Huawei and 5G technology: US - China conflict

This lecture will offer secondary school students an example of international relations topics discussed at American Studies Center. Beyond trade and tariffs, United States and China have exchanged accusations over technology uses. President Trump accuses Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. of violating various international laws such as ignoring sanctions on Iran. That led to the arrest of its founder’s daughter, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, in Canada at request of the United States. Huawei is the largest telecommunications equipment provider in the world since it overtook Ericcson in 2012, and second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world (after Samsung) once it overtook Apple in 2018. In national security, the “Five Eyes” accused Huawei of  “backdoor” spying by including cybersecurity compromising infrastructure in its devices to enable monitoring of data and conversations by Chinese intelligence agencies, that Huawei denies. Huawei has admitted some of its “innovations” came from “reverse engineering”, meaning the deconstruction of technologies patented by American or other Western companies, then reconstructing the same or similar technologies as their own products. Each of these accusations overlaps “G5” technology, meaning an “Internet of Things” or (IoT) that will lead to high speed connection of devices such as to enable driverless automobiles on automated highways, programmed home operation applications, surveillance cameras capable of facial recognition of everyone everywhere, together with deeper and more advanced artificial intelligence. President Trump signed an executive order on 15 May 2019 to secure American technology from “foreign adversaries”. Soon, Western companies began cutting or reducing ties with Huawei.