Do not dismiss US concerns over Huawei

Failing to recognise how seriously President Trump takes defence would be a serious misjudgment

There is a mistaken impression concerning the US national security policy-making process that says somehow our government is not serious, because decision-making in the Trump administration can be capricious and arbitrary. Having been a part of the process as senior director of strategy to the president, I can say this is farthest from the truth.

The Trump White House has been grappling with a bureaucracy which has grown complacent over decades of American dominance. The truth is that the world has gradually changed in ways that favour totalitarian regimes. Globalisation and the internet, which initially looked like the harbingers of liberal democratic values, have

become been harnessed by dictatorships that use financial incentives, economic ties and information as tools to promote their agendas. As I learnt in my time in the military, some like China have even begun to redefine war as conflict between networks, highlighting growing capabilities to blind or destroy military and civilian systems at the outset of a conflict.

Other nations must not make the mistake of thinking President Trump’s recent executive order banning companies like Huawei from US networks is merely an afterthought of the trade war. In fact, the process is far more detailed, requiring several interagency meetings and at least one – but likely more than one – meeting of the full cabinet to approve.

However, more damaging to Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions may be the accompanying placement of Huawei on the Entity List. While the UK debates the merits of including Huawei in its networks, its undertakings as a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement may render such discussions redundant. The 42 members of the Wassenaar Arrangement have agreed to match the actions of other countries that place companies on their own Entity Lists. This strategy, which previously almost forced another Chinese technology firm, ZTE, into bankruptcy, will ensure that Huawei is increasingly isolated.

The US government’s National Security Strategy is a thoughtful outcome of looking at the world as it is and not as we wish it to be. Globalisation and the internet have brought great benefits to democratic countries, but as the core technology has advanced, the huge amount of personal, commercial, and national security data that make up our lives and our nations have been put into the digital realm.

The impact on democratic elections has already been felt in the West, as the Cambridge Analytica case revealed. That scandal – which referred to data culled from Facebook – was undertaken mostly by people who were raised in democracies and were well-versed in rights and liberties.

The advance of tech firms from authoritarian powers like China is bound to bring a new level of risk to these same challenges. Already, the Chinese Communist Party has managed to take advantage of network openness, and we are beginning to see that the risks outweigh the returns. The decisions regarding Huawei have been the results of cross-government discussions and a robust national debate, reflecting the fact that the US is beginning to respond thoughtfully and in accordance with the rule of law.

Going forward, I expect and hope that the US will try to work closely with the UK Government to ensure that their data and internet systems align closely with our own, and those of the other Five Eyes members, to protect the national security and the people of our five democracies. The Huawei ban is an interim step towards redefining democracy in a digital age, as was outlined in a report I presented to the National Security Council during my time at the White House.

The severity of President Trump’s declaration underscores just how seriously the US views this issue, and the UK must recognise this strength of feeling. To miss the significance of his actions would be a grave misjudgment of how seriously we take our security in an ever-more dangerous world.

Brigadier General (retd) Robert Spalding is the former senior director for strategy at the National Security Council