British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s refusal to ban Chinese telecommunications companies from the United Kingdom’s next generation of wireless technology drew applause from a political rival.
“I commend the government for taking a decision which protects our national security but also recognizes the interests of our economy,” Theresa May, the former British prime minister whom Johnson maneuvered out of office during the Brexit debate last year, told the House of Commons on Tuesday.
May’s praise drew a salute from Johnson’s team, as British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab made a point to “pay tribute to the assiduous and rigorous work” she did as prime minister, which “made possible the decision” that Johnson made as her successor. Their agreement fueled frustration among British and U.S. officials who believe that the decision allows economic motives to take precedence over national security.
“The Chinese can peel away an ally merely using finance,” retired Air Force Gen. Rob Spaulding, who helped draft President Trump’s national security strategy, told the Washington Examiner. “They don’t need to roll tanks down the streets of Czechoslovakia like the Soviets did.”
Lawmakers wary of China’s geopolitical ambitions expressed a similarly ominous view of telecommunications giant Huawei’s expected role in U.K. networks. “Today’s decision by the British government is deeply unfortunate and will endanger the national security of Britain, as well as the United States, and our allies, for generations to come,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said on Tuesday. “Britain’s critical role in the Five Eyes alliance means that, absent policy changes by the United States, we and our allies will now be sharing intelligence with a nation that has given China a backdoor to all of their communications.”
Raab dismissed such complaints while outlining the decision, arguing that “high-risk” 5G companies such as Huawei would be “excluded from security-critical network functions.” May echoed his position, declaring that “high-risk vendors never have been and never will be in our most sensitive networks.”
That pledge doesn’t reassure China hawks who warn that the nature of the 5G technology makes it dangerous to work with Huawei at all.
“It’s inherently possible for a vendor in the supply chain to insert malicious code in the many millions of lines of code and it not be discovered through any kind of technical means along the way. Therefore, you must have trust in the network,” a senior State Department official told reporters earlier this month.
Raab argued that a ban on Huawei “would be a very blunt tool” and would slow down the U.K.’s adoption of 5G technology, which is crucial to a host of cutting-edge technologies. “It would significantly increase the cost to industry, and it would delay the rollout of 5G,” he said.
The decision comes almost exactly one year after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched an international diplomatic campaign to warn allies of the danger posed by Huawei, which U.S. officials regard as an arm of Beijing’s spy services. His attempt to persuade the small nations most vulnerable to China met with uneven success, but Johnson’s decision delivered Beijing their most significant diplomatic victory in that debate so far.
“The U.S. intelligence community will now make a determination on how this impacts intel sharing,” Klon Kitchen, who leads tech policy research at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. “But, to be sure, the British decision on Huawei fundamentally alters the relationship, and it hurts everyone’s security.”
