The good (news for Huawei) . . .
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has voiced support for using Huawei technology, a rebuke of the U.S.’s blacklisting of the Chinese telecom company. The Malaysian PM acknowledged that the U.S. may have legitimate grievances against Huawei, but said banning the company was not the way forward.
The bad . . .
Meanwhile, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a U.S.-based professional association, is banning Huawei employees from peer-reviewing the organization’s publications and has cut ties with Huawei in accordance with U.S. demands. The U.S. has also threatened to limit intelligence sharing with allied countries that use Huawei in their telecomm networks. In April, a leaked U.K. National Security Council decision to let Huawei into ‘non-core’ parts of its 5G network prompted threats by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. President Trump is expected to press this issue hard during his June visit to the U.K.. Theresa May is set to resign on June 7, and the new British PM may seek to reverse the April decision to curry favour with Washington.
The ugly . . .
With the rhetoric around Huawei escalating, Canada has yet to make a decision on letting Huawei into its 5G network. The Canadian government’s stance is that a decision should be made on technological and national security grounds. But growing pressure from Washington and an increasingly fraught relationship with Beijing could frame any decision as bowing to political pressure, and will have serious consequences for our relations with either nation.
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