Many of the things that make life in Alaska difficult are the very things that we love about it. It’s remote, rugged and sparsely populated. The communities are situated in some of the most dynamic, beautiful and diverse landscapes in the world and are often separated by long distances. 

While this lifestyle provides a degree of freedom and independence not found in other parts of the country, it comes with unique challenges. One of the biggest involves the complexity of building and maintaining transportation and communications infrastructure.

I’ve been involved in developing public infrastructure in Alaska for more than 20 years, including serving as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s infrastructure investment coordinator. Alaska’s size, geographic isolation and extreme weather present a host of construction challenges. Harsh building environments, high shipping costs and short building seasons make construction costs five to 10 times higher than in the Lower 48. Operating costs are also higher for similar reasons. All of this hinders our ability to build and maintain critical infrastructure.

Every modern economy requires reliable, high-speed broadband. Despite significant public and private investment over the last decade, Alaska’s broadband infrastructure lags far behind the rest of the country. Increasing network capacity in Alaska is a difficult and expensive endeavor. This isn’t just a concern for Alaska, it’s a problem for the entire country.

Alaska’s position in the Arctic is increasingly significant to the economic and national security interests of the United States. As Alaska’s strategic importance grows, maintaining a secure, redundant and resilient communications network is a national imperative.

President Trump acknowledged Alaska’s role in our nation’s security during his first day in office. Dunleavy praised the president’s executive action, which is designed to remove federal barriers hindering development in Alaska, saying, “With his leadership, we can unlock Alaska’s vast potential to fuel the nation and create jobs for our people.”

Two recent weather-related events in the Beaufort Sea serve as painful reminders of how fragile Alaska’s communications systems are. Ice scouring along the sea floor cut the fiber that powers broadband internet service throughout Alaska’s Northwest and North Slope communities, temporarily disabling the entire region and highlighting the urgent need for more resilient and redundant communications networks.

Alaskans have learned to adapt to our environment. Following the first cut in 2023, the cable owner, Quintillion, and the local tribal government, the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, partnered on a project to build a self-healing redundant network ring across a land route from Utqiagvik to Deadhorse. To support the project, they applied for funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. This program is specifically designed to help communities shift away from reactive responses to disasters and toward more proactive, climate and hazard-resilient solutions.

Despite the urgent need and national importance of this initiative, the application languished and has yet to be awarded. As a result, a critical construction window was missed.

President Trump has made addressing FEMA’s process deficiencies a priority of his administration and promised swift, efficient and less bureaucratic responses to community needs. In the case of the network outage in the Northwest and North Slope of Alaska, the president’s ability to cut through red tape could be the difference between continued isolation and reconnecting Alaska to the rest of the world.

Let’s hope we see swift executive action from the Department of Homeland Security on a project that is critical to the economic security of Alaska and the national security of our country.