The United States has made new threats to allies who intend to continue to work with the Chinese company Huawei. Specifically, Germany has been threatened with less information if it allows Huawei to help set up 5G networks.
The Wall Street Journal writes that the American ambassador to Germany, Richard A. Grenell, wrote a letter to the German Minister of Economy. In it, Grenell warned that his country would share less intelligence as soon as a 5G network with parts of Huawei was established in Germany.
Suspicion Huawei
The United States has for some time been putting pressure on allies not to allow Huawei to help set up the internal 5G networks. The technology of the Chinese company is needed to make a transition to the much faster networks. According to all kinds of analyses and studies, possible blockages could lead to a delayed roll-out of 5G and to economic damage.
According to the United States, however, this is outweighed by the chance that the Chinese government will allow Huawei to build backdoors into its networks. Chinese law requires individuals and companies to cooperate with requests from the intelligence services. But according to Huawei, an independent legal expert states that this does not apply to the company. It has also offered to take extra measures to prevent espionage via the networks it helps set up.
Extra pressure
This is not enough for the United States, so it is putting pressure on allies to deny Huawei access to its network market. With varying success by the way, because wherever Australia decided to block Huawei, there is already a deal with the company in Portugal, for example. In Germany, too, the government seems to be considering allowing the Chinese company to participate in the construction of 5G networks.
However, the United States’ threat of less intelligence coming towards Europe is a serious one. The European intelligence services are partly dependent on American information in the fight against terrorism. If the provision of information comes to a standstill or is drastically reduced, this may pose a threat.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.