Iran launches cyberattacks against the U.S. and successfully impacts water supplies in 12 states. China sends Iran 400 shoulder-fired rocket launchers to down U.S. airplanes. Russian diplomats threaten Europe that support for Ukraine is an act of war. Moscow greenlights Russian jets invading European airspace, and its navy fires live artillery in the English Channel. Underwater cables are severed by Russia’s trawler fleet while its GRU agents coordinate violent, including lethal, sabotage campaigns across the continent.
Last week the CIA cautioned, as had been predicted, that President Vladimir Putin may challenge NATO by staging attacks in the Baltics or Poland. Putin calculates he can undermine NATO’s credibility by taking action, which would bring the alliance to the brink of invoking Article 5, the mutual defense provision that means an attack on one member state is an attack on all. He’s counting on NATO’s nervous nellies refusing to honor Article 5 if his target is Eastern Europe and his offensive is limited in scope. Making NATO appear toothless in the face of Russian provocation will splinter its cohesion and simultaneously make Europe’s leaders fearful of supplying Ukraine with weapons.
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Also last week, an explosives-laden drone thought to be Russian unsuccessfully attacked a German airport. Across the globe, China prepares to invade Taiwan by conducting military drills and cutting underwater cables the island relies on for commerce and communications. Taiwan will hold its own defense exercises this week, including a novel component of intentionally disrupting its own internet access. Cutting internet service through cyberattacks or destroying infrastructure is a feature of modern war. Taiwan wants its populace to start finding other ways of keeping in contact with one another when cellphones, texts, emails, and social media are cut off.
Will that really happen? Are we close to a major war?
I don’t know, but we need to act as if we might be.
The U.S. could benefit from Taiwan’s realization that defense requires a whole-of-society approach and not just military preparedness. With the sole exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world is more volatile now than it has ever been in my lifetime. Despite this sobering reality, the federal government’s civilian agencies are making policy as if a third world war is impossible. Case in point: The Federal Communications Commission declared in the spring that America’s telecommunications companies should terminate landline telephones. The FCC views this as opening the way for “21st century” phone technology.
Never mind that VoIP and the fiber-optic-based digital voice service, which the FCC proposes to replace landlines, are actually 20th-century technology. Both rely on internet access and externally supplied power. Phone companies such as Verizon, which recently merged with Frontier, have already notified consumers across the country that their landlines will go dead in November.
This is a grave error.
Copper-based landlines still function when cellphones, internet-based VoIP, or fiber-based digital voice fail. The 19th-century technology is dated but robust. Landlines are critical during natural disasters such as hurricanes, when cell towers are destroyed and electrical power is lost. I went through two Category 4/5 hurricanes in Florida that knocked out electrical power and cellphone coverage for days. My landline was the only working link to the outside world.
In a war with China and Russia, landlines would be essential. As the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran reveal, it takes more than military might to win a major war. It also takes a functioning economy and civil society. Cellphone service is particularly vulnerable to cyberattack. So is America’s energy grid. If these two are attacked simultaneously, society would grind to a virtual (no pun intended) halt. America needs reliable landlines now more than ever as a backup system in the event of war.
Guess how the FCC proposes we power our fiber-based phones when the electrical service gets cut? Back-up lithium batteries made exclusively in China that last at most 24 hours before requiring recharging!
Starlink has given Ukraine a communications lifeline, but satellite-based systems, including GPS, would absolutely also be targets in a global conflict. China has openly admitted it is fielding a satellite fleet designed to cripple Starlink and U.S. space-based communications in a war. The Pentagon is preparing for that threat. Civilians must do the same.
Fifty-five million Americans still have landlines. In a crisis, the service can be easily expanded to more businesses and households. In contrast, internet-based communications are extremely vulnerable to cyberattack and sabotage. Yet despite well-documented business and personal safety risks, the ostriches leading the FCC still want to strip America of its most resilient telecommunications.
This FCC folly needs to be stopped immediately, before irreparable damage is done to America’s national security through overreliance on vulnerable telecommunications. In an ideal world, the FCC would reverse itself and rescind the policy.
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But as we learned during the COVID crisis, even in the face of countervailing evidence that their policies are misguided, federal bureaucrats are reluctant to acknowledge error and change course. Congress is too fractious and focused on the midterm elections to take action in time. It falls to the White House and our national security agencies to compel the FCC to abide by its core statutory mandate of preserving life-safety communications infrastructure in the case of a national crisis.
President Donald Trump, please pick up that telephone and order the FCC to keep landlines!
John B. Roberts II served in the Reagan White House and was an international political strategist and executive producer of The McLaughlin Group. He is an author and artist.
