It’s remarkable how Congressional panels draw conclusions even while providing supporting evidence in the opposite direction.  Example, a recent article in the WSJ quotes a congressional advisory panel report as saying, “China will effectively become the principal market driver in many sectors, including telecom.”   A few paragraphs later, this same article states, “In the latest setback for the Chinese [telecom] companies, Sprint Nextel left the companies out of final consideration for a major network upgrade largely due to U.S. security concerns.”

In spite of these contradictory statements, reportedly, the advisory panel recommends, “the U.S. government should more closely monitor the telecom supply chain…and provide incentives to manufacture in the U.S.”  The report also recommends the U.S. should “reduce or eliminate the number of foreign vendors that receive government funds to work on sensitive systems.”

Is it any wonder the market is confused and Congress has a hard time reaching a sensible conclusion?  The report suggests the U.S. government is paying foreign vendors to work on sensitive systems AND recommends the U.S. is at risk due to “the globalization of the telecom supply chain.”

This one seems rather obvious – if the Federal Government feels at risk due to foreign suppliers, then they should stop paying them to work on sensitive government systems... and based on this report it appears Sprint Nextel is more effective in maintaining U.S. security than the U.S. Government - at least when it comes to sensitive telecom systems.

Instead of advisory panels maybe the Congressional appropriations committee could just say "no" to buying foreign equipment for "sensitive government systems" - and then say "no" again to monitoring the global supply chain for telecom providers.