Originally published on Washington Times by Diana Furchtgott-Roth – Wednesday, November 26, 2025

With over 70 million Americans expected on the road this Thanksgiving weekend, everyone can agree that car navigation systems should be impervious to hacking. Families don’t want to end up like the Robinsons in “Lost In Space,” where John and Maureen set off with the kids for one planet and ended up on another one.

These free global positioning systems (GPS) need protection.

Few people realize that the navigation systems in their cars and on their phones depend on a set of 31 satellites that could be taken down by an electromagnetic storm or by adversaries in a war.

China and Russia have already shown that they have the capacity to take down Western satellites. And even with the satellites intact, hacking incidents proliferate, using inexpensive hardware that can be purchased on Amazon.

Disruptions over the holidays — and at other times — would not just inconvenience families but would pose an immense economic and national security threat, costing billions of dollars daily.

Other vehicles that would be affected include trucks taking loads across country; buses in cities and between cities; Ubers, Lyfts, and taxis taking people to and from airports, and to other destinations; and ambulances, fire trucks, and police vehicles that are on call to keep people safe. Tractors and other farm machinery use GPS to put seeds in a particular location and then fertilize and water these seeds.

Most people are unaware that their GPS might go out completely. Sure, they experience a temporary lapse if they drive through a tunnel, or between skyscrapers in New York and Chicago, but they have not experienced a complete breakdown.

In his first term, President Trump asked all government departments in an executive order to find vulnerabilities in their GPS. This is a nonpartisan issue. President Biden did not repeal this executive order, which still stands.

Multiple technologies are available that could be used in the absence of GPS signals, including terrestrial radio signals, low-earth orbit satellites for encrypted signals, and Wi-Fi and cell signals for localization.

One of the simplest and least expensive solutions is from TERN, which has developed a software-only positioning system that uses a vehicle’s existing sensors, not satellites, to compute locations. This solution is installed in cars’ info systems and automatically backs up the navigation system, switching to whatever map the driver is using.

Any vehicles after 2008 — when diagnostic ports became required in cars — can use TERN, which has been tested by the Transportation and Defense departments. The technology can be added to vehicles for a minimal one-time cost and does not impose ongoing fees or infrastructure requirements.

But there is one very different and very costly solution that has been proposed by NextNav, a technology company that has sought government intervention to repurpose a band of radio spectrum for it to use to back up GPS.

However, repurposing this portion of the radio spectrum would not only deliver a multibillion-dollar windfall to NextNav, it would displace other critical users of the band, including tolling systems; wireless inventory tracking systems; security cameras; countless systems used for public safety, and medical sensors.

GPS’s success has changed the workforce. No longer do professional drivers have to be familiar with cities and highways. Now anyone can be a driver by relying on their navigation system. This has resulted in millions of jobs for people driving not only for ride-share services but also for grocery and restaurant delivery services.

GPS has changed the nature of family travel, too. No longer do families carry books of highway and local maps and assign their children to navigate on long trips. Now the navigation system does the work, and children entertain themselves with Wi-Fi and electronic games and movies on long trips.

GPS was free from interference when it was first developed in the latter part of the 20th century, but today it needs protection. The cost of GPS outage is too high for us to wait for it to fail. We never want to be lost, but especially not on Thanksgiving..

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