The Federal Communications Commission has banned the use of funds from its $8.5B Universal Service Fund to buy telecommunications products from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE over concerns that they pose threats to U.S. national security. 

FCC said Friday it adopted a new rule that would require telecom carriers that use the fund to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment and services, particularly 5G, from their networks and replace them with materials from acceptable companies. 

The agency also proposed to create a reimbursement program to help companies cover replacement and removal costs.

Officials said that due to Huawei and ZTE’s close ties and legal obligations to the Chinese government, their products may have backdoors to allow foreign actors to inject malware, steal private data from U.S. citizens or spy on American companies. 

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency initially designate Huawei and ZTE as covered companies for purposes of the new rule, with plans to establish a process for designating additional companies in the future.

Pai added that the adoption of the new rule highlights FCC’s “commitment to doing everything we can within our statutory authority to address national security threats to our communications networks.” 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working to access the maximum performance of military servicemen’s biological systems under a program announced in January.

DARPA said Friday its Measuring Biological Aptitude program seeks to determine the performance-related effects of measuring these biological systems.

The Department of Defense would use the MBA program’s resulting technologies to support training improvement, post-mission recovery, mission effectiveness and identification of special role candidates.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, GE Research and the Institute for Human Machine Cognition lead teams to correlate observable traits with quantifiable biological elements under the program.

These teams will work to identify and describe phenotypes, or interaction-based characteristics of an individual in an environment, based on military training measurements.

The program will then use these phenotypes to further study gene expression circuits, the molecular medium that facilitates the translation of genotypes to phenotypes.

MBA’s final phase will put the teams’ results into tests with actual members of the U.S. military.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has passed a bill authored by Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., that aims to secure mobile infrastructure, 5G networks and other wireless communications systems within Central Virginia and in the U.S.

The Secure 5G and Beyond Act will push the government to built a strategy that will protect consumers and help partners and allies in augmenting 5G security capabilities, the office of Abigail Spanberger said Wednesday.

The bill will also seek to drive companies’ research and development efforts and protect consumer privacy and the integrity of international standards from foreign political influence.

“If we aren’t actively working to strengthen our resilience against these threats—especially as we see the growing adoption of these technologies in our rural communities and increasing reliance on these high-speed connections—we are putting American families, businesses, and consumer data at risk,” said Spanberger.

The bill awaits full approval from Congress.

The U.S. Army is working on its cloud architecture and intends to do so for two more years before investing in artificial intelligence technology, Fedscoop reported Friday.

Ryan McCarthy, secretary of the Army, said at an American Enterprise Institute event that cloud would serve as the groundwork for the service branch’s future AI-related efforts.

He said, referencing financial industry professionals, that cloud architecture is the basis of algorithms that inform decision making.

The focus on cloud as an AI precursor aims to accelerate decision making in the battlefield from minutes to a second, McCarthy noted.

The Army’s cloud investment over the next years would exceed $700M, according to the secretary.