6G is a Team Sport

“The more, the merrier” is one of those phrases that you have to be careful with. It might be true for a Thanksgiving dinner but maybe less true for a marriage. Or maybe it’s not even true for Thanksgiving dinners. We could probably agree it applies to social media followers or fans of a sports team, but it DEFINITELY applies to geopolitical strategy. The more allies you can bring to your way of thinking and the more support you can gain in terms of economic assistance, military backing, and other means of statecraft, the better. In our era of great power competition centered around emerging technologies, more is definitely merrier when talking about telecommunications standards. We’ve seen how this can play out with 5G and now that 6G standards are being created, it is critically important that we approach the 6G standards process as a team.   Telecommunications standards processes have been going on since 1G was released in 1979. The history is long but was largely ignored until the Chinese found a way to use telecommunications technology as a form of state power. The Digital Belt and Road Initiative installed highly subsidized Huawei 5G equipment in developing countries in exchange for natural resources and creating economic dependence. The US and its allies played from behind in this phase of the strategic game but were eventually able to make gains through sanctions on critical electronics components. The match is far from won and China is already gearing up to make larger gains in 6G.  It might feel like 5G is new but new telecommunications standards tend to come out around every 10 years. The 5G standard was released in 2017 putting us around 3 years from the finalization of 6G. What gets baked into the standards will drive the operation of emerging technologies for at least a decade. The technical standards for 6G globally could be designed to protect privacy (aligned with democratic values) or they may be designed to include surveillance capabilities for authoritarian regimes. Now is the time to act but even if this was the top priority of the US government, it could not change the course of 6G standards creation alone.   Telecommunications standards are developed by 3 international organizations:   3G Partnership Project   International Telecommunications Union   Internet Engineering Task Force   At these bodies, the specific technologies and patents that will comprise the standards must be voted on and the US only gets one vote. Right now, quietly and in a very specific corner of the emerging technology world, there is a diplomatic race to gather votes for a specific vision for 6G. Some may view this as a snoozer, but it is important to all of us because of everything that telecommunications enable. Everything from drones to connected communities to self-driving cars, not to mention your daily dose of cat videos on your phone, depends on telecommunications. If we end up with a 6G standard that reflects the Chinese view of the world, we could see standards that do not protect privacy, collect data without authorization, and possibly enabling mass surveillance. What is needed is a joint vision among several countries laying out principles for secure, open, and resilient by design 6G standards.  Well, lucky for us, that’s exactly what the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) did for us with their Joint Statement Endorsing Principles for 6G: Secure, Open, and Resilient by Design . Signatories to this statement include,   Australia  Canada  Czech Republic  Finland  France  Japan  South Korea  United Kingdom  United States  This statement provides a framework to help all parties understand what a principled approach to 6G standards development looks like. It is also building the kind of team that will be necessary for upcoming votes on 6G standards. This is exactly the kind of momentum we need for 6G standards creation to ensure shared democratic values are reflected in the standard. It of course does not end here. This is a start but more movement for more federal government agencies, universities, and private companies is required to complete our team.   Telecommunications enable so many important emerging technologies that its standardization cannot be ignored or taken for granted. It is wonderful to see NTIA taking the necessary steps toward building the coalition it will need to ensure 6G aligns with our vision of emerging technology for the next decade. The consequences were previewed for us in the 5G/Belt and Road issues of the 2010s. In order to not repeat that history, we will need to play on a team that shares a vision for not just how technology works but how the world works and as a consequence how geopolitical strategy will play out in the next 10 years.