from the zero-calorie-xenophobia,-going-nowhere dept
Long before the great TikTok moral panic of 2021 to 2024, you might recall that numerous members of Congress spent a solid decade freaking about another Chinese company: Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei.
The argument, made without much in the way of public evidence, was that Huawei was systematically using its network gear to spy on Americans at a massive scale. Congress then proposed a solution: it would require that U.S. telecom operators (large and small) rip out all Huawei equipment from their networks at great expense, then replace it with usually more expensive alternatives.
So in early 2020 Congress passed the Secure And Trusted Communications Act effectively banning Huawei from U.S. telecom networks. Congress doled out $1.9 billion to rip out and replace Huawei gear, but it’s estimated to cost around $5 billion to actually complete the effort. But instead of finishing the job, Congress fell asleep, resulting in huge costs for telecom providers (especially small, rural ones).
The Secure And Trusted Communications Act also set aside $1 billion to try and “invest in Western-based alternatives to Chinese equipment providers Huawei and ZTE.” Five years later and that project is effectively rudderless; the money redirected by the Trump administration to give large tax cuts to rich people and large corporations who already pay very little in taxes.
The project was intended to help establish an alternative technology called open radio access network, or Open RAN. Open RAN is still being developed, and heavily dependent on government funding. Texas Senator Ted Cruz spearheaded shifting that funding over to tax cuts, but it sounds like Republicans aren’t being particularly coherent or consistent on strategy or messaging, even internally:
“That contradictory approach to the issue extends to Capitol Hill as well. Just days after Trump signed the reconciliation law slashing the remaining $850 million in open RAN grants, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill directing the government to alert small companies to the benefits of open RAN — even letting them know about how to participate in the program the GOP had just gutted.”
This is, again, highly reflective of the U.S. superficial hyperventilation on national security. There will be several years of consternation and outrage a rotating parade of “Chinese threats,” followed by lots of hand-wringing and costly programs and projects that go nowhere.
Much like the TikTok ban, which was floated for years and even forged via legislation, only to be scuttled because it upset the financial plans of a billionaire Trump ally. Or like the “race to 5G,” which involved giving giant U.S. telecoms bottomless subsidies and tax cuts to “defeat the Chinese,” only for lawmakers to disappear when the efforts resulted in slow, expensive, and patchy U.S. 5G coverage.
It comes down to the fact that the U.S. is generally too corrupt to function, something that usually isn’t included as essential context by U.S. journalists covering the government incompetence. And this is just one aspect of the incompetence; the Trump administration has gutted government cybersecurity programs, including a board investigating the biggest Chinese hack of U.S. telecom networks in history.
The Trump administration has also fumbled FCC efforts to shore up internet of things (IOT) security in Chinese smart home devices, clumsily dismantled the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) (responsible for investigating significant cybersecurity incidents), and randomly fired oodles of folks doing essential work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
These are all dire risks to public safety and national security. But when the press covers the MAGA GOP’s efforts on national and cybersecurity, the stunning lack of competence generally isn’t mentioned. The party curiously never really has to take ownership of bad policy or their bottomless dysfunction. From TikTok to Huawei, the MAGA GOP’s Chinese cybersecurity outrage is routinely just a xenophobic, expensive, self-serving and corrupt performance, usually going nowhere.
Filed Under: china, chinese, cybersecurity, donald trump, fcc, national security, open ran, privacy, security, ted cruz, telecoms
Companies: huawei, zte
