Visiting London on Friday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper made clear why the United States expects Britain to ban Chinese telecommunications firm, Huawei, from its networks.

“Our view is that Huawei is the means by which China would get into our networks and our systems,” Esper continued, “and either attempt to extract information, or to corrupt it, or to undermine what we’re trying to do. So our message has been, and it’s the message I carried to NATO in June, was that we need to be alert to this and not buy into the attractiveness of Huawei technology that is subsidized by the Chinese government and is being offered out there. Because at some point depending on how they leverage that technology it may constrain our ability to share intelligence, share technology, share plans, etc.”