Johnson promises to end reliance on Huawei
PM lets Chinese firm into 5G network but tells US he will find alternatives in future
BORIS JOHNSON moved to heal the rift with the US over Huawei by telling Donald Trump he would never again allow Britain to become reliant on Chinese technology.
The Prime Minister confirmed yesterday that Huawei would be allowed to build parts of the UK’S 5G network, despite security fears, but that a new law would limit its influence.
Speaking to Mr Trump yesterday, Mr Johnson said Britain would work with the US to “break the dominance” of companies like Huawei, with the ultimate aim of squeezing the Chinese giant out of the UK’S infrastructure.
Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, told MPS: “It is essential that we are never again in a position of having such limited choices when deploying such important new technologies.”
Whitehall sources said Mr Trump and Mr Johnson agreed the UK and US should “put our brains together” to find ways to replace Huawei by bringing other firms into the 5G market.
Huawei was given the green light to carry on building “non-core” parts of the network, such as masts, despite being designated a “high-risk vendor”.
It prompted a fierce backlash from Tory MPS that suggested Mr Johnson could face the first major rebellion of his administration when he introduces legislation on Huawei later this year.
Senior Conservatives have already promised to try to amend the legislation to ban Huawei from the network.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said the decision “beggars belief ” when “we have a cyber war going on with China”.
David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: “Are we effectively going to accept a bribe from the Chinese government to let them gain access to our communications network?”
Some of Mr Trump’s Republican allies reacted with fury, saying it was “like allowing the KGB to build [Britain’s] telephone network during the Cold War”. One Trump official said the UK was “risking its continued membership” of the Five Eyes intelligencegathering network comprising the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The extent to which it would affect intelligence sharing, the “special relationship” and the chances of a postbrexit trade deal with the US is likely to become clearer when Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, arrives in London today to meet Mr Johnson and Mr Raab, among others.
Significantly, however, Mr Trump remained silent, having reportedly given Mr Johnson a fair hearing when he told the president he had little choice but to approve Huawei.
The decision was finalised by ministers and intelligence chiefs at a National Security Council meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, during which Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, dropped her opposition.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph today, Ms Patel says she fully supports the decision.
Mr Raab said the Government would fund “new, disruptive” firms to help them enter the 5G market as well as attracting established firms that do not currently sell 5G products in the UK.
After a review of Huawei’s involvement that lasted almost a year, Mr
“WE HAVE never trusted Huawei.” Not the words of Donald Trump, but a comment yesterday from Dr Ian Levy, technical director of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
Yet Boris Johnson decided yesterday that the potential risk to national security posed by the Chinese telecoms giant was outweighed by the estimated £126 billion boost to the economy of allowing it to build 5G infrastructure.
The final decision was confirmed in an 80-minute meeting of the National Security Council yesterday, at which ministers and intelligence chiefs once again argued for and against.
Such senior figures as Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, had warned Mr Johnson during previous meetings of the National Security Council that the risks were too high. Senior Tory MPS had told Mr Johnson that he was “letting the fox into the hen coop”.
Senior members of his Cabinet told Mr Johnson to block Huawei, with dark mutterings about intelligence-sharing being at risk. Others rattled off lists of all the countries that had already banned Huawei, including the US and Australia, both “Five Eyes” partners in Britain’s intelligence-sharing network.
Mr Johnson, however, argued that Britain’s position was different from any other country, thanks in part to its superior intelligence agencies.
“The fact is, GCHQ knows more about Huawei than America’s National Security Agency,” one Whitehall insider told The Daily Telegraph. “We can manage the risk; other countries can’t.”
Mr Johnson’s view that Britain should go ahead with Huawei was cemented by a phone call last Friday night with Mr Trump, during which the two leaders discussed working together to build an alternative 5G network that did not use Huawei.
The Telegraph understands that Mr Trump was less hawkish than some of his Republican colleagues. According to one US source, the president has never been the one to raise the issue of Huawei with the Prime Minister.
One of the aces in Mr Johnson’s deck in his arguments with his own ministers and backbenchers was the so-called “Banbury cell”, a secretive building in Oxfordshire where Huawei’s hardware and software technology is tested to destruction at the Government’s behest.
Officially known as the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC), it is overseen by Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the NCSC, who also sits on the board of GCHQ.
Every new piece of technology and software programme brought to the UK by Huawei is pulled apart there, and any company which wants to use Huawei products in its mobile networks can run tests there to mitigate risk. “We know more about Huawei’s products than Huawei does,” said one official yesterday.
Despite the NCSC classing Huawei as a “high-risk vendor”, Mr Johnson was swayed by the argument that a ban would be disastrous for long-term eco- nomic plans. Whitehall insiders say Mr
Johnson’s decision was founded on his unshakeable belief that the key to improving Britain’s economy is increased productivity, which in turn relies on reaping the benefits of 5G and full-fibre broadband. “Everyone knows that productivity in this country is terrible compared to our competitors,” said a senior Whitehall source. “The only way to address that is by utilising artificial intelligence to increase efficiency and improving connectivity throughout the country so that no area is left behind.”
Banning Huawei would also leave 5G reliant on two suppliers: Nokia and Sony Ericsson, which would have carried its own risks. One source close to the discussions said: “The problem is that if you have just two companies supplying everything, and one of those companies is the subject of a cyber attack or its hardware proves unreliable, half the network will go down.
“You need at least three suppliers to ensure the network is robust and resilient, and at the moment there are only three suppliers, meaning we have to let Huawei in. The answer to all this is not to ban Huawei, it’s to work to find alternative suppliers who can take Huawei’s place in the market who are not deemed high-risk vendors.”
America’s emerging 5G network works on different frequencies than the UK’S, meaning that firms approved by Washington do not yet make equipment that would work in the UK.
Huawei’s hardware, such as antennae and masts, accounts for 34 per cent of the UK’S embryonic 5G infrastructure, and ripping it all out would delay the national roll-out of 5G by up to three years, Mr Johnson has been told.
Downing Street said an immediate ban on Huawei would also cost the economy as a whole “tens of billions” in lost productivity – money the Prime Minister was not prepared to forego.
“We have been left behind in the past when the East has led the field in technology and the West has had to play catch-up,” said a source close to the Prime Minister. “We can’t let that happen in this case.”
Balanced against the prize of increased productivity were the wellpublicised dangers of allowing 5G infrastructure to rely on a company that could be used as a Trojan horse by the Chinese government to spy on Britain.
Mr Johnson’s response was twofold: firstly, the Government will pass a law to impose a cap of 35 per cent on the proportion of “noncore” 5G equipment built by Huawei, to come into force in three years’ time.
Secondly, he assured the US that Britain would work with its transatlantic ally to find new, trusted suppliers who could, in time, replace Huawei.
Security sources insisted yesterday that despite the warnings coming from the US, no security chiefs in allied countries have threatened to downgrade intelligence-sharing, partly because the 5G network plays no part in the way top secret messages are re- layed between countries. Huawei will also be banned from placing masts near “sensitive sites” such as military bases and nuclear facilities.
Even though Huawei will have no access to data passing through its hardware, security advisers have told Mr Johnson that if hundreds of mobile phones suddenly converged on a military base, that in itself would be useful intelligence to a hostile power.
Mr Levy said yesterday: “We’ve never ‘trusted’ Huawei, and artefacts like the HCSEC exist because we treat them differently to others. Nothing we do can entirely remove risk in any telecoms network. Our intent is to get the risk down to an acceptable level.”
‘GCHQ knows more about Huawei than America’s National Security Agency. We can manage the risk; other countries can’t’