In February of last year, President Donald Trump reversed long-standing administration policy when he issued Executive Order 13905: “Strengthening National Resilience Through Responsible Use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Services.”
The Global Positioning System has become the world’s most widely used tech utility. America’s over-dependence on it for everything from synchronizing cellphone networks to managing power grids has caused government officials to call it “a single point of failure” for the country.
While Trump’s order rightly warned of the dangers in over-relying on GPS, it also shifted away from years of executive-branch policy. Rather than focusing on reinforcing GPS and protecting users with an alternative PNT source or sources, the order told users to protect themselves by accessing commercial services it hoped would be developed to meet their needs.
GPS signals underlie virtually every technology but are weak, easily blocked and imitated. And many studies have found a reasonable chance the system will be damaged or destroyed by solar activity within the next 50 years. These vulnerabilities pose a near-existential threat to the nation’s economy and security.
The Trump order’s warning to users—and many of its other provisions—were necessary but they were far from sufficient. This is because the order ignored fundamental economic and security realities.
A Free Utility
America established GPS as its gift to the world in the hope that it would be widely adopted and used. Making the signal free and its specs public were wildly successful. So much so that as early as 1999 a special commission told President Bill Clinton America was likely becoming too dependent on the system.
GPS rapidly became a utility, much like a muni ..
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