America Must Help Europe Avoid Entanglement in Communist China’s Digital Silk Spiderweb

An observer of a fly landing on a spiderweb will notice the incredible effectiveness of that sticky net. Upon feeling the vibrations in the web, the spider can sense everything it needs to know to kill the insect, which moments before had never suspected that it would be stuck, helpless, and struggling to break free for fear of death.

At this very moment, the European Union is that unsuspecting fly, the web is 5G infrastructure, and the spider is Communist China.

In 2015, the European Union formally partnered with China in an agreement to conduct joint research on 5G technology. “5G will be the backbone of our digital economies and societies worldwide…with today’s signature with China, the EU has now teamed up with the most important Asian partners in a global race to make 5G a reality by 2020,” Gunther Oettinger, European Commissioner in charge of the Digital Economy and Society stated at the time.

The Chinese side of this partnership has been managed by a company called China Mobile and included other worrisome Chinese tech companies, such as Huawei. Huawei recently made headlines after the arrest of an employee in Poland on espionage charges, criminal investigations by the U.S. Justice Department, and the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on allegations of bank fraud and violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. Numerous countries have banned the use of Huawei equipment due to fears of the company installing backdoors to enable Chinese government espionage.

As some countries within the EU are reconsidering their relationships with Huawei, the EU leadership is still moving full speed ahead in its 5G partnership with China.  The EU program’s coordinator, Uwe Herzog, told the South China Morning Post: “The conversations with our Chinese partners on the joint work are pleasant, constructive and productive.”

What Herzog and other leaders in the European Union fail to understand is that Chinese companies have every reason to be “pleasant, constructive, and productive” in their 5G partnership effort to make sure it moves along as quickly as possible.

Let’s put this in the context of an American or European business owner.

Imagine if your biggest competitor could see every piece of your business’ inventory, the contact information for all of your customers and keep an eye on your pricing information in real time? The competitor could introduce its products to your customers at a slightly lower price at just the right time. You would lose sales and not even know it and before long your entire business would be in jeopardy.  If future business-related communications are transmitted via a Chinese-owned 5G infrastructure, this scenario becomes entirely possible.

China already conducts this type of corporate espionage. According to the EU’s own Intellectual Property Office 2017 report, “China has long been recognized as the engine of the global counterfeiting industry.” Ownership of worldwide 5G infrastructure will only make this type of economic warfare easier.

Europe’s entanglement in China’s digital silk spiderweb underscores the importance of American technology companies working with the U.S. Government to rapidly build a secure 5G infrastructure. Such infrastructure would give nations around the globe a viable alternative to having their economic and societal lifeblood sucked out by Communist China, since once the Chinese 5G web has been built, it will become nearly impossible for nations to free themselves from it.