The United States continues to urge European countries to ban Chinese telecom giant Huawei from participating in the construction of local 5G networks, warning that Huawei’s involvement could jeopardize NATO security.
Keith Krach, Under Secretary of State for Economic Development, Energy and the Environment at the U.S. State Department, made the warning during his first visit to Europe since the outbreak this year. Germany and Italy are currently considering whether to allow Huawei to participate in the construction of next-generation mobile networks.
Participating in a networking event organized by the German Marshall Fund, Krach noted that Huawei is “an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state and an instrument of human rights violations” and that new technology is “the backbone of the surveillance state. He stressed that European governments can only choose products from two companies, Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson.
Krach said that “untrusted and high-risk suppliers such as Huawei and ZTE are providing authoritarian regimes in China with the ability to terminate or weaponize infrastructure-critical applications, or provide technological advances to the Chinese military” and that Huawei’s participation in Europe’s 5G mobile network would put the NATO alliance at risk.
Klatsch said he has discussed Huawei with German government officials and business executives, and he also linked Huawei to Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong and the oppression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
The U.K. and France have effectively banned Huawei from participating in the construction of local 5G networks.
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