Huawei – the Chinese state is already deeply embedded in Britain

Boris Johnson has just accomplished the first big balancing act of his new government by offering the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei 35% of the action in developing the 5G mobile network in the UK.

It was a case of being damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t – and more of this is sure to follow as the government sets its course for Brexit Britain.

The Prime Minister himself chaired a nine member meeting of the National Security Council before announcing the decision. The ensuing statement did not refer to Huawei by name but talked of the new entrants into the business of rolling out 5G, a process to be fully under way by this time next year.

Under the new policy, Huawei is to supply 35% of the equipment and infrastructure for the new system – it supplies rather more to the current 4G setup. However, it is not to have access to the “core”, what some call the “brain” of the network and will operate with periphery equipment and network apparatus.

Critics in the UK and the US say this will allow Huawei and the regime of the People’s Republic of China into the whole array of intelligence gathering, analysis and processing, not only of the UK but its close allies such as the US. It will allow the Chinese into the workings of the “Five Eyes” intelligence consortium of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Both Australia and New Zealand have voiced vehement opposition to the British move to include the Chinese conglomerate.

President Trump has said that the UK embracing Huawei could lead to intelligence-sharing sanctions by the US towards Britain, though how this would be done is yet to be seen.

The UK Culture Secretary, Nicky Morgan, newly promoted to the House of Lords, declared, “this is a UK-specific solution for UK-specific reasons and the decision deals with the challenges we face right now.”

She added that world-class connectivity “must not be at the expense of our national security.” She implied that the government intended to reduce dependence of Huawei, and hoped that new contractors would bid to develop 5G beyond the initial stages. 

“High-risk vendors never have been, and never will be, in our most sensitive networks.”

In the run-up to the announcement, Tom Tugendhat, who is seeking re-election to be chairman of the foreign affairs select committee in the UK House of Commons, had warned that awarding a 5G contract to Huawei would be like “letting the fox into the chicken coop in security terms.”

Huawei, naturally, has welcomed the announcement. It said it meant the UK’s plan for the roll-out of 5G infrastructure would be kept on track.

At first sight, Boris Johnson’s decision to reward China with this contract and alienate the Trump White House seems risky to the point of rashness. At second sight, however, it is all a lot more complicated than either the critics or champions of the Johnson case have cared to admit, at least out loud.

To have denied Huawei on this would have been very costly both in the long and short term. It would mean dismantling Huawei from much of the existing 4G system and what of the 5G network has already begun. The fees in compensation and litigation might well have run into the billions.

China is already involved in the UK’s public and private sectors in a big way – from the nuclear power stations starting with the Hinkley Point extension to railways and the transportation networks. Countries like the UK, France and Italy, in the second division of world economies, have limited capacity for development and investment in fundamental infrastructure. They haven’t sufficient funds, manpower and brain power.

“For some time now China has been a major European player, only the Europeans don’t like to admit it,” my colleague Lucio Caracciolo of the Limes think tank in Rome confided to me over two years ago. Italy is now buying into the Belt and Road project by clearing Beijing to move into the port of Trieste – as it has with Piraeus in Greece.

Even the medium European military powers like the UK and France are not investing enough in research and development to keep up with the huge revolution in security and strategic affair now hitting us – with the arrival of quantum and nano technology – and the huge acceleration in data processing now under way. 

Remarks like “letting the fox among the chickens” are somewhat deceptive, and even have a whiff of humbug. Tom Tugendhat once served, with distinction, on the staff of the head of the armed services, the Chief of Defence Staff. Each Christmas, the chief gives a state of the nation’s security address in Whitehall. A couple of years back, I had the temerity to ask the CDS why our service chiefs banged on at such events about the risks and threats from Putin’s Russia but not from China. I got a reply as swift as it was utterly non-committal before the great general moved smartly on to safer grounds.

“Foxy, you should have known better,” a senior staff officer, and pal, muttered as we left the room. “The boss couldn’t have said anything different – so much of our defence software now originates from China.

It has been long suspected that the Chinese have a pretty fair appreciation of the software of the F-35 Lightning II, in theory the world’s most advanced – and most expensive – combat plane now being acquired for the RAF and Royal Navy.

But, caveat emptor, Huawei is not just a telecoms company in the mould of its competitors and rivals, Ericsson and Nokia. It is connected umbilically to the apparatus the Chinese Communist party and the People’s Republic, for that’s the way things work in the China of Xi Jinping’s solipsistic political vision. 

The new plan for Huawei’s participation in the UK’s 5G system has been signed off by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill in his role as national security adviser, and in the matter of communications security he is no slouch.

His office will be responsible for Huawei being allowed access to the periphery and not the core of the new apparatus. This will be a proposition about to be tested to breaking point. American communications gurus believe that as the system evolves and grows up, the distinction between core and periphery will disappear.

It won’t even be virtual.