LONDON: Britain faces a crucial choice on Tuesday over whether to allow China’s Huawei Technologies to build its next-generation wireless networks.

The decision has implications for the country’s diplomatic relations with the United States, which is pushing allies to shun the Chinese company over cybersecurity concerns.

And Britain’s choice will feed into a wider battle between the US and China over technological supremacy that has seen the world’s two biggest economies engage in a damaging trade war.

Britain’s National Security Council is poised to decide whether to allow Huawei to build parts of its new high speed cellular network known as 5G, an infrastructure program the country sees as critical to its economic future. But Huawei has come under scrutiny because of worries that communist leaders in Beijing could, under China’s 2017 national intelligence law, compel the company to carry out cyberespionage.

Why Is This So Important?

Days away from leaving the European Union and desperately needing to secure its future outside of the trading bloc, Britain is now caught in the middle of a geopolitical battle between the US and China — both important trading partners. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government finds itself in the awkward position of risking the fury of its closest ally at just the moment it really needs President Donald Trump’s administration to quickly strike a trade deal. Britain is also loathe to insult Beijing. The UK made a point of courting Chinese investment with the State Visit of Xi Jinping in 2015, a gilded affair meant to underline the dawn of a new era.

What Is 5G?

Dont be fooled by the name. The fifth generation of cellular networks is not merely an upgrade from existing 4G wireless network technology. It’s billed as a radical transformation delivering ultrafast download speeds combined with vastly reduced signal lag – the slight delay that occurs between, say, tapping out a command on your phone and getting a response. The other difference is that it will be built into thousands of new devices, like thermostats and sensors in medical devices. The aim is for 5G to be instrumental for self-driving cars or for telemedicine, allowing doctors to control robots in remote surgery on patients thousands of miles away. Underpinning all this new connectivity will be a lot more software that can lead to more vulnerabilities.

What Are The Cybersecurity Risks?

Cell networks have traditionally consisted of two parts. There’s the radio access network made up of antennas and base stations on rooftops and masts. There’s also the core, the brain keeping track of smartphones connecting to the network so account holders can be billed along with managing data traffic flowing across the entire network. With 5G, US officials worry that the core will run extensively on software. Millions of lines of computer code would present a huge attack surface and it could be nearly impossible to spot an accidental vulnerability or a malicious backdoor that can be used for siphoning information or crippling vital connected infrastructure like a power grid. These fears aren’t entirely unfounded. Huawei equipment has for years been inspected at a lab overseen by British officials, who said in their latest annual report that the company’s software was buggy.—AP

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2020