U.K. decision today on Huawei to carry global implications
LONDON — Britain faces a crucial choice today over whether to allow China’s Huawei Technologies to build its next-generation wireless networks. The decision has implications for the country’s diplomatic relations with the United States, which is pushing allies to shun the Chinese company over cybersecurity concerns.
Britain’s National Security Council is poised to decide whether to allow Huawei to build parts of its new highspeed cellular network known as 5G, an infrastructure program the country sees as critical to its economic future. But Huawei has come under scrutiny because of worries that communist leaders in Beijing could, under China’s 2017 national intelligence law, compel the company to carry out cyber-espionage.
The United States has been pressing allies to shun Huawei and has threatened to cut off intelligence cooperation with Britain if it gives Huawei access. Supporters say Britain needs Huawei’s expertise and that security issues can be managed. The company denies it would give data access to the Chinese government.
Days away from leaving the European Union and desperately needing to secure its future outside of the trading bloc, Britain is now caught in the middle of a geopolitical battle between the U.S. and China — both important trading partners.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government finds itself
in the awkward position of risking the fury of its closest ally at just the moment it really needs President Donald Trump’s administration to quickly strike a trade deal. Britain is also loath to insult Beijing. The U.K. made a point of courting Chinese investment with the state visit of President Xi Jinping in 2015, a gilded affair meant to underline the dawn of a new era.
Johnson hinted Monday that he wants to thread a middle route. “The way forward for us clearly is to have a system that delivers for people in this country the kind of consumer benefits that they want through 5G technology or whatever, but does not in any way compromise our critical national infrastructure, our security, or jeopardize our ability to work together with other intelligence powers around the world,” he said. “We are going to come up with a solution that enables us to achieve both those objectives, and that’s the way forward.”
The 5G — fifth generation — of cellular networks is not merely an upgrade from existing 4G wireless network technology. It’s also billed as a radical transformation delivering ultrafast download speeds combined with vastly reduced signal lag — the slight delay that occurs between, say, tapping out a command on a phone and getting a response. The other difference is that it will be built into thousands of new devices, such as thermostats and sensors in medical devices. The aim is for 5G to be instrumental for self-driving cars or for telemedicine, allowing doctors to control robots in remote surgery on patients thousands of miles away. Underpinning all this new connectivity will be a lot more software that can lead to more vulnerabilities.
Cell networks have traditionally consisted of two parts. There’s the “radio access network” made up of antennas and base stations on rooftops and masts. There’s also the “core,” the brain keeping track of smartphones connecting to the network so account holders can be billed along with managing data traffic flowing across the entire network. With 5G, U.S. officials worry that the core will run extensively on software. Millions of lines of computer code would present a huge “attack surface,” and it could be nearly impossible to spot an accidental vulnerability or a malicious “backdoor” that can be used for siphoning information or crippling vital connected infrastructure like a power grid.
Supporters say Huawei, the world’s biggest maker of networking equipment such as switches and antennas, can help countries meet the challenges of adopting 5G because it makes cheap, good-quality gear that appeals to wireless carriers. Banning Huawei puts Britain at risk of falling behind economically, they say. Complicating matters, some British wireless carriers have already started installing Huawei 5G gear and don’t want to spend more money ripping it out.
Johnson’s remarks Monday suggest he wants to grant Huawei partial access to Britain’s telecoms networks, setting up a clash with Trump, whose administration has lobbied intensely for Britain to ban Huawei, saying its presence in 5G networks would threaten intelligence-sharing.
“Why do we need high-risk vendors in our networks at all?” Conservative member of Parliament Bob Seely said. “Whoever controls 5G will affect significantly our rule of law, our data privacy, our security and our freedom to support our allies.”
“Any decision that is made will nest a dragon into our critical national infrastructure or not,” influential Tory politician Tom Tugendhat told the House of Commons on Monday. “This is a decision that we will live with for the next 10, 15 or 20 years.”