This situation between the US and China is escalating further with news that the US is going to purge what it calls “untrusted” apps which all happen to be from China:
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said expanded U.S. efforts on a program it calls “Clean Network” would focus on five areas and include steps to prevent various Chinese apps, as well as Chinese telecoms companies, from accessing sensitive information on American citizens and businesses.
Pompeo’s announcement comes after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok. The hugely popular video-sharing app has come under fire from U.S. lawmakers and the administration over national security concerns, amid intensified tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok, WeChat and others are significant threats to personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for CCP (Chinese Communist Party) content censorship,” Pompeo said.
To the shock of absolutely nobody, China is not at all happy:
In an interview with state news agency Xinhua on Wednesday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said the United States “has no right” to set up the “Clean Network” and calls the actions by Washington as “a textbook case of bullying”.
“Anyone can see through clearly that the intention of the U.S. is to protect it’s monopoly position in technology and to rob other countries of their proper right to development,” said Wang.
But the US action doesn’t stop there. The US doesn’t want US apps on Huawei phones:
Pompeo said the United States was working to prevent Chinese telecoms firm Huawei Technologies Co Ltd from pre-installing or making available for download the most popular U.S. apps on its phones.
“We don’t want companies to be complicit in Huawei’s human rights abuses, or the CCP’s surveillance apparatus,” Pompeo said, without mentioning any specific U.S. companies.
No matter how you look at it, this war between China and the US is going to be very bad and you can expect to see more shots traded between these two. Especially in the lead up to the US election in November.
Huawei & ZTE Punted From Canadian 5G Networks…. What Took Canada So Long To Do This???
Posted in Commentary with tags Canada, China, Huawei, ZTE on May 20, 2022 by itnerdLate yesterday news filtered out that both Huawei and ZTE have been banned from Canadian 5G networks over national security concerns. And any telco that are using their gear needs to rip it out ASAP. This mirrors similar moves by the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia who along with Canada are known as the “Five Eyes” which is an alliance of these five countries to share intelligence. The difference is that Canada was late to this decision while the other four made this call years ago. Thus one has to wonder why it took Canada so long to make this move.
In my opinion, one factor had to be the Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor situation where those two Canadian citizens were essentially held hostage by the Chinese government in retaliation for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou who is the CFO of Huawei in Vancouver and at the request of the US government. That eventually got sorted when the US cut a deal with Wanzhou which allowed the two Michael’s to be released by China as that’s how “hostage diplomacy” works. But even then, that was over a year ago and they are only banning Huawei and ZTE now. So that can’t be the only reason. Though it’s not clear to me what other reasons exist.
Regardless of what reasons exist, here’s the thing that really bothers me about this rather late decision by the Canadian government to ban Huawei and ZTE. If you accept that both of these companies are arms of Chinese intelligence, which I happen to believe to some degree, then this inaction by the Canadian government has given both these companies an inside look at not only the telecommunications networks in Canada, but how Canadians use those networks. Not to mention that they could have been doing who knows what to gather whatever information that the Chinese government wanted them to gather. All while the Canadian government sat on its hands and did nothing. So even though they’re now banned, Huawei, ZTE, and the Chinese government still win. And that highlights how the Canadian government has failed miserably on this issue.
When it comes to national security, governments have to take it seriously. They have to make decisions that lean towards ensuring security and they have to make those decisions quickly. That didn’t happen here, and I have to wonder if it is going to cost Canada down the road. Because it’s pretty clear that the Canadian government dropped the ball here, and there needs to be some accountability on that front.
Leave a comment »