Olivier Guitta is the Managing Director of GlobalStrat, a security and geopolitical risk consulting company for companies and governments.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shed light on a number of serious security threats that were hitherto largely ignored by the West. Following the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, all eyes are on critical infrastructure protection, including – importantly – digital and telecommunications infrastructure.
Over-dependence on China in vital strategic sectors such as telecommunications is a glaring security vulnerability that has led the UK, Canada, Germany, and Italy, among others, to block the purchase of high-tech companies by Chinese firms.
The telecom industry has come to the fore in terms of national security matters, and analysts have warned that China’s involvement in communication networks could create cyber vulnerabilities while Beijing’s ongoing participation in some digital infrastructure projects could generate intelligence risks.
Making matters worse, China could also potentially conduct surveillance on military forces. The U.S. has been investigating Huawei, the Chinese telecom company, over concerns that American cell towers fitted with its gear could capture sensitive information from military bases and missile silos which the company could then transmit to China.
This risk is partly the reason why, last November, the U.S. outlawed the sale of Chinese-origin communications equipment made by Huawei and ZTE, prohibiting the use of some Chinese-made surveillance systems due to an “unacceptable risk” to national security.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it is “committed to protecting our national security by ensuring that untrustworthy communications equipment is not authorised for use within our borders”. It is quite notable that it is the first time in FCC history that it has prohibited the authorisation of new equipment based on national security concerns.
Specific concerns of that kind are not limited to the U.S. alone. Over in Europe, a huge critical project could leave Europe at the mercy of China: the 9,300-mile Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) fibre-optic cable to Europe. It will travel overland from China to Pakistan, where it will head underwater and snake along for about 7,500 miles of ocean floor via the Horn of Africa before landing in France.
Huawei is not only making the equipment for the PEACE cable landing stations and its underwater transmission gear, but it is also the third-largest shareholder in Hengtong Optic-Electric Co, the company building the cable itself. Huawei’s founder has declared war on the West as he urged workers to ‘surge forward, killing as you go, to blaze us a trail of blood’ in a battle for supremacy.
Furthermore, he said Huawei had ‘entered a state of war’ after a heated technology battle between China and the West. Responding to this, the UK is seeking to forge an alliance of ten democracies to create alternative suppliers of 5G equipment and other technologies to avoid relying on China’s Huawei.
Huawei and ZTE have also been kicked out from the 5G network contracts in the U.S., UK, Sweden, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. While barring Huawei is a first step, achieving indigenous technology solutions for domestic critical telecom infrastructure represents a much more far-reaching measure.
In the meantime, to provide government services secure access to the internet in case of cyberattacks, which both Russia and China are proficient at, the EU has agreed to launch its own telecommunications satellite system called IRIS2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnection and Security by Satellites), which should hopefully be operational by 2027. The 6B€ project is to be financed by the EU for 2.4B€ and 3.6B€ by the private sector.
The UK has also beefed up its legislative arsenal by passing the National Security and Investment Act in January 2022. It is designed to prevent inappropriate foreign ownership of or control over 17 key areas of the UK economy and infrastructure. It is also designed to protect against potentially hostile countries’ ill-intentioned investments such as Huawei’s planned involvement in the UK’s 5G network.
Further to this and in terms of national security risk, the fact that China owns 35 per cent of Electricity North West led British authorities to block it from accessing sensitive information about Britain’s power grid, though that decision has since been rescinded.
That Chinese involvement in global telecommunications infrastructure is a weak point is not a new realization. In the wake of the Ukraine war and the shifting geopolitical landscape, however, this issue has received a special urgency and should be the definitive wake-up call for Western allies on both sides of the Atlantic. If the West truly wants to shield itself effectively against Chinese or Russian intrusions in the future, it has no other choice but to strengthen its capabilities from the inside out.
Olivier Guitta is the Managing Director of GlobalStrat, a security and geopolitical risk consulting company for companies and governments.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shed light on a number of serious security threats that were hitherto largely ignored by the West. Following the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, all eyes are on critical infrastructure protection, including – importantly – digital and telecommunications infrastructure.
Over-dependence on China in vital strategic sectors such as telecommunications is a glaring security vulnerability that has led the UK, Canada, Germany, and Italy, among others, to block the purchase of high-tech companies by Chinese firms.
The telecom industry has come to the fore in terms of national security matters, and analysts have warned that China’s involvement in communication networks could create cyber vulnerabilities while Beijing’s ongoing participation in some digital infrastructure projects could generate intelligence risks.
Making matters worse, China could also potentially conduct surveillance on military forces. The U.S. has been investigating Huawei, the Chinese telecom company, over concerns that American cell towers fitted with its gear could capture sensitive information from military bases and missile silos which the company could then transmit to China.
This risk is partly the reason why, last November, the U.S. outlawed the sale of Chinese-origin communications equipment made by Huawei and ZTE, prohibiting the use of some Chinese-made surveillance systems due to an “unacceptable risk” to national security.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it is “committed to protecting our national security by ensuring that untrustworthy communications equipment is not authorised for use within our borders”. It is quite notable that it is the first time in FCC history that it has prohibited the authorisation of new equipment based on national security concerns.
Specific concerns of that kind are not limited to the U.S. alone. Over in Europe, a huge critical project could leave Europe at the mercy of China: the 9,300-mile Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) fibre-optic cable to Europe. It will travel overland from China to Pakistan, where it will head underwater and snake along for about 7,500 miles of ocean floor via the Horn of Africa before landing in France.
Huawei is not only making the equipment for the PEACE cable landing stations and its underwater transmission gear, but it is also the third-largest shareholder in Hengtong Optic-Electric Co, the company building the cable itself. Huawei’s founder has declared war on the West as he urged workers to ‘surge forward, killing as you go, to blaze us a trail of blood’ in a battle for supremacy.
Furthermore, he said Huawei had ‘entered a state of war’ after a heated technology battle between China and the West. Responding to this, the UK is seeking to forge an alliance of ten democracies to create alternative suppliers of 5G equipment and other technologies to avoid relying on China’s Huawei.
Huawei and ZTE have also been kicked out from the 5G network contracts in the U.S., UK, Sweden, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. While barring Huawei is a first step, achieving indigenous technology solutions for domestic critical telecom infrastructure represents a much more far-reaching measure.
In the meantime, to provide government services secure access to the internet in case of cyberattacks, which both Russia and China are proficient at, the EU has agreed to launch its own telecommunications satellite system called IRIS2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnection and Security by Satellites), which should hopefully be operational by 2027. The 6B€ project is to be financed by the EU for 2.4B€ and 3.6B€ by the private sector.
The UK has also beefed up its legislative arsenal by passing the National Security and Investment Act in January 2022. It is designed to prevent inappropriate foreign ownership of or control over 17 key areas of the UK economy and infrastructure. It is also designed to protect against potentially hostile countries’ ill-intentioned investments such as Huawei’s planned involvement in the UK’s 5G network.
Further to this and in terms of national security risk, the fact that China owns 35 per cent of Electricity North West led British authorities to block it from accessing sensitive information about Britain’s power grid, though that decision has since been rescinded.
That Chinese involvement in global telecommunications infrastructure is a weak point is not a new realization. In the wake of the Ukraine war and the shifting geopolitical landscape, however, this issue has received a special urgency and should be the definitive wake-up call for Western allies on both sides of the Atlantic. If the West truly wants to shield itself effectively against Chinese or Russian intrusions in the future, it has no other choice but to strengthen its capabilities from the inside out.