CHINA’s tech giant Huawei poses such a grave security threat that the Government must reverse its decision to give it a role in building 5G networks, a former spy boss has said.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who led MI6 from 1999-2004, said using Huawei equipment could place the Chinese government in a “potentially advantageous exploitative position” in the UK’s future telecoms network.
His intervention comes in a report by the influential Henry Jackson Society think tank, which warned that the Government’s risk assessment of Huawei is “too narrow”. Yesterday Donald Trump effectively blocked Huawei products from the US yesterday.
He signed an executive order barring US firms from using telecom gear from “foreign adversaires”.
It will pile pressure on Britain to bar Huawei from any involvement in building the new 5G network.
Huawei issued a damning rebuttal - warning that the move would force the US to use “inferior and expensive alternative equipment” and would “ultimately harm US companies and consumers”.
It added: “If the US restricts Huawei, it will not make the US safer, nor will it make the US stronger.”
In a foreward to the HJS report, which recommends Britain also bans Huawei equipment, Sir Richard wrote: “The fact that the British Government now appears to have decided to place the development of some its most sensitive critical infrastructure in the hands of a company from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is deeply worrying,”
“The PRC uses its sophisticated technical capabilities not only to control its own population (to an extreme and growing degree), but it also conducts remotely aggressive intelligence gathering operations on a global scale.
“No part of the communist Chinese state is ultimately able to operate free of the control exercised by its Communist Party leadership.
'SHORT ON FACT'
“To place the PRC in a potentially advantageous exploitative position in the UK’s future telecommunications systems therefore is a risk, however remote it may seem at the moment, we simply do not need to take.”
Replying to the report, a Huawei spokesman said: “This report is long on politically motivated insinuation but short on fact. It fundamentally misunderstands the nature of modern China, global technology markets and of 5G.
"The isolationist approach they recommend may support an America first trade agenda but it’s hard to see how it’s in UK’s national interest.
"We are an independent, employee-owned company which does not take instructions from the Chinese government. In 32 years, there have been no significant cyber security issues with our equipment.
"We hope and expect that any decision on Huawei’s participation in Britain’s build-out of 5G networks will be based on solid evidence, rather than on unfounded speculation and groundless accusations”
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