What to Watch For Today

There might be a very interesting hearing in the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces today. The hearing on Sustaining GPS for National Security starts at 11:30am and will feature the following line up:

General William L. Shelton
Commader
U.S. Air Force Space Command

Ms. Teresa M. Takai
Chief Information Officer
U.S. Department of Defense

The Honorable Julius Genachowski
Chairman
Federal Communications Commission

Mr. Karl Nebbia
Associate Administrator, Office of Spectrum Management, National Telecommunications and Information Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce

Mr. Anthony J. Russo
National Coordination Office, Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Training
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Now you are probably wondering why I would highlight this. Eli Lake has the story on the Daily Beast.

The four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

The episode—confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee—is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser.

Now the Pentagon has been raising concerns about a new wireless project by a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared, whose majority owner is an investment fund run by Democratic donor Philip Falcone. Gen. Shelton was originally scheduled to testify Aug. 3 to a House committee that the project would interfere with the military’s sensitive Global Positioning Satellite capabilities, which control automated driving directions and missile targeting, among other things.

According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, the officials said.

Read the whole thing. Two important things here.

Lightsquared's product is National WIFI, and right now they are the only company ready to move on bringing WIFI at that scale. With the power of network access being demonstrated worldwide, National WIFI is obviously a technology that could offer the US a lot of promise, and has great potential as a service to areas of the US that even today suffer from a lack of broadband. The potential disruption to GPS would make their specific technology a non-starter in the eyes of the DoD - and should be considered a non-starter by everyone else too, but apparently not. It's nice to know the right people I guess.

The second point is - Administration tampering with testimony before Congress is never acceptable. It wasn't acceptable when the Bush administration did it regarding climate science, and it isn't acceptable to tell a General to favor a technology that might have political influence - but also disruptive to existing important technologies like GPS.

This has all the makings of a very interesting hearing on the Hill today.