If the Mission Matters, So Does the Infrastructure

By Rob Spalding, SEMPRE CEO

When we think about infrastructure, we often picture power lines, roads, and runways. But today, our most vital infrastructure is digital. It connects our economy, enables national security, and supports nearly every function of modern life.

I spoke with Carl Ford of Crossfire about why this infrastructure can no longer be an afterthought. It is now central to how we operate, how we respond to threats, and how we maintain stability in a fast-moving world.

This conversation looks at how we got here, why fragility is a growing risk, and what it takes to build systems that are secure, resilient, and ready for what’s next.

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Carl: How did your extensive background in national security and your experience with China directly lead to the founding of SEMPRE?

Rob: My time in national security, especially working on China-related strategy, made one thing clear: The U.S. was too dependent on fragile digital infrastructure in both commercial and government systems.

I saw how easily adversaries could exploit our networks – not just with code, but by targeting the very systems we rely on to function as a society. That became painfully real during my work in the White House, where I realized our digital foundations weren’t built to survive a serious attack or even a major natural disaster.

I actually began thinking about this during Hurricane Katrina. I was a B-2 pilot at the time. While we could complete our missions, I watched civil society crumble because it couldn’t communicate. That was a wake-up call. Resilient communication isn’t just a military issue. It’s a societal one.

At the same time, I was witnessing our military comms surpass commercial networks, I realized our military systems were still stuck in the push-to-talk era. There was no interoperability, no modern workflows. I wanted to bring the security and resilience of military systems together with the usability and flexibility of commercial tech.

That’s what led me to start SEMPRE: To make secure, resilient infrastructure simple to deploy and available to the people who need it most, whether they’re on the battlefield, in a factory or recovering from a hurricane.

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Carl: What specific security threats are SEMPRE addressing with its technology?

Rob: Most systems today are built on the assumption that core infrastructure, like fiber, cloud, and grid power, will be available when needed. But, that assumption doesn’t hold in real-world conditions, like cyber attacks, sabotage, EMP events or even natural disasters and storms.

SEMPRE was designed to fill that gap.

In military settings, we address outdated, fragmented communications that can’t keep up with modern operational demands. The goal is to bring secure 5G and edge compute directly to the field without relying on public networks.

In civilian scenarios, the challenge is different, but related: When centralized systems fail, most communication needs are still local. In a typical crisis, roughly 90% of traffic stays within the affected area, but the local infrastructure is often the first to go. SEMPRE provides systems that continue to support communications and data at the point of need, even without internet access.

The key difference is in how the system is built. Our hardware is physically resilient – EMP- and tamper-tested to military standards – but the internal architecture matters just as much. It uses a zero-trust, closed-loop design that keeps the control plane separate and secure, even during disruption or compromise.

This isn’t just about withstanding a failure – it’s about continuing to operate while that failure is happening.

Basically we seek to simultaneously solve two problems: 1) Lift the military out of the pen and paper and push to talk era by bringing 5G and edge cloud services to the battlefield, and 2) Provide resilient communications for everyone else to solve the problem of natural disasters, cyber and physical attacks.

How does SEMPRE’s approach to secure, EMP-hardened telecommunication infrastructure differentiate it from other solutions in the market? There are no similar efforts that I am aware of. There are other companies doing edge cloud services and private 5G, but none of them have the physical security, like EMP and tamper-proofing, combined with the zero-trust architecture and simple, fast deployment.

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Carl: Could you elaborate on the "EMP-resistant" aspect of SEMPRE’s towers? What military standards are they designed to meet, and what specific techniques are used for protection?

Rob: SEMPRE’s systems are built to meet military standards for electromagnetic pulse (EMP) protection – specifically MIL-STD-188-125 and MIL-STD-461G RS105, which cover high-altitude EMP (HEMP) and other extreme electromagnetic threats. These kinds of disruptions could come from a high-altitude nuclear detonation or a powerful weaponized signal. They’re serious enough that the military has long had standards to protect critical systems against them.

Those military standards are set by U.S. Strategic Command, and compliance testing is conducted by agencies like the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Our equipment has been through hundreds of EMP tests, including scenarios where we streamed 4K video while under pulse. It’s not enough to survive the hit; the system has to keep working through it.

What we learned is that consumer devices often survive the pulse, but the infrastructure around them doesn't, so there is nothing to connect to after the event. SEMPRE is designed to fill that gap.

We treat resiliency as a systems engineering problem. Protection isn’t just about shielding a box. It includes how ports are designed, how power is handled and how the internal systems are isolated and recover.

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Carl: Am I correct in assuming that your 5G networking design is a stand alone design, or are you supporting 4G/LTE as well?

Rob: Yes, SEMPRE’s use of 5G Stand Alone (SA) architecture is a deliberate decision. We are technically capable of supporting 4G and LTE, but we choose not to. Those systems were not designed with strong native security and present risks we consider unacceptable.

Earlier generations, like 4G, rely on shared signaling, centralized control and vendor-managed infrastructure. In environments where interception, manipulation or disruption are real concerns, that architecture becomes a liability.

5G SA gives us full control over how the network is structured. We built our systems from the ground up to be secure. Zero-trust principles are applied not just in software, but in hardware. The systems are physically tamper-resistant, EMP-hardened and isolated by design. This ensures continued secure operation even during active attack or system degradation.

We take this a step further by physically separating the control plane from the data and application layers. That separation is core to our zero-trust model. This architecture allows us to contain threats, preserve system integrity and recover quickly even in compromised conditions.

This is not just about adopting 5G. It is about redefining how secure communications operate under stress, especially in disconnected or high-risk environments.

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Carl: It has been revealed that public networks have been penetrated by rogue nations and other hacker organizations. How do you maintain SEMPRE’s level of security when (if) you interconnect to the public network?

Rob: Public networks have known vulnerabilities. They were not designed for zero-trust security, and many components are owned, managed or monitored by third parties. That creates exposure.

SEMPRE systems are designed to maintain security even when operating over or alongside public infrastructure. We do interconnect with public networks, such as through SEMPRE Shield where we overlay our architecture onto T-Mobile’s 5G Stand Alone network. In those deployments, the public network provides basic transport, but all sensitive functions – identity, routing and application hosting – remain behind SEMPRE’s secure firewall.

We isolate the control plane from the user and data planes, creating a system that can function securely, even if connected networks are compromised. That separation is physical, not just logical, and it allows us to contain and manage risk at the architectural level.

We also encrypt data at rest and in transit, but encryption is only one layer. The broader system is hardened through a closed-loop control model, tamper resistance, and a zero-trust software environment. Even if a public network is compromised, SEMPRE services and applications remain segmented and protected.

We treat public networks as untrusted by default. That’s the baseline assumption our architecture is built on.

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Carl: What kind of traffic do you expect to carry? Will the Internet of Things be a large part of the traffic or is the use case neutral on what the customer transmits through the system? Does AI have a role in your solutions?

Rob: You can think of what we are building as the antithesis of the dark web. It’s an industrial internet built for critical infrastructure. We’re already deployed in emergency response, smart factories and on military bases, but we also see applications in energy, finance, and healthcare. Over time, we expect to support civilian resilience too, especially during major disruptions.

The system is neutral to what kind of traffic it carries. It can support voice, data, IoT telemetry, and video. We also designed it with scale in mind. Satellite communications are useful, but they can’t handle massive infrastructure failure alone. During a crisis, roughly 90 percent of communication stays local, and that local traffic can overwhelm satellite networks. That’s why we keep most data on the ground.

AI already plays a role in many of our deployments. Customers use it for things like camera-based detection, automation and real-time analytics. By processing data locally at the edge, the system becomes more efficient and avoids unnecessary dependency on cloud infrastructure. In many cases, this is the only way to get real-time results in the kinds of environments we serve.

We also integrate LoRaWAN to support low-bandwidth sensors. That gives users a mix of lightweight, power-efficient connectivity and high-performance edge computing in a single system.

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Carl: How do SEMPRE’s distributed data centers contribute to resilience and survivability? Does this mean that it is primarily a military solution, or are there other scenarios where it’s important to have a distributed solution?

Rob: SEMPRE systems act as decentralized data centers that can operate independently. Each initial installation is set up in about 10 minutes and will support 5G connectivity, edge compute, and local applications without needing access to the internet.

That flexibility supports both military and civilian use cases. In military settings, they can be deployed in the field or integrated with existing infrastructure. In civilian scenarios, they can function as fixed assets at cell towers, enterprise sites or even in managed service provider environments.

These systems can also be integrated into a public network as we’ve done with Shield. When paired with a carrier like T-Mobile, they form a hybrid model. In that model, day-to-day traffic benefits from nationwide coverage, but devices are still protected behind SEMPRE’s secure firewall wherever they go.

This isn’t limited to defense. Any organization that needs to maintain operations during disruption benefits from having local infrastructure that can survive and operate autonomously. That includes critical industries like healthcare, energy, manufacturing and finance.

The goal is to put survivable infrastructure where it’s needed, not just in the cloud or at a central hub.

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Carl: Are you using eSIMs with SEMPRE’s endpoints? Recently, eSIM CMP architectures have been designed to give more control to the enterprise and given the military applications. I think you would want that kind of control. How have you set up your CMP model?

Rob: We give both eSIMs and physical sims. To provide a consistent user experience both on and off network, we have partnered with T-Mobile for SIMs. This means we have the full capability of an MNO, yet give control to the user, so they can configure the network in the ways they require.

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Carl: SEMPRE is described as an "infrastructure provider" rather than a carrier. Could you explain this business model further and who SEMPRE’s primary customers are or will be? Given your use for national security, what kind of restrictions do you expect on where and to whom you sell?

Rob: SEMPRE provides access to our products on an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) basis, enabling enterprise and government customers to access the capabilities they need to meet their specific operational requirements.

Our products combine secure, resilient 5G communications with edge compute, allowing customers to choose which services they activate based on their use case. For example, some of our secure manufacturing customers began using 5G services within hours of activating a node on-site, and quickly expanded into additional compute capabilities available within the same system.

We plan to expand the range of services available through SEMPRE nodes in the near future to give customers even greater flexibility in how they use the platform.

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Carl: In your book “War Without Rules,” you do a great job explaining that China is penetrating the U.S. in many ways. One place I am most worried about is the critical infrastructure of communications, power grids and water management, many of which have Chinese equipment that probably have back doors to China and can be used to cause outages, shut down grids and flood our rivers. Is there a way for the U.S. to block this with SEMPRE at the network level, rather than having to rip and replace endpoints?

Rob: That’s exactly the kind of problem SEMPRE was designed to address.

Replacing every piece of vulnerable infrastructure isn’t always feasible. Rip-and-replace strategies take time, disrupt operations and come with high costs. SEMPRE offers another path that focuses on network-level protection without requiring a full rebuild.

Our systems are designed to be deployed quickly, with minimal impact to existing operations. In most cases, we can bring secure connectivity and compute online in minutes, with no custom installation or complex integration required. That makes it easier to procure, easier to deploy, and much faster to get operational protection in place.

Once deployed, SEMPRE nodes overlay existing infrastructure, route traffic securely, and isolate high-trust applications from untrusted or foreign-sourced components on the network. You don’t need to trust every endpoint. You just need to control how and where data flows.

It’s a faster more affordable alternative to rip-and-replace, and much less disruptive.

Originally posted on IoT Evolution.

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