We saw it front and center last month along Ohio River: For a few hundred dollars worth of copper stripped out of a transmission line, a perpetrator can cause a broadcast station nearly $100,000 in damages and take it right off the air.
It was under this backdrop that FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty confronted what she described as a growing and concerning challenge across all communications sectors: infrastructure vandalism. She spoke at the fourth National Summit on Protection Critical Communications Infrastructure in Philadelphia on Thursday.
It’s not the first time Trusty has spoken on the matter, and we’ve heard from broadcasters who have welcomed the attention she has brought to copper theft, particularly in rural areas where towers are “sitting ducks,” as Will Payne of the Payne Media Group described.
But the problem, Trusty explained, is only growing.
“It has become more frequent, more sophisticated and more coordinated,” Trusty said.
Many of her comments were geared toward the telecommunications infrastructure sector and with nefarious use of AI looming as a potential “force multiplier,” she urged a faster transition in rural areas from copper lines to fiber.
But for broadcasters, harsher penalties and more scrap metal market accountability, the commissioner said, would aid in deterrence.
Wide reaching
There is a perception, Trusty said, that copper theft is just a “petty crime.”
“It is a few harmless individuals with wire cutters looking for a quick payday at the scrap yard,” she posited.
But Trusty said thefts are a real problem that have both economic and national security consequences.
Recent attacks are more coordinated, Trusty said, with a level of planning and sophistication not previously seen.
Trusty referred to industry data that shows a clear surge in attacks on communications infrastructure across the country.
The NCTA showed there were 18,000 such incidents nationwide in 2025, a 59% increase from the previous year. More than 11 million customers were affected.
She also cited a study from last fall which found that outages resulting from such attacks created societal consequences — such as lost productivity and network downtime — that far exceeded the value of the stolen materials themselves.
It’s easy to see how that would be similarly the case for radio stations, too.
NCTA data shows that more than half of copper theft incidents, approximately 53%, are concentrated in California and Texas.
“But let’s not read that as a regional problem,” Trusty said.
Stronger laws
Stronger deterrence, Trusty said, begins with the law. In 2025, 23 states considered new protections for communications infrastructure and 13 enacted laws strengthening felony penalties for theft and vandalism.
In 2026, Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon and Virginia adopted felony-level protections, according to the NCTA.
Today, 28 states classify such crimes as felonies.
“That is real progress,” Trusty said. But the remaining states that have not made the same classification create a “patchwork” that offers opportunities for bad actors where the consequences are minimal.
The proposed “Stopping the Theft and Destruction of Broadband Act” would extend federal criminal protections to privately owned communications networks, and Trusty urged Congress to act on the legislation.
She also urged more scrap metal market accountability. If there is no convenient place to convert copper into cash, she explained, the economic incentive diminishes. Several states, including Kentucky, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri and Oregon, have begun implementing policies that beef up documentation requirements, waiting periods and transaction monitoring at scrap dealers.
Investment in security is imperative for all communications operators, Trusty said, and she acknowledged that it is costly.
“But the cost of inaction is higher, measured not just in dollars, but in the very real human consequences of leaving vulnerable communities without the connectivity they depend upon,” she said.
Trusty closed by urging the issue to be reframed in both government and public conversations.
“Copper theft is an attack on American infrastructure,” she said.
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