Security, Resilience, and the Future of Mobile Infrastructure
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What is the Salt Typhoon breach and how did it expose Chinese infiltration of U.S. cellular networks?
I was at Davos last year in a cyber forum and one of the speakers was talking about Sol Typhoon. It was closed door room of sixty cyber folks. And she said, wait, how many people know about this? It was five out of the house.
What we learned was that China has infiltrated major telecommunications carriers in the US for all intents and purposes fully. So they can listen to the phone calls, the lawful intercept plugin points. They have control of those, and they can just flip and turn along at any time and listen to. I mean, what do you do on your phone? You know, how much of your life runs on your phone? Basically, all of it. And what we continue to learn is that that's true for everybody, everybody in the United States. Rather than trying to ferret through the existing carrier. Barriers on Guam and find all the China and try to get rid of it. Let's just do a clean install of the telco on top of the existing physical infrastructure.
Just assume it's hostile. This was literally three months before the SALT Typhoon news broke, and we learned that China had compromised the X1 interface of all these major telcos.
the more folks who are kind of bringing connecting the dots speaking the same language, I think the better off we all are from a national security and
economic prosperity perspective. In late 2024, the United States confirmed that Chinese hackers had infiltrated every major American cellular carrier. The operation, SALT Typhoon, gave China access to lawful intercept systems, live phone calls, and the communications of senior government officials. It was not a one-time breach. It was the product of an industry-wide failure in cybersecurity. Years before the story broke, a former Green Beret and Palantir executive had started building a new kind of cell network. One designed to operate securely on top of compromised physical infrastructure. The Navy was an early partner, testing the technology on Guam before anyone outside the intelligence community fully grasped the scale of the threat.
David Yulovich speaks with Justin Fennelli, CTO of the Navy, and John Doyle, founder and CEO at CAPE.
Thank you guys for being here. We are very lucky to have Justin Pennelli, the CTO of the Navy, on his Tekken tour back with the Navy and in this role. And we have John Doyle, the founder and CEO of CAPE with us. And we are gonna have a terrific discussion about building for the country, building for the Navy, partnering with the Navy and all the technology transformation work that is going on at the Navy. So thanks guys for being with us today. Thanks for having me. Justin, just give us a quick background, who you are, what's your job today, how long you've worked in this space.
Thanks for having me. Awesome to be with winners. That's actually a big part of my job is hey, let's figure out where needs are, where gaps are, listen to our sailors and Marines, spend time with them, and then connect dots for people who are bringing either improvements or breakthroughs. The name of the game is how do we lessen pain and increase gain? And so So across the board it's a little bit of signal to noise detection. The good news is we have a really healthy and thriving and growing ecosystem. And so this is not a me thing. This is, hey, how do we make sure that folks who are super innovative are able to get in? How do we catalyze? And so my backstory is I'm an engineer, Air Force picked electrical engineering.
It was a pretty good time for that. This is just before the world starts getting eaten by software. When was this? Well you're going to date me. So this is early two thousand Okay. This is right after nine eleven. But the hardware revolution and the internet starting. I think that quote from Mark Andreessen happens late. Early two thousands, yeah. Uh and then we start to like kind of my office within the Navy at that point starts to ride the wave towards software. So really early glistenings on software defined warfare, no one called it that at that point. I think the earliest Name was network centric effects.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the Salt Typhoon breach and how did it expose Chinese infiltration of U.S. cellular networks?
0:00–7:23
2
How did the Navy discover the scale of the telecom security threat before the Salt Typhoon story broke?
7:23–17:07
3
What role does the Navy’s CTO play in prioritizing technology adoption and innovation?
17:07–27:42
4
How did the Navy’s bootcamp program change the timeline for commercial tech pilots from 18 months to 3 months?
27:42–31:08
5
What is CAPE and how does it provide a more private, secure, and resilient mobile network?
31:08–36:20
6
How does CAPE handle lawful intercept requirements while maintaining security?
36:20–40:59
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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