WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr said Thursday that China’s dominance of 5G telecommunications networks was one of America’s top national security and economic threats, amplifying warnings issued for years by intelligence officials but that President Trump has sometimes undermined.
Mr. Barr said that allowing China to establish dominance was not only a “monumental danger” as Beijing could use the technology for monitoring and surveillance, but also that “the stakes are far higher than that.”
“Our economic future is at stake,” Mr. Barr said in a speech delivered during a conference in Washington on threats that China poses to the United States. “The risk of losing the 5G struggle with China should vastly outweigh other considerations.”
Mr. Barr noted that two Chinese telecom giants, Huawei and ZTE, account for about 40 percent of the global 5G infrastructure market, which is expected to serve as the backbone for trillions of dollars’ worth of economic and industrial activity in an increasingly digital global economy. 5G networks promise substantially faster network speeds and prospects for new commercial applications in multiple industries like transportation and health care.
Mr. Barr said it was the first time in history that the United States was not the leader in a major technological sector that will underpin future innovation.
The next generation of telecom networks — and the equipment for them that is currently being built — has emerged as a key fight in the battle between the United States and China for technology supremacy. American intelligence officials also say that equipment made by Chinese telecom companies could pose a threat to national security and have urged allies not to use it in their systems.
The White House and American national security experts have said that companies including Huawei are too closely tied to the Chinese government, and that their equipment could give Chinese officials unlawful access to data and communications if networks across the world decide to use it. The companies have long denied that they are beholden to the government.
“No country poses a greater threat than communist China,” John Brown, the assistant director of the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division, said during separate remarks at the conference. He said that the world must decide whether its communications will go through China or the United States.
But the Trump administration has taken an inconsistent approach toward Huawei and ZTE and those companies continue to play an essential role in the new, 5G telecom networks being built around the globe.
A proposed rule change that would restrict sales of American computer processing chips to Huawei was placed on hold after Defense Department officials argued that such a move could undermine national security by discouraging the use of American components abroad.
Mr. Trump’s response to the security issues posed by 5G has been mixed. Last summer he said that “Huawei is something that is very dangerous.” But during the same remarks, he raised the prospect of including Huawei in a trade deal with China. “If we made a deal, I can imagine Huawei being included in some form or some part,” he said.
And in 2018, Mr. Trump lifted tough sanctions that the United States had imposed on ZTE, which had violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea and that defense advisers said posed a threat to national security. President Xi Jinping of China had personally asked Mr. Trump to intervene.
Intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers decried the move, saying that ZTE had not only failed to remedy its sanctions issues but had also lied about its efforts.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has asked allies not to use equipment made by Huawei, in some cases threatening to withhold intelligence from countries that do not ban the company. But that pressure campaign has had limited success. China has threatened to economically retaliate against countries that ban equipment made by its technology companies.
Last month, Britain, one of the United States’ closest allies and part of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, decided to allow Huawei on its new 5G wireless network.
The British government said that it would only use Huawei in the parts of its new wireless network that would not compromise its national security. Officials also said it had to use Huawei because — after years of mergers and industry consolidation — there are too few competitors in the network-equipment space. It asked allies to work with the private sector to foster more competition.
Mr. Barr agreed that too few companies were making 5G equipment; Nokia and Ericsson are the only other global competitors. He said that proposals had already been floated to address this problem, including the possibility that a consortium of private American and allied companies could put financial might “behind one or both of those firms” to make them more competitive and guarantee their staying power.
“It’s all very well to tell our friends and allies that they shouldn't install Huawei, but whose infrastructure are they going to install?” Mr. Barr said.
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February 07, 2020 at 01:10AM
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China’s Dominance of 5G Networks Puts U.S. Economic Future at Stake, Barr Warns - The New York Times
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