Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the Chinese Communist Party has replaced terror as the leading threat to Western values.
Pompeo spoke to reporters on Thursday while on a trip to Europe and Central Asia. He warned that terror attacks are still a threat to the United States, but the Chinese regime posed a greater danger overall.
“While we still have to be enormously vigilant about terror … the Chinese Communist Party presents the central threat of our times,” Pompeo said, according to Reuters.
Pompeo traveled to London on the first leg of his official trip to meet with his United Kingdom counterpart Dominic Raab and Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The officials will discuss a potential trading agreement, as well as Johnson’s recent decision to allow the Chinese telecom giant Huawei to help build Britain’s 5G network.
The U.S. pushed the U.K. to reject Huawei technology before Johnson announced his partnership with the company on Monday. The decision caused blowback from U.S. leaders that are concerned the Chinese regime is using Huawei to build a global surveillance infrastructure and expand the Communist Party’s influence.
“There is also a chance for the United Kingdom to relook at this as implementation moves forward,” Pompeo said on Wednesday while traveling to London. “We will make sure that when American information passes across a network, we are confident that that network is a trusted one … Our view of Huawei is: putting it in your system creates real risk.”
The British government has labeled Huawei a “high-risk vendor” and said that Huawei would only help build non-core parts of its 5G network. Huawei technology is banned from military bases and key energy infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants.
