Washington elites love to talk about America leading the world in technology, but when it comes to the future of the nation’s wireless communications, they turn a blind eye to—or worse—actively subvert the Trump administration’s agenda.
In the One Big Beautiful Bill that passed earlier this year, Congress authorized a sale of spectrum—the official term used for American wireless communications—worth nearly $100 billion. President Donald Trump lauded this as a necessary goal for ensuring American dominance in 5G and 6G. Now, the latest NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) has a hidden provision that would undo that progress and give the military-industrial complex more power to block auctions that President Trump already advocated for.
This isn’t the first time deep state actors within the defense industry have acted contrary to a President’s interest to defend their own fiefdom. Last time, the military-industrial complex went after Ligado Networks, a 5G telecommunications company, in an effort to strangle innovation rather than lose control of spectrum policy.
After nearly two decades of back-and-forth, the Federal Communications Commission finally approved Ligado’s plan to bring new 5G and IoT services to market. The final vote in 2020 was unanimous and bipartisan; in return, Ligado gave up valuable spectrum rights, added protections to prevent interference, and even secured agreements with other GPS manufacturers to guarantee peaceful coexistence. By any fair measure, the company had jumped through every hoop Washington demanded.
But the Pentagon still didn’t like the result. Without credible evidence, defense bureaucrats claimed Ligado’s network would somehow put GPS at risk. When the FCC rejected those arguments, the Pentagon then turned to politics, leaning on Congress to slip language into defense bills to block Ligado’s plans. A strikingly similar situation is playing out now, with language being slipped into the 2025 NDAA reauthorization – only this time, it’s directly contravening a major part of the president’s agenda. After playing politics, the Pentagon deployed its contractors to wage smear campaigns, turning what should have been a triumph for American enterprise into a death sentence for the company.
These fights are not based on national security. They are, fundamentally, turf wars in which government insiders protect their power and control, even if it means bankrupting private businesses that play by the rules. We’ve seen this pattern before: Every time the spectrum is freed up for commercial use, government agencies cry disaster. Yet time and again, those claims prove to be just noise.
These bureaucrats are hoarding resources that should be fueling our economy. The numbers tell the story. Rough estimates suggest that federal agencies sit on around 60 percent of America’s most valuable spectrum. That’s more than half of the critical resource needed to power 5G, 6G, and the mobile future. To put it in perspective, China’s government doesn’t hold back nearly as much. While Beijing pushes its companies forward, Washington holds ours back. The new amendment language stripped power from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and handed it right back to the same military-industrial complex that mismanaged resources for decades.
Every year of delay is another year we lose ground. If entrepreneurs can’t trust the government to honor its own decisions, or to even stay the course on a law it passed earlier the same year, why would they invest billions to innovate here?
The real threat to U.S. leadership is coming from inside our own government. The Pentagon’s deep state apparatus and its defense contractors have built an empire on blocking progress. They’ve learned that shouting “National security” is the easiest way to protect budgets and power. And as long as Congress allows it, they’ll keep crying wolf to ensure innovation remains locked away.
Ligado’s struggle should be a wake-up call. We cannot win the race for technological dominance if Washington elites are allowed to hold back or even crush American companies on a whim. If spectrum is the fuel of the digital future, then it needs to be in the hands of the innovators who can actually put it to work. That means prying it out of government silos and unleashing it for private use. It means calling out the scare tactics of defense insiders and holding them accountable when they undermine U.S. competitiveness.
Excessive bureaucracy in the face of technological progress is a key reason for American decline. We need a bold policy that trusts entrepreneurs, rewards risk-takers, and honors the decisions of our own regulators and legislators.
The stakes are much bigger than one company. This is a struggle over America’s place in the future of technological innovation. President Trump knew that freeing up spectrum auctions could unleash a wave of innovation that keeps America ahead. If this provision in the NDAA remains, it will mark a stark contrast to the agenda President Trump staked out just this past summer. It’s time to let American ingenuity do what it does best: win.
