President Donald Trump weighed in on telecom policy for the first time in recent memory, posting a pair of cryptic tweets Thursday that plugged leadership in developing 5G and “6G” wireless technologies and left experts scratching their heads about what he meant.

The U.S. must roll out the next generation of mobile services as quickly as possible and “win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies,” Trump said. Some experts say this could be a general commentary on U.S.-China relations or a nod to administration infrastructure policy.

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Stanford Law School fellow Ryan Singel similarly interpreted Trump’s tweets as an allusion to broad U.S.-China dynamics, as China has been seen as one of the leaders in producing 5G technology components.

Trump’s comment “seems like somewhat of an outlier,” since he rarely, if ever, wades into substantial issues of telecom policy, Singel said. This could mean “the interest is less around the nitty-gritty of telecom deployment in the United States” than it is a broad commentary on “an international competition” with China to develop 5G equipment, Singel said.

Trump’s comments could be seen as a hint to relax sanctions on Chinese telecom manufacturers that are currently blacklisted by the federal government, according to Singel.

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