What the bill does
On 1 October 2026, Reps. August Pfluger (R-TX) and Rob Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the Submarine Cable Security Policy Act of 2026, H.R. 10695. Bill-tracking records show it was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce the same day, with no later action. It is a proposal, not law. I could not retrieve the bill text from congress.gov, so the description below rests on the sponsors' announcements, trade coverage and bill-tracker summaries.
As described, the bill would require the interagency committee known as Team Telecom to produce a national submarine cable security policy within 180 days. The FCC would then adopt rules built on that policy. The summaries say it would move more licensing authority from the President to the FCC by revising the old Cable Landing License Act. They also say it would set up two tracks: lighter treatment for low-risk applicants, who could self-certify, and heightened scrutiny for projects that raise national-security concerns. Capacity's coverage describes a "standardised framework" with defined FCC review timelines and expedited pathways for some applicants.
The strongest case for the bill
The security argument deserves a fair statement. Cables carry the overwhelming majority of international internet traffic. The FCC's own June 2026 order calls them "the most consequential and critical communications infrastructure serving the United States" and "the backbone" for AI. Today's security conditions are not set in statute. They come from FCC rulemaking and from case-by-case negotiation with Team Telecom, so a future commission or administration can change them. A statutory policy would give operators, allies and investors a stable baseline and would make the rules harder to reverse by waiver or by changing priorities. Congress also has a legitimate interest in telling the executive branch and the FCC who decides what.
The FCC has already done much of the work
The bill arrives after the FCC has overhauled the regime twice. The 2025 First Report and Order (FCC 25-49, adopted 7 August 2025) was published in the Federal Register on 27 October 2025. It created a presumption against granting applications from foreign-adversary-owned or -controlled entities and from Covered List entities. It also required a certified cybersecurity and physical security risk management plan and an annual foreign-adversary report. Some of its sections were indefinitely delayed pending further action.
The Second Report and Order (FCC 26-42, adopted 25 June 2026 and released 30 June) went further in the direction the bill points. The order's own table of contents lists a category of applications that are presumptively exempt from referral to the executive-branch agencies. To qualify, an applicant must be subject to an existing mitigation agreement or meet the order's ten national security conditions. Those conditions cover foreign-adversary ownership, senior officials, customer arrangements, interconnection, cybersecurity and incident reporting. A law firm summary says Team Telecom may object only in "narrow and compelling circumstances" tied to the applicant or the cable system. The order also creates a blanket licensing regime for submarine line terminal equipment owners and operators.
That sequence matters. The FCC has built a tiered system through rulemaking, and the bill would ask Team Telecom to write the underlying policy within 180 days before the FCC adopts rules. The risk is that rules the FCC is already implementing get reopened while operators wait.
Where the bill could help, and where it could hurt
From a pro-innovation view, the best feature is the one that treats applicants differently by risk. Capital for new cables is global and mobile, and approval delays raise the cost of building to the United States. A trusted operator landing a cable from an allied country should not face the same review as a project with opaque foreign-adversary financing. Defined review timelines and self-certification are what make that distinction real in practice.
There are three concerns.
- Self-certification needs a credible backstop. The tracker summary says applicants could self-certify that, among other things, a minimum share of the cable is owned by eligible entities. That is workable only if false certifications carry meaningful consequences and the criteria are objective. The FCC order already ties the exemption to enforcement, audit and revocation for noncompliance. The statute should not weaken that.
- Timing and duplication. A 180-day policy-setting step followed by new FCC rules could stall the streamlining the FCC just adopted. The bill should state that existing FCC rules stay in force until replaced, so pending applicants are not left in limbo. Summaries suggest some provisions would not reach applications filed before the new rules take effect, which helps, but the transition needs to be explicit.
- Shifting authority from the President. Moving licensing authority from the President to the FCC could improve predictability and transparency. It could also strip away the flexibility to handle sensitive cases through diplomacy. Heightened-scrutiny cases should still have a route that involves foreign-policy judgment.
What Congress should do
The most useful version of this bill would codify the principle already in the FCC's rules: objective, published standards, and a fast lane for applicants who meet them. It should set statutory outer limits on review time, require that national-security objections be specific to the applicant or the system, and preserve existing rules during the transition. Security that is predictable is also more credible, because operators plan around rules they can read. The risk is not that Congress cares about cable security. It is that a well-meant overlay slows a build-out that the same Congress says it wants to speed up.
The bill is at the first step of a long process, with no hearing or markup yet. It is worth watching less for its headline than for whether the final text protects the low-risk track.