communication has become another Arena of great power competition and the United States must Harden networks against all kinds of attacks from kinetic strikes to cyber sabotage last Thursday's abrupt collapse of the AT&T cell network along with recent news reports of Russian nuclear attack weapons in space underscore threats to satellite cellular and cyber networks Americans must take urgent measures to protect emergency communications as a national security imperative millions of Americans throughout the country lost cellular signals on February 22nd though the blackout lasted only one day the incident should be a wake-up call for policy makers to make the US telecommunications architecture more resilient wildfires hurricanes earthquakes and other natural disasters have repeatedly toppled cell towers and disrupted internet service that our First Responders and Emergency Management officials depend on to broadcast urgent messages those Cellular Systems are primed for problems Thursday's outage was an accident apparently caused by a flawed procedure to expand the network still the chaos underscored the vulnerability of cell phone networks to malign actors as well as mishaps Russia China and other us adversaries including terrorists aim to Blind and paralyze Americans in a crisis the Russian armed forces have repeatedly disrupted Ukrainian phone systems through cyber and electronic warfare attacks the Pentagon has also taken down adversary Communications in foreign military operations