Senate Intelligence vice-chair Mark Warner and Commerce chairman Ted Cruz introduced the Telecommunications Cybersecurity and Resilience Act, creating a government-industry body to write voluntary best practices for telecom carriers. Warner called the Salt Typhoon intrusion "the worst telecom hack in our nation's history", a campaign attributed to Chinese state actors that compromised major US carriers and siphoned data from presidential campaigns. The voluntary approach is a deliberate response to political reality: federal officials have warned repeatedly that Salt Typhoon remains active, yet public apathy has stalled mandatory rules and the administration rolled back an FCC rulemaking in late 2025. For Australian and NZ readers the significance is structural rather than legislative — Australia's SOCI Act already imposes positive security obligations on telecommunications carriers, so the US debate is now about whether to adopt a regime closer to the one already operating here.

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