by Jordan Evans-Kaplan, MAEUS student
This blog post was written for the course "Dialogue on Europe" during the Fall 2019 semester.
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| Photo Credit: Jon Worth, via Flickr License available here. |
One of the most salient aspects of the Huawei clash has been rooted in Europe's difficulty in unifying on issues of security. However, if security alone was insufficient to elevate the issue to this level of international concern, technological and regulatory hurdles provided the rest of the legwork. Once specific example of this form or jumbling is in Germany's recent "security catalog". This policy has drawn the ire of many EU nations for being a "toothless" provision, as the only requirement being imposed on Huawei is that they agree to a "no-spy clause" without the EU having plans for either enforcement or verification. Further, given the already strained trade relationship, coupled with a backdrop of trade tensions, it is clear how unification on this multidimensional issue could pose quite difficult for the European Union.
The transatlantic relationship is undoubtedly a key component in the friction between Chinese telecom and the European market due to a host of security and economic concerns. One such concern is the threat of Huawei inserting a backdoor into their technology, as they were accused of doing with Vodafone Italy. In lawsuits going back to 2011, Huawei was found to have the means to access the private data of millions of citizens through so-called downstream packet collection via backdoors in critical infrastructure. Further, recent evidence has come to light showing that routers and fiber optic infrastructure built by Huawei demonstrated serious security vulnerabilities and backdoors which would allow the company to effectively "siphon" data from optical nodes and broadband network gateways, gathering information secretly without risk of detection. Despite this, the US position seems to have softened with respect to Germany, as they walked back the demand that Germany ban Huawei's 5G plans. As a result, the current refrain coming from the United States with respect to Huawei can be summed up in the Cold War adage, "Trust but verify."
Security and privacy concerns are not limited to the transatlantic relationship, as the European Union has been hotly debating this issue on the grounds of state spying as well as citizen privacy. The threat of backdoors leading to Beijing is clearly on the minds of European regulators and politicians. However, in response to these accusations of clandestine surveillance, Huawei has pushed back on Europe for what they see as being "singled out" by the European Union. One proposed solution favored by Huawei is common telecom securi
ty standards within the European Union. While many see this as an attempt to share blame with the entire sector, it speaks to a larger trend within the common market of the Eurozone: a centralization of security-based policies in order to ensure infrastructure cannot ever be compromised by a foreign nation.
Huawei represents one of the most challenging regulatory and security hurdles for an actor such as the European Union due to the complex and multifaceted way through which it interacts with Europe and its people. As a result, it can be said that the issue of Huawei is largely one of integration and securitization of infrastructure, in which the solution can only be hammered out through a rigorous democratic process that prioritizes not just the security of Europe, but its privacy as well. Only time will tell how this issue will be regulated and drafted into law, but it is clear that the way forward is in a more closely integrated Europe with consistent policies around the world.
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