(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The President tweeted about 5G (and 6G!) today, something we should probably take seriously but not literally.

His tweets were pretty divorced from reality, so I'm a little scared to try to divine policy from them. But because he is, in fact, the president, and this is a statement of presidential priorities, I feel the need to parse it.

First, I have no idea where this is coming from. Trump's 5G tweet doesn't seem to be connected to any specific news event or policy action. Maybe something was on Fox and Friends?

"American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind," he says. The fact is, American companies are leading in 5G right now, and Trump's own government is taking action to slow down Qualcomm, one of those leaders.

The four US carriers will be among the first to launch 5G services when they begin to roll them out from March through May. The FCC can keep up the pace by quickly auctioning new 5G-ready airwaves, something Trump does have influence over.

There's an important 24GHz auction coming up, but the best thing the government can do there is free up space in the 3.7-4.2GHz bands, which are sort of a sweet spot for speed and coverage in 5G. That process is moving slowly because of conflicts between wireless carriers and the satellite companies who are currently using those bands. Executive branch urgency could speed that up.

There are also concerns around local governments impeding buildouts. China will launch 5G a little later than we will, in late 2019, but its coverage is expected to expand more quickly because its carriers don't have to debate thousands of local town and village councils for permission to put up towers. In October, the FCC limited the fees cities and towns could charge carriers to put up 5G equipment, but this is still a highly contentious topic, and one that's core to our federalized system of government.

Qualcomm, a US company, is the world leader in 5G modems. But Trump's FTC appears dead-set on handicapping America's national 5G champion, arguing that it has a monopoly in wireless modems even though Samsung, Huawei, Intel, and MediaTek also supply 4G modems and plan 5G products. If Trump's tweet is being turned into action, he could order the FTC to lessen the pressure on Qualcomm to help it further lead in 5G.

In an extreme case, we could be going back to the completely insane proposal of a nationalized 5G network that someone in the Trump administration floated last year. The carriers would fight tooth and nail against this, though, and it would go completely against Republican principles of keeping government small and letting private industry flourish.

Does Trump Really Want Competition?

Now here's where things get really interesting. In his second tweet, the president says, "I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies."

The technology we're currently "blocking out" right now is Huawei, the world leader in overall cellular infrastructure and the world's No. 2 smartphone company. This is because other elements of Trump's government believe Huawei to be a nest of Chinese spies. But the lack of competition from Huawei has helped cement the Samsung/Apple handset duopoly here in the US, and reduced the urgency for infrastructure providers Nokia and Ericsson to offer the latest capabilities.

If Trump really wants the US to win through competition, he needs to tone down the fearmongering and let Huawei—and other Chinese companies such as ZTE and Xiaomi—come in and compete on equal terms, with their intense competition driving American innovation forward.

But who knows? It's just a tweet.