As the Trump administration squares off with China’s Huawei over who will dominate the world’s next generation of wireless networks, another battle is emerging closer to home. And in this one, the force causing the most concern isn’t a shadowy Chinese firm, or even a company at all. It’s the Pentagon.

The fast new consumer and business network known as 5G, already being touted in Super Bowl ads, will require large new swaths of the airwaves. And for the companies building it out, the most coveted piece of that invisible real estate is the “mid-band,” a set of frequencies that can carry far more data than current cellphone signals.

Since the 1960s, rights over much of the mid-band have been claimed by government agencies, most notably the U.S. Department of Defense, which says it needs to use mid-band waves for research and military communications. Critics say the military is barely using those airwaves, and by squatting on the rights it is blocking American firms from developing better 5G networks.

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