Lawfare Daily: FCC’s New Submarine Cable Rules with Adam Chan
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
Adam Chan, National Security Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and inaugural Director of the FCC’s new Council on National Security, joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss the FCC’s rulemaking on submarine cables and national security. They discuss the FCC’s new submarine cable rules, the role of submarine cables in the U.S. telecommunications supply chain and in the data and AI era, and the national security risks facing submarine cable infrastructure. They also discuss new requirements for submarine cable license applicants to make physical security and cybersecurity certifications, the objective of limiting Chinese influence on U.S.-tied submarine cables, and the future of how the FCC is thinking about threats, responses, and engagement with industry to address them.
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Transcript
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| 1:01.3 | 18 plus. So what our rule does is we apply kind of the same presumption of denial, the same clear and convincing evidence standard for any cable that wants to connect directly from the United States to a foreign adversary country. |
| 1:22.4 | So that would be, you know, if I want to land a cable in Virginia and connect it directly to Iran, for example, |
| 1:32.6 | that would be prohibited. |
| 1:35.0 | It's the Lawfare podcast. |
| 1:37.5 | I'm Justin Sherman, contributing editor at Lawfare and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, |
| 1:44.1 | with Adam Chan, National Security Council at the Federal |
| 1:47.9 | Communications Commission, an inaugural director of the FCC's new Council on National Security. |
| 1:54.6 | I think the idea here really is to kind of incentivize industry to do the right thing where, you know, okay, if you really |
| 2:03.2 | go all the way and sort of do all the kind of national security things we want to make sure |
| 2:09.1 | these cables are safe and secure from foreign adversaries, then you're going to have a real |
| 2:15.0 | streamlined process that's going to save a lot of costs and kind of |
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