It’s been a while.
For anyone who has historically followed this blog, you may
have stopped, as I wearied of posting.
For those who are new to this blog, it began as a series of
musings on family and technology, and open markets and an open Internet, and then evolved into an ongoing review of the U.S. Government’s quixotic assault on my
employer of the last eight years – China-based Huawei Technologies.
In the last year or two, I’ve gone relatively – not entirely
- dormant.
One doesn’t have to read the last eight years of posts to
follow this one, but it might help.
Huawei is an almost-30 year-old China-based tech
company.
It’s grown from a reseller of other company products, to researching and developing and producing it’s own product – an innovation and intellectual property powerhouse.
It’s now the world’s largest telecommunications equipment
provider, the third largest smartphone provider globally, and, pretty much, the world’s
leading information and communications technology (ICT) company.
Huawei doesn’t do it alone.
Huawei, like every global ICT company, relies on a global
supply chain, conducting R&D globally, partnering globally, procuring over
$10 billion annually from U.S.-based suppliers alone.
But this ain’t about that.
This is about the U.S. Government having recently fired up
an all-new campaign to block Huawei from the U.S.
Why?
Because Huawei is perceived as a threat to U.S. national
security.
Bullshit.
Oh dear, Huawei is based in China and thus must be vulnerable
to Chinese Government manipulation.
So too are Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, Microsoft and on and on,
all of the U.S.-based and other Western companies that employ tens of thousands of Chinese in China to code
and produce their solutions.
But the U.S. Government knows that.
They also know that they’ve penetrated all of these companies
themselves, to compromise their solutions to enable espionage, intellectual
property theft, etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations).
Go figure.
They also know that the ICT industry is global and
interdependent. They know that there is
no ICT company that is not researching, coding and building in China.
They know this. They mourn
this. They want yesterday. But that was then, this is now.
America can choose to embrace the global ICT industry, or
reject it and let it all gradually verticalize, likely in China, perhaps the only country which can currently afford to do that in terms of human, capital and technological resources.
That, of course, would NOT be in our national security
interests.
But arrogance abounds.
Let’s recap how the U.S. Government has, over the last 10
years, deterred Huawei's market access, and, indirectly, adversely impacted U.S. telecom carriers, investors, suppliers, and
consumers.
- In early 2010, National Security authorities pressured AT&T executives away from selecting Huawei’s network gear for its 4G upgrade project.
- In late 2010, the then-Secretary of Commerce similarly pressured Sprint’s CEO to stop considering Huawei from purchasing Huawei gear for it’s network upgrade. This cost Sprint billions, and factored into its ultimate sale to a foreign-based owner.
- In 2011, CFIUS further chilled Huawei’s prospects by unwinding a transaction which posed "national security" concerns due to a "sensitive technology" which the Government later declined accepting as a donation as the technology was of no interest.
- In 2012 Huawei suffered humiliation as a result of a sham of a national security Congressional Investigation that The Economist best captured at the time as "written for vegetarians."
- The machinations got more clever in 2014-2016, e.g. in the CFIUS approval of Softbank-Sprint, which called for sweeping Huawei from Clearwire, but more importantly requiring Government approval of “new” venders.
- The FCC put a similar provision in the Metro PCS-T-Mo spectrum license transfer.
- More recently, in December 2017, a passel of Congressfolk wrote to the FCC warning against the sale of Huawei smartphones to AT&T. Nonsense. And they knew it. A PR stunt. It worked, AT&T scuttled the deal rather than risk rejection of its Time Warner acquisition.
- In early January, 2018, the House introduced HR4747 which, in part, would ban government entities from contracting with any commercial entity that contracts with Huawei - an effective de facto ban.
- And just this week, Reuters reported that unnamed Congressional aides said that the intent on the Hill was to block all AT&T (and presumably other U.S. carrier) dealings with Huawei.
What a load of crap (much of which has been detailed in this
blog over the years).
As referenced above, and reflected ad nauseum in this blog
over the years, the ICT industry is global, interdependent and transnational – whatever vulnerabilities that may exist are universal, and suggestions otherwise are outright ignorant, and dangerously misleading.
Look, I’m not saying that the Chinese are not spying on us, or us
on them, or the Russians on both us, or the Israelis on all of us, or any other
State on any other.
I’m just saying that the U.S. Defense and Intelligence
community has seemingly abandoned reality.
They are the ones driving this absurdity. They know better.
The U.S. founded a system of fair and open markets and trade
in the wake of the second World War, in large part to bolster global security,
our national security.
The U.S. is now in the process of undermining the very global and
national security we hoped to secure.
But that’s just my opinion.
