Is Biden's 5G Infrastructure Plan a Preparation for the Next War?

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

In speeches praising 5G, or fifth-generation wireless standard, President Biden focuses on benefits like extending connectivity to rural areas, improving industrial efficiency, and boosting innovation. Some even label 5G potential a 4th industrial revolution. There is little mention of military applications. Yet for the President and his military advisors, 5G is no less - and maybe considerably more - significant for defense and warfare. 

5G can rapidly speed up data sharing between Internet of Military Things (IoMT) smart devices and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, enable lag-free collaboration for battle units and control and command (C2) leaders, make artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications more effective, and support augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences. 

Although the President is facing criticism for pulling back conventional forces from fields like Afghanistan, his infrastructure plan reflects his awareness of the potential - and risk - that advanced connectivity holds for a new type of warfare. 

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

5G's high speed data sharing is a gift to ISR systems. Drones can map troop movements, earthworks, and developments in or near contested areas, and share HD video and photography with military analysts in real time. Low latency is crucial for both advanced intelligence gathering, and fast decision-making in battle situations. 

5G gives new life to the Internet of Military Things (IoMT), enabling units to merge data from multiple different sources. AI analysis can then piece this information together into a detailed model that's constantly updated in real time, helping improve logistics, area control, situational awareness, command and control, and active protection of units and bases.

Logistics and Maintenance

Ensuring that the right supplies reach the right units at the right times is critical to battlefield success. Fast, reliable connectivity through 5G means that armies can fine-tune logistics with advanced, smart warehouses which use automated item retrieval and AR glasses to help workers find the right items quickly. 

Reliable Communications 

Reliable communications are key in battle and intel-gathering situations, especially in contested environments. 5G offers the military another connections pathway to ensure that units never lose contact with each other or with their command teams. If radar is jammed, for example, soldiers can switch to 5G networks, which are far more difficult to block. Because they use a wide swathe of spectrum, operators can quickly shift data to different parts of a massive range of spectral bands. 

The DoD is currently working on a Private 5G Program, aiming to create a 5G unit that can be dropped anywhere to activate a full 5G network, even if there's no radio or cell tower nearby.

Command and Control Systems 

Until the advent of 5G, there was no way to bring all your leadership in a single location to work off the same map, intelligence, and information without, making them highly vulnerable to attack. 

With low latency, secure 5G connectivity, however, C2 systems can be disaggregated. Commanders can be agile and on the move, without losing connections with other commanders, real time information, and the units under their control. 5G connects the sensors for all their domains and unites all the data in a shared, secure cloud space that everyone involved can access. 

As a Department of Defense (DoD) report notes, “Tomorrow’s warfighters will use local and expeditionary 5G networks to move massive amounts of data to connect distant sensors and weapons into a dense, resilient battlefield network."

Unmanned Weaponry

Drone attacks like those carried out by Israel on Iranian nuclear infrastructure underscore advances in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and driverless weapons. Autonomous military vehicles and armed drones need 5G so they can access HD maps and other large databases stored in the cloud, and download them quickly to sync with on-board sensor data. 

5G also enables facial recognition systems (which themselves depend upon powerful AI that's supported by 5G) to be embedded into drones for targeted assassinations. 5G and AI also unite in hypersonic weapons and missiles, which can travel at speeds faster than Mach 5. They can't be guided manually because their trajectories have to be changed far more quickly than any human could achieve. Only AI can gather the mass of data needed to control hypersonic weapons, analyze it, and take action in response, and only 5G supports the necessary speeds. 

China is Steaming Ahead

It's clear that President Biden and the US military are fully aware of the threat that rogue states like China and Russia pose to the liberal democratic order. 

It's estimated that China spends approximately the same amount on R&D as the US, even though its economy is far smaller. When it comes to 5G and other fourth industrial revolution technologies with extreme strategic significance, China spends around ten times as much as the US. 

China is pouring investment into cutting edge connectivity projects like 5G. For example, a drone submarine was found near Indonesia in late December 2020, and Chinese forces recently declassified an academic paper on a secret field test of drone submarines. China is working on undersea UAVs that can detect other vehicles, track their location, and fire torpedoes. 

China is already known to be using facial recognition and fast surveillance systems to fence in Uighurs in the province of Xinjiang, using it to prevent them from straying more than 300m beyond village fences. It's also supporting business standards for street lights that would enable video monitoring and facial recognition software to be built in, as a way of creating a future-proof censored society. It doesn't take much imagination to see the potential of these applications for a war situation.

As well as China's overt investment into strategic technology, there's a fear that China's domination of international 5G networks could have military implications. Some analysts have suggested that the vulnerabilities in Chinese networks like those run by Huawei could have been placed deliberately, to give CCP a back door into governmental and business secrets. 

Russia is Taking the War to Cyberspace

While China focuses on militarizing 5G and AI capabilities, Russian operations are focusing on cyber attacks. The last few months alone have seen the widely-reported Solarwinds attacks, which penetrated several federal departments as well as critical businesses; the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline; and the Kaseya ransomware hack which halted hundreds of businesses around the world; to name just a few. 

Biden has publicly held Putin accountable for these attacks, but his planned investment in better digital infrastructure is another sally in this cyber war. By powering stronger and faster AI-based cybersecurity, 5G can help detect and block hacking attempts and speed up malware scanning to harden security profiles. Edge computing, which relies heavily on 5G, also helps increase security for many sensitive verticals, because it means that decisions can be made on edge nodes instead of sending data packets back and forth to the cloud, making them vulnerable to interception. 

The US is Running to Catch Up

Between the new infrastructure plan and existing plans to invest in R&D, the US is working hard to boost its own 5G military capabilities. A classified project, known as CLAWS, is underway to create undersea UAVs powered by AI, which can detect targets, evade opponents, and deploy torpedoes and other projectile weapons, to give just one example. 

Military organizations are working directly with 5G carriers to create custom 5G networks to support specific operations. In June 2020, the DoD designated 7 bases as test beds for 5G military applications, and added 5 more in October, at the same time as announcing $600 million in awards for 5G experimentation and testing. 

In September 2020, the DoD's request for $439 million for R&D in 5G and microelectronics in 2021 was approved, and it submitted a new request for $374 million for the same purpose in 2022. Additionally, May 2021 saw the DoD release a paper outlining its military strategy for 5G. 

5G Stocks 

If you thought that 5G was just for cloud gaming, think again. The use cases for 5G are far greater and more significant than realized at first glance, which is part of why 5G stocks are so attractive for investors looking for markets with growth potential. 
The multitude of companies involved in some area or other of 5G development and deployment makes it difficult for investors to choose the best 5G stocks. To avoid placing all your eggs in one basket and diversify your exposure to risk in this active market, investors can choose a 5G ETF like Defiance’s FIVG, which enables them to spread their investment across numerous stocks in the 5G space, while still taking part in this disruptive vertical.

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.