Is Huawei a Security Risk?

This question is quite beyond my technical competence to answer.  Even the experts disagree amongst themselves.  President Trump thinks it is too risky to use Huawei equipment and insists that Britain and our other allies not use Huawei equipment for building out their 5G telephone infrastructures. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thinks its OK (plus it is available and cheaper than its potential future competitors) for many but not all uses.  President Trump, who likes to think he is protecting American jobs even though our economy is fully employed, was so angry at Johnson’s unwillingness to bow to his demands that he hung up on Johnson in their most recent phone conversation.  Johnson promptly cancelled his planned trip to the White House. Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelensky, must be shaking his head in disbelief.

Trump has reason to be suspicious of foreign produced equipment following the recent disclosure that a CIA owned Swiss company, Crypto AG, sold encryption devises to 120 countries that enabled the U.S. and Germany to “easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.”  This went on for over 40 years allowing us to spy on our friends and foes alike. “National-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage”

But these days security is much more sophisticated and wouldn’t allow such hardware to slip through undetected. On the other hand, the spying technology is more sophisticated too. Britain and other European countries are avoiding Huawei equipment for sensitive applications and using it for the rest. My point is not to join the debate over whether and where to use Huawei equipment but rather to argue that the more promising approach to convincing our friends of potential dangers (the more Adult approach, if I may) is to present our evidence and endeavor to convince them of our views. Trump’s approach, as in so many other areas, is to threaten and bully. “The-basis-of-American-world-leadership”

It is not easy to determine when trade restrictions reflect genuine security concerns and when they are just another manifestation of Trump’s protectionist, central planning direction of our resources.  He has imposed and threatened to impose tariffs with abandon, inflicting harm on our own economy as well as the tariffs’ targets. “Trumps-recent-trade-moves-show-adversarial-approach-has-only-just-begun”  “The United States has also threatened duties of up to 100% on French goods, from champagne to handbags, because of a digital services tax that Washington says harms U.S. tech companies.”  “Trump-threatens-big-tariffs-on-car-imports-from-EU”  This use of tariffs has nothing to do with trade and violates WTO rules, which Trump seems to pay little attention to in any event.

While this type of bully approach might work sometimes, it is unsustainable in the long run.  Needless to say, world confidence in the U.S. to do the right thing has plummeted. While for now other countries bow to and follow orders from the U.S., not out of respect but out of fear of retaliation, they follow a strategic waiting game. They know that Trump will not always be in power. And after he is gone, the U.S. will no longer have allies but adversaries ready to bare their claws for revenge.  https://www”9-charts-on-how-the-world-sees-Trump”

 

 

 

Author: Warren Coats

I specialize in advising central banks on monetary policy and the development of the capacity to formulate and implement monetary policy.  I joined the International Monetary Fund in 1975 from which I retired in 2003 as Assistant Director of the Monetary and Financial Systems Department. While at the IMF I led or participated in missions to the central banks of over twenty countries (including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgystan, Moldova, Serbia, Turkey, West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Zimbabwe) and was seconded as a visiting economist to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1979-80), and to the World Bank's World Development Report team in 1989.  After retirement from the IMF I was a member of the Board of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority from 2003-10 and of the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review from 2010-2017.  Prior to joining the IMF I was Assistant Prof of Economics at UVa from 1970-75.  I am currently a fellow of Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.  In March 2019 Central Banking Journal awarded me for my “Outstanding Contribution for Capacity Building.”  My recent books are One Currency for Bosnia: Creating the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina; My Travels in the Former Soviet Union; My Travels to Afghanistan; My Travels to Jerusalem; and My Travels to Baghdad. I have a BA in Economics from the UC Berkeley and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. My dissertation committee was chaired by Milton Friedman and included Robert J. Gordon.

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