In the wake of President Donald Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping in Osaka, Japan Saturday, the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) called for a halt to the sale of all U.S. equipment to the Huawei communications company.
Trump announced that “U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. I’m talking about equipment where there is no great national emergency problem with it,” CPDC said in a press release.
The Committee on the Present Danger: China said it believes that all provision of products and services and licensing of technology to Huawei undermine the security of the United States, its allies, and partners.
CPDC said it agrees with the findings of Trump’s executive order of May 15, 2019 titled “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain.” This order addressed the threat posed by “foreign adversaries.” Huawei, a state-owned enterprise with known ties to the People’s Liberation Army, is such an adversary, the committee said.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May accused the head of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies of lying about his company’s relationship with the government in Beijing, Battleground State News said. Huawei, the world’s largest maker of telecommunications network equipment, is a leader in 5G technology. It has been trying to win contracts to build a global network that would make the internet much faster.
As of May 16, Huawei was added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List.
This order’s findings are:
I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in information and communications technology and services, which store and communicate vast amounts of sensitive information, facilitate the digital economy, and support critical infrastructure and vital emergency services, in order to commit malicious cyber-enabled actions, including economic and industrial espionage against the United States and its people.
I further find that the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of information and communications technology or services designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries augments the ability of foreign adversaries to create and exploit vulnerabilities in information and communications technology or services, with potentially catastrophic effects, and thereby constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. This threat exists both in the case of individual acquisitions or uses of such technology or services, and when acquisitions or uses of such technologies are considered as a class.
Although maintaining an open investment climate in information and communications technology, and in the United States economy more generally, is important for the overall growth and prosperity of the United States, such openness must be balanced by the need to protect our country against critical national security threats. To deal with this threat, additional steps are required to protect the security, integrity, and reliability of information and communications technology and services provided and used in the United States. In light of these findings, I hereby declare a national emergency with respect to this threat.
The CPDC said it believes that the national emergency Trump rightly declared must preclude any further provision of goods, services, and technology to Huawei as such provision would inevitably enable the threat posed by that company to grow.
The National Indian American Public Policy Institute and the CPDC on June 22 hosted a forum and panel discussion in which participants expounded upon the “unrestricted warfare” that has been waged for decades by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against American electronics and other manufacturers and the importance of India’s help in fighting this threat. Battleground State News reported on the forum, and that coverage is available here.
Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei said in June that the Chinese company’s revenue will be $30 billion less than forecast over the next two years, as he compared the company to a “badly damaged plane” in the face of U.S. government actions against it.
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
