Can anyone fill the Huawei void?
I returned to Al Jazeera’s Inside Story on 20 July 2020, after Britain reversed its earlier decision and moved to exclude Huawei from its 5G networks. Appearing as a former vice president of Global Government Affairs at Huawei, I joined cybersecurity consultant Robert Pritchard and Japan-based technology analyst Marc Einstein to discuss who could fill the gap.
I did not argue that there was no life after Huawei. Nokia and Ericsson were already established suppliers, and Samsung was a company to watch. My concern was that removing a major competitor would leave Britain with fewer choices and delay its 5G rollout. I questioned how quickly additional suppliers could change those market dynamics, and warned that delays could affect the country’s longer-term competitiveness.
I also saw the reversal as deeply political. Britain’s earlier review had concluded that the risks could be mitigated; by July, pressure from Washington and politics within the Conservative Party had helped shift the decision. At the time, I thought the US election and the incentives for renewed trade negotiations with China might create room for some restrictions to be rolled back.
The discussion also turned to government financing designed to persuade other countries to exclude Huawei. I warned that a contest of that kind could distort markets and incentives. My broader point was that cybersecurity threats came from several capable states, and that reducing the issue to the nationality of a single supplier misrepresented the challenge.
Watch the interview
Related interviews
- Huawei and Britain’s 5G decision: managing the risks — 2020-01-28
- Is Huawei a threat to cybersecurity? — 2020-01-31
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