loss of technical capability for cyberdefense from ravitejafe's blog

U.S. critical infrastructure, national defense, and homeland security, which depend on having uninterrupted access to leading-edge telecommunications technology, are potentially threatened by the loss of a domestic telecommunications industry.

Without a continuing focus on telecommunications R&D, the United States will increasingly be forced to purchase telecommunications technology and services from foreign sources. Risks include (1) U.S. dependence on foreign sources of technology to meet critical defense needs; (2) loss of exclusive or early access to state-of-the-art communications technology; (3) loss of know-how to employ state-of-the-art technology; (4) opportunities for other nations to introduce security holes into equipment and networks; and (5) loss of technical capability for cyberdefense in such areas as cybersecurity, network assurance, and cryptography. Investment in telecommunications research yields major direct and indirect benefits.

U.S. telecommunications research has yielded tremendous direct and indirect returns.Notable payoffs from U.S. investment in telecommunications research and related areas in recent decades include the following: The Internet, which realized a new communications paradigm, introduced a new, highly flexible network architecture and protocols, and ultimately enabled myriad new applications and services;Radio-frequency communications technologies for cellular systems and wireless local area networks, which have enabled modern mobile voice and data communications;

Optical networks, which have revolutionized communications by providing extraordinary communications bandwidths at very low unit cost; and Voice over IP (VoIP), which provides voice communications with enhanced flexibility and efficiency and has provided opportunities for innovation in applications beyond those provided by the public switched network.

There are many promising avenues for telecommunications research, and renewed U.S. investment would yield major dividends, as indicated by the following possible results:

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