.S. government launched a worldwide Clean Networks program.”

As aresult of this initiative, many of the U.S. government’s allies started

the process of ending their relationships with Huawei. It is time for an Administration to build and expand on this groundbreaking work by

taking a similar approach to the standard-setting process. Right now,

the CCP is seeking to extend its influence by exerting control over the development of standards in a variety of areas, including technology and telecommunications. It is vital that the United States meet this threat with a comprehensive clean standards initiative.

Stop aiding the CCP’s authoritarian approach to artificial intelligence. The CCP has set itself a goal of becoming the global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. Beijing is bent on using this technology to exert authoritarian control domestically and export its authoritarian governance model overseas. U.S. businesses are aiding Beijing in this effort— often unwittingly—by feeding, training, and improving the AI datasets

of companies that are beholden to the CCP. One way that U.S. companies