Dunno. That might be a good point. Or perhaps they're envisioning cases where a cooperating telco could instantly eliminate a threat that could take hours to eliminate physically, or a threat in which taking over a building would disclose something that would damage operational security. We have a lot of secrets in our corner of this industry, most of them boring, almost all of them necessary.

I wouldn't want to give the impression that I'm simply sticking up for the bill. Especially not in its entirety. I agree, I don't see the compelling reason to have a new law allowing the government to disconnect critical infrastructure.

But that's just a tiny portion of what the bill does. Among other things, tt also tries to harmonize the hodgepodge of security measures we already have, revamp procurement standards (a sucking chest wound in current security practice), and it funds academic research into secure programming.