FCC’s Simington Raises GPS Security Concerns

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2024 – As U.S. reliance on foreign satellite networks for GPS grows, a top Federal Communications Commission official has spotlighted new national security threats.

This week, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington addressed the Hudson Institute, warning that foreign navigation systems — including the European Union’s Galileo, Russia’s Glonass, and China’s BeiDou — have become embedded in U.S. devices, posing potential security risks.

“We have to recognize that even the most seemingly benign use of foreign technology can become a security threat,” Simington said in his address. “It appears that many American businesses and consumers are relying on these foreign systems in their operations.”

Simington warned that adversaries could disrupt U.S. operations by either disabling foreign navigation systems or sending incorrect data to U.S. devices.

While the FCC currently has limited knowledge of how U.S. devices connect to these foreign systems, Simington said, the agency, spurred by former Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., has launched an investigation into these connections in the hope that this will inform future regulatory action.

“The FCC does not have any insight into whether and how a terrestrial provider would know if a customer is using an application that connects to Chinese, Russian or other foreign navigation system. These are answers the FCC does not currently have and that it should as it ventures into governing this nascent service,” Simington said.

Simington’s concerns align closely with geolocation company NextNav’s recent proposal, currently under FCC review, for a domestic GPS backup.

Although Simington did not mention NextNav by name, his call for resilient, secure positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) solutions echoes NextNav's proposal to create a nationwide terrestrial GPS network, valued at $14.6 billion.