Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act (2020)

• Law: Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, Public Law 116-124
• Passed: March 12, 2020
• Vote: House 420–4; Senate unanimous consent
• Signed by: President Trump

The federal government just voted itself the power to decide which hardware is allowed to run the internet. House vote: 420–4. Senate: unanimous consent. Not a close call. Not a contested debate. Four members of the House had the courage to vote no. Everyone else handed Washington a permanent chokepoint over US communications infrastructure — and most Americans have never heard of it.

If you control what hardware runs the internet, you control the internet. That is what this law does.

How It Passed

The bill moved through Congress with almost no opposition. The national security framing was simple and effective: Huawei and ZTE are Chinese companies, China is an adversary, therefore their equipment is a threat. Nobody wanted to be the senator who voted to keep Chinese hardware in US telecom networks.

That framing worked. It also obscured what the law actually creates: a federal government with permanent authority to decide which telecom equipment is approved and which is banned. The FCC's "Covered List" — the list of prohibited equipment — does not require a congressional vote to expand. The FCC can add new companies, new equipment categories, new countries by determination alone. That authority was handed over in a 420–4 vote with minimal public debate.

Rural telecom carriers that had deployed Huawei and ZTE equipment — often because it was the only affordable option for serving remote communities — were given no meaningful transition time. Their equipment worked. It served their customers. Under this law, it became illegal to use it in any network receiving federal support. They were told to rip it out and replace it with government-approved alternatives, and the government would reimburse them.

The government did not keep that promise.

What It Does To You

The FCC maintains a "Covered List" of equipment and services that are prohibited in any communications network that receives federal funding. Right now that list includes Huawei, ZTE, Kaspersky, China Mobile, China Telecom, and Pacific Network Corp. The FCC can add to this list at any time by determination — no vote, no public comment period required, no statutory criteria limiting the designation.

Any telecom carrier — rural or urban — that accepts federal Universal Service Fund money, RDOF grants, or any other federal broadband subsidy is subject to this prohibition. That covers a large share of rural America's internet infrastructure.

The "rip and replace" mandate required covered carriers to physically remove prohibited equipment and replace it with approved alternatives. The law appropriated $1.9 billion for reimbursement. The actual cost of replacement, as certified by the carriers themselves, exceeded $4.6 billion. Congress has not made up the gap. Small rural carriers were left holding hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded mandates. Some faced genuine risk of insolvency. Customers in remote areas faced service disruptions and degraded internet access — not because of any security breach, but because the federal mandate to rip out equipment that was working outpaced the funding to replace it.

The law's "Trusted" designation — which determines what equipment you ARE allowed to use — is also administered by the FCC, through a process with minimal judicial oversight.

Rights It Strips

Your community's right to affordable internet access. Rural telecom carriers deployed Huawei and ZTE equipment because it was affordable and functional. The government banned it and promised reimbursement. The reimbursement fell $2.7 billion short. The people paying that price are rural Americans who depend on those carriers for connectivity.

Your right to a communications infrastructure free from federal control. Once the federal government controls which hardware is permitted to run the physical layer of the internet, it controls a chokepoint over all communication that passes through it. The "Covered List" has no limiting principle — any company, from any country, can be added by FCC determination. Today it is Huawei. The mechanism exists for any future administration to add anyone.

The limiting principle on government control of communications. The constitutional question is serious: does the federal government have the authority to mandate removal of specific equipment from private networks simply because it might contain a security risk — before any actual breach is documented? Courts have not fully resolved this. Congress did not wait to find out.

Documented Harms

The funding shortfall is not a hypothetical harm. It is a documented, ongoing crisis.

The FCC's rip-and-replace program was originally funded at $1.9 billion. When carriers submitted their cost estimates, the total came to $4.98 billion — nearly $3 billion more than Congress appropriated. The FCC announced in November 2022 that it could only reimburse carriers at approximately 40 cents on the dollar. Carriers that had already begun replacement work were suddenly informed the government would cover less than half their costs.

At least two rural carriers publicly warned they might have to shut down service or declare bankruptcy. NTCA — The Rural Broadband Association — documented case after case of small providers facing existential threats because of an unfunded federal mandate. Customers who depended on those carriers for emergency services, telehealth, and remote work faced real disruptions.

The government created the problem, mandated the fix, and then refused to fund it.

Separately, no carrier subject to the rip-and-replace mandate was ever shown a documented security breach or intelligence finding proving their specific Huawei or ZTE equipment had been compromised. The risk was asserted. The harm — to rural communities and small carriers — was real and documented.

Who Pushed This

The national security establishment. The intelligence community and Department of Defense drove the public argument for the Huawei ban, citing the possibility that Chinese law could compel Huawei to provide backdoor access to Chinese intelligence services. That concern may be legitimate. It was not subject to public verification.

Huawei's US competitors. Ericsson and Nokia — Huawei's primary competitors for telecom infrastructure equipment — are the direct beneficiaries of the ban. Both are European companies. The US government chose sides in a commercial competition and used national security justification to do it. The lobbying coordination between major US carriers and the approved vendor ecosystem is worth examining.

The FCC under both parties. The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai (Republican) pushed the initial designation. The FCC under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel (Democratic) expanded the Covered List and administered the broken rip-and-replace program. This is bipartisan government failure. Both parties built and administered a system that devastated rural internet access while enriching approved vendors.

Congress, nearly unanimously. 420–4. This was not a partisan failure. It was a near-unanimous institutional failure to ask basic questions: Who pays if the reimbursement is inadequate? What is the limiting principle on the Covered List? What happens to rural communities when this mandate hits networks they depend on? Those questions were not asked. The vote happened anyway.

Key Votes

• House: 420–4. Four members voted no. Those four — Representatives Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, and two others — read the bill, understood the precedent, and said no. They deserve recognition.
• Senate: Unanimous consent. No recorded individual votes. Every senator who allowed this to pass by unanimous consent shares responsibility for the outcome.

The four House NO votes were on the right side of history. They understood that the mechanism being created — a federal list of approved and prohibited communications equipment, administered by an agency with no statutory limiting criteria — was more dangerous than the problem it claimed to solve.

Why This Matters for We The Citizens

The Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act is the infrastructure-layer version of the TikTok ban. Both use the same argument: a Chinese company's involvement in US communications creates a national security risk. Both result in the federal government asserting permanent control over who may participate in US communications — at the hardware level.

The TikTok ban generated massive public opposition because 170 million Americans used the app and felt the ban directly. The Secure Act generated almost no public opposition because most Americans do not think about who manufactures the equipment that routes their internet traffic. That invisibility is exactly why it matters. The most dangerous government power grabs are the ones that happen at layers of infrastructure too boring and technical for most people to follow.

The FCC's Covered List can be expanded to include any company from any country by agency determination alone. The mechanism that started with Huawei and ZTE exists for any future application. The precedent — federal control of approved communications hardware — is now established law.

We The Citizens' voter accountability work should document which members voted YES on the 420–4 vote and which ones (the four) had the principle to vote no. More importantly, We The Citizens should be tracking who is asking hard questions about the Covered List expansion authority, who is demanding the rural funding gap be filled, and who is building oversight tools to prevent this precedent from being used more broadly.

See also: Bad Laws Overview