The USA’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), passed last year, includes rules related to ‘Build America, Buy America’, which are being seized upon by the Open RAN community, among others. These require a proportion of the federal subsidies allocated by the IIJA for broadband construction to be spent on homegrown equipment. Like India (see separate item), China and, to a lesser extent, Russia, the USA is increasingly keen to support its own industries at a time of economic uncertainty and geopolitical tension, in order to improve its self-sufficiency in key technologies, stimulate local companies and, so the argument goes, enhance national security. While the USA dominates some areas of technology, such as processors and cloud, it has a minor role…