Robert Boxwell

Opinion | Trump must stand firm on Huawei to convince US allies to ban the Chinese company from their 5G networks

US allies who hesitate to keep Huawei out of their 5G networks are not only afraid of reprisals from Beijing but also find a Trump-sponsored policy a hard sell. Worse, they are unsure the US will be there for them when the dust settles

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A pedestrian walks past an ad displaying a 5G sign in London on January 29. The US has been putting pressure on its allies to ban the Chinese telecom giant from their 5G networks. Photo: EPA-EFE

Robert Boxwell

Published: 2:00am, 2 Mar 2020Updated: 2:00am, 2 Mar 2020

The top responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens. The United States and its allies all have multiple institutions dedicated to this effort.

Intelligence gathering is a critical component of their work. Sharing intelligence binds them together and helps them connect dots. Since much of the sharing takes place through telecoms systems, keeping these systems secure from adversaries is critical to national security.

Today, this goes beyond simply keeping military and diplomatic secrets from prying eyes. It also means protecting one’s economy, trade secrets and intellectual property. It means keeping propaganda and foreign misinformation off domestic screens. It even means keeping the power to those screens on. Today’s wars, with dangers to democratic society no less destructive than military wars, are being fought on all these battlegrounds.

For years, the US has been sharing concerns with allies about the possible harm to national security that could come from using telecom equipment made by China’s Huawei. These concerns, first documented in a 2011-2012 House intelligence committee investigation into Huawei and Chinese telecom supplier, ZTE, are bipartisan. The committee concluded that “the risks associated with Huawei’s and ZTE’s provision of equipment to US critical infrastructure could undermine core US national-security interests”. Both companies deny this.

Nevertheless, Huawei has become one of the world’s largest telecom equipment suppliers since then, despite being unwelcome in America.

The Huawei logo is pictured at the IFA consumer tech fair in Berlin, Germany, in September last year. Photo: Reuters