Cotton, Others Urge UK to Rethink Huawei Policy
China may be “attempting to drive a high-tech wedge” between the U.S. and U.K. via concerns about the national security implications of allowing equipment from Huawei on telecom infrastructure, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told the U.K. House of Commons’ Defense Select Committee Tuesday. Cotton and other U.S. lawmakers criticized the U.K. allowing Huawei on “non-core” parts of communications infrastructure but bar it from “sensitive locations” like military bases (see 2001280074). Recent media reports claim the U.K. government may be planning to change that.
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“I do hope that as the government refines its decision, that if it doesn’t reverse it outright, it will mitigate it and minimize the use of Huawei technology, put it on a shorter time frame,” Cotton said. “I would welcome” a potential decision to end the presence of Chinese gear in U.K. telecom infrastructure by 2023 “and I would urge you to try and do so even sooner.” It remains important “for our nations to cooperate and to help lead that coalition of advanced industrial democracies” on issues including on telecom infrastructure security, he said. Divisions between the U.S. and U.K. let China “continue to try to replace” the U.S. “as the dominant power and to rewrite the international rules of order.”
Conservative Party MP Sarah Atherton, Scottish National Party MP Martin Docherty-Hughes and Labour Party MP Kevan Jones were among those who dug into concerns that a continued Huawei presence on U.K. infrastructure could hurt the intelligence sharing relationship with the U.S. Cotton filed S-3153 in January to bar the U.S. from sharing intelligence information with any country that permits Huawei-produced 5G equipment (see 2001080002). The Network Security Trade Act (S-3994) aims to ensure U.S. communications infrastructure security is a clear negotiating objective of U.S. trade policy (see 2003050067).
Jones suggested legislation like S-3153 and National Security Council review of whether to pull U.S. intelligence and military assets out of the U.K. are simply “threats” aimed at changing U.K. policy. There’s “no evidence” such cooperation “is going to be compromised” by limited Huawei presence on U.K. infrastructure, Jones said. “There’s no way that Huawei equipment will come anywhere near anything” involving U.K. intelligence data. Experts from the U.S., Australia and Japan “disagree” with that view, Cotton said.
Huawei gear could give the Chinese People’s Liberation Army “hackers a window into our military logistics operations,” Cotton said. He asked Jones “why are you so eager to put a criminal organization's technology into your networks? An organization whose technology is being used to repress millions of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang province, who is a serial sanctions violator, building out the networks in Iran and Syria. You seem very eager to use their technology.”
5G Action Now Chairman Mike Rogers and Hudson Institute's Robert Spalding also urged the U.K. to reverse course. Even allowing Huawei in non-core parts of the U.K.’s telecom infrastructure is problematic because 5G is “about pushing the security to the edges, to the end users,” Rogers said. “If you have the ability to do any administrative function, you have the ability to disrupt that function.” It “might not be your whole network goes down,” but “what you could do is jeopardize certain parts,” he said. “If you know” China is “interested in economic extortion,” then “I think you’d have to be concerned about their ability to go in and make things really difficult or even just slow it down.”
The Chinese government created “a moat around their population to ensure that they can’t be attacked and then have the freedom to attack others by deploying” malicious hardware in other countries’ infrastructure via companies like Huawei, Spalding said. “They subsidize the deployment" of Huawei’s equipment “because they want access to the data.” China’s “goal is to behind that firewall collect and then monetize” data for both “economic dominance” and to influence global policy, he said. The Chinese government has “learned very well how the internet can be used to influence populations … by using Huawei as one of the avenues.”
The House of Commons’ Defense Committee “concentrated on America’s desire for a home-grown 5G company that can ‘match’ or ‘beat’ Huawei,” said company Vice President Victor Zhang in a statement. “It's clear that market position, rather than security concerns, is what underpins America's attack on Huawei. The committee was given no evidence to substantiate security allegations.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai highlighted the hearing, noting in a tweet “the need for trans-Atlantic cooperation” on 5G security matters. The FCC asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday to reject Huawei’s legal challenge asking the court to overturn the FCC’s ban on rural eligible telecom carriers from using USF money to buy equipment that from the Chinese firm (see 2006020064).