It’s bad enough that we bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and killed three journalists because of shoddy military intelligence. So now Pentagon sympathizers want to level U.S. spectrum policy. What gives?
DOD says it knows nothing about this assault on spectrum policy. One explanation for DOD spectrum zingers: The Navy or one of its contractors got to the Senate Armed Services Committee and its chairman, John Warner (R-Va). Another: It’s really the Clinton administration that wants $2.6 billion from accelerated auctions this fiscal year.
And the Pentagon is fighting like hell to get these DOD spectrum measures removed from House and Senate bills, right?
This is confusing. Pentagon top brass openly disdain U.S. policy of selling spectrum as fast as the Federal Communications Commission can put it on the auction block.
And, somehow, conferring super-status on Pentagon spectrum and protecting the global positioning system for U.S. armed forces to the exclusion of all commercial space- and land-based wireless systems is the answer. Hmmm.
The Pentagon still is fuming about having to spend $1 billion to relocate military radio systems as a result of a 1993 law that created auctions and ordered the feds to surrender 235 megahertz to the private sector.
It’s apparently not enough that Congress last year voted to make commercial wireless carriers reimburse the Pentagon for moving costs.
So then, given DOD’s jaundiced view of the FCC’s fast-food approach of selling wireless licenses, how is it there’s a provision in the Senate DOD appropriations bill to auction 36 megahertz this year instead of after Jan. 1, 2001?
Well, for one thing, it’s TV broadcast-not DOD-spectrum being auctioned. Second, the Pentagon needs money. Hey, $2.6 billion can buy you a few cruise missiles. So if it suits Pentagon purposes, U.S. spectrum auction policy is just fine.
Those 1997 balanced budget spending caps are tough. Just ask House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-Ill.).
… Liberal (high-tech) leave policy. The Hill reports Rep. Chris Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the select House committee that concluded U.S. national security was compromised by satellite transfers to China and by Chinese nuclear espionage, was a cosponsor in 1993 of two bills to ease controls on computer exports at a time when California’s economy needed a boost.
President Clinton, supposedly alarmed at the Cox report without accepting any responsibility for the mess (So what’s new?), apparently is ready to ease restrictions on computer exports to more than 100 counties in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, The Los Angeles Times reported.
The White House, however, said no-go to extending the policy to China and 50 others.
… T-shirt reportedly on sale in Beijing: “My parents went to America to steal nuclear secrets and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
