Sunday, February 04, 2018

Over-zealous General attempts to wrest control of 5G roll-out!

Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding USAF, the senior director for strategic planning with the National Security Council, left the White House this week following the leak of a memo that advocated for a government takeover of development of the nation’s 5G mobile telecom network.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported some White House officials viewed next-gen 5G wireless service as a “key area of competition,” and saw a potential threat from China as justification for a “moonshot” government effort behind the network’s development. Moonshot in this context being an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits.

Spalding was the memo's author which irked the telecom industry and irritated the White House according to the Washing Post, but was not implicated in the leak. However it was decided his backing of the potential government takeover of the 5G network exceeded his NSC role.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai told the New York Times that he opposed the idea of a government-built 5G network, and industry group USTelecom said government involvement would likely slow the technology's development.

"What can seem like a logical idea can often be derailed in the way it's presented," said Brigadier General "Whopper" Creedon, USMC, SPEARHEAD Assistant Commander for Intelligence and Information who as a Colonel in 2005 served the NSC as Military Assistant to the Deputy National Security Advisor for Extraterrestrial Encounters. "My proposal for AMDI, the Alien Mothership Deterrent Initiative needed to make it look like it was coming directly from the advisors never by me. If it got shot down - fair enough, if it got accepted - all good but if it crashed and burned it would have been difficult for the advisors to pin it on me without looking like they were idiots for suggesting it."

"One doesn't just suggest taking government control of a new telecommunications standard roll-out! You give the companies 'incentives' to get them all to do the job faster themselves. You have to know how to play the game but more importantly you have to know the players, sadly Spalding was too over-zealous with his proposal for the current administration to handle or likely even understand," said Gen. Creedon.

Source: Fox News / WSJ / NYT / Washing Post