For
the
better
part
of
thirty
years
telecom
giants
(and
the
consultants,
think
tanks,
and
lobbyists
paid
to
defend
them)
have
fought
against every effort
at
coherent
federal
oversight.
It
didn’t
matter
whether
it
was modest
privacy
standards or basic
pricing
transparency,
the
argument
that
was
if
you
stripped
away
coherent
state
and
federal
government
oversight
of
telecom,
free
market magic
would
happen.
Not
only
is
U.S.
broadband
uncompetitive,
patchy,
expensive,
with
bad
customer
service
as
a
result,
lax
oversight
and
privacy/security
standards
has
resulted
in
a
steady
parade
of
hacks
and
leaks,
culminating
recently
in
the worst
hacking
intrusions
the
U.S.
has
ever
seen.
Chinese
hackers
deeply
infiltrated
nine
major
U.S.
ISPs
to
spy
on
high
profile
targets,
and
the
government
and
U.S.
telecoms
are
still
trying
to
assess
the
damage
months
later.
(Why,
it’s
almost
as
if
corruption
is
a
national
security
risk.)
Because
the
“Salt
Typhoon”
hackers
were
very
careful
about
wiping
logs
it’s
been difficult
to
assess
the
full
scale
of
the
intrusion
or
whether
intruders
are
still
in
sensitive
systems.
Officials
believe
intruders
could
still
be
rooting
around
the
networks
of
the
nine
compromised
ISPs.
They
also
state
the
hack
was
because
telecoms
“failed
to
implement
rudimentary
cybersecurity
measures
across
their
IT
infrastructure.”
The
U.S.
reporting
on
the
hack
has
been…interesting.
The
story
has
seen
a
fraction
of
the
press
attention
reserved for
the
TikTok
moral
panic.
And
very
few
news
outlets
are
willing
to
draw
a
direct
line
between
the
telecom
industry’s
relentless
“deregulatory”
lobbying
(read:
corruption)
and
the
intrusion,
despite
U.S.
officials
making
it
very
clear
in
statements:
“When
I
talked
with
our
U.K.
colleagues
and
I
asked,
‘do
you
believe
your
regulations
would
have
prevented
the Salt
Typhoon attack?’,
their
comment
to
me
was, ‘we
would
have
found
it
faster.
We
would
have
contained
it
faster,
[and]
it
wouldn’t
have
spread
as
widely
and
had
the
impact
and
been
as
undiscovered
for
as
long,’
had
those
regulations
been
in
place,”
[White
House
Cybersecurity
chief]
Anne
Neuberger
said.
“That’s
a
powerful
message.”
The
FCC
is
poised
to
hold
meetings
next
month
to
address
whether
it
should
shore
up
its
cybersecurity
oversight
of
telecoms.
But
at
the
helm
of
those
conversations
will
be new
Trump
FCC
boss
Brendan
Carr,
who
has never
stood
up
to
major
telecoms
on
any
issue
of
importance,
ever.
And
the
looming Trump-court-backed
defeat
of
net
neutrality also
curtails
the
FCC’s
authority
on
cybersecurity.
Again,
the
U.S.
Congress
has
repeatedly
proven
too
corrupt
to
pass
meaningful
telecom
reform.
Regulators
are
routinely
stocked
with
revolving
door
careerists
too
worried
about
their
next
career
move
to
stand
up
to
telecoms.
And
the
corrupt
U.S.
Supreme
Court just
neutered
what’s
left
of
regulatory
independence,
ceding
most
reforms
to
a
Congress
too
corrupt
to
act.
The
Salt
Typhoon
hack
comes
after
years
and
years
of
officials
freaking
out
about
the
security
risks
of Chinese-made
Huawei
telecom
hardware.
Though
when
the
worst
hack
in
U.S.
history
finally
arrived
it
was
courtesy
of
lax
domestic
oversight,
domestic
deregulation,
domestic
corruption,
domestic
laziness,
and
outdated
administrative
passwords.
Mindlessly
‘Deregulating’
U.S.
Telecom
Contributed
to
The
Worst
Hack
In
U.S.
History
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