"America’s efforts to stop Huawei have become an embarrassment."

David Goldman (Spengler) writes in Asia Times,

The US intelligence community’s alarm at Chinese leadership in 5G mobile broadband has less to do with a threat of Chinese eavesdropping than with the likelihood that electronic eavesdropping will become next to impossible, thanks to quantum cryptography.

...America’s intelligence community spends nearly $80 billion a year, including $57 billion for the National Intelligence Program and $20 billion for the Military Intelligence Program. Signals intelligence (SIGINT), mainly electronic eavesdropping, takes up the lion’s share of the budget. Among other things the National Security Agency recorded more than half a billion calls and text messages of Americans in 2017. In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Security Agency admitted — for the second time — that it improperly eavesdropped on Americans.

The US intelligence services argue that if China’s national champion Huawei dominates the installation of 5G mobile broadband, it can build “back doors” into its hardware to steal information, and perhaps even sabotage communication and industrial control networks in case of conflict. The US has threatened its allies with a cutback on intelligence sharing if they use Huawei equipment. So far, no country but Japan has acceded to American demands. Huawei denies that it has the capacity or intention to steal data, but charges of this sort are hard to disprove.

...I continue to believe that the United States cannot effectively restrict the spread of a technology under Chinese leadership without offering a superior product of its own. The fact that the United States has attempted to suppress Huawei’s market leadership in the absence of any American competitor in this field is one of the oddest occurrences in the history of US foreign policy. If the US were to announce something like a Manhattan Project for 5G broadband and solicit the cooperation of its European and Asian allies, it probably would get an enthusiastic response. As matters stand, America’s efforts to stop Huawei have become an embarrassment.

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Trump's war with Huawei

Bloomberg Businessweek visits a Huawei plant in China.

Huawei is said to have stockpiled enough chips and other vital components to keep its business running for at least three months, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of its 180,000 employees remain optimistic that Beijing will resolve its dispute with Washington. Others are confident the Chinese government will step in with either capital or policy changes to prop up the company.

...As Huawei marshals its troops, the U.S. continues to exhort governments around the world to shun its equipment. Australia and New Zealand have banned its gear, and Japan has effectively done so, while others, including the U.K., are weighing their options. Trump has said the restrictions on the company could be lifted as part of a trade deal with China, but negotiations have stalled. “The fundamental question here is, is this a negotiating lever as part of a trade deal?” says Chris Lane, a Sanford C. Bernstein analyst. “If the ban goes on a long time, Huawei will lose a lot of market share.”- Reporting by Gao Yuan

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"the implosion of America's technological predominance"

Spengler writes in PJ Media,

...If America's closest ally ignores our urgent pleas to keep the Chinese telecom giant out of its communication networks, where do we really stand in the world? The Germans did same, and so did the Eastern Europeans. Huawei built out Eastern Europe's telecom infrastructure during the past decade, and it would be prohibitively expensive to replace it.

...5G isn't about downloading movies quickly--it's the disruptive, game-changing technology that will allow robots to exchange vast amounts of data nearly instantaneously in the factories of the future, and allow armies to deploy swarms of thousands of drones operating together using artificial intelligence. And Huawei is the 800-pound gorilla in the world of 5G.

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