Huawei, in the sights of the US and at the center of the standoff on US-China tariffs, is also under observation in the United Kingdom. The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), the British body responsible for monitoring digital security, has issued a report which states that Huawei has not fixed the security issues of its products and has not demonstrated a commitment to do so. The report highlights the existence of “underlying defects” in engineering software that “governments or hackers” could exploit, creating national security risks.
In particular, British officials are expressing concern especially that Huawei has not implemented the cybersecurity practices it promised to implement when the United States called the Chinese giant a threat to national security. British officials attribute the problem essentially to Huawei's "poor software engineering" and not the possible "result of Chinese state interference".
The reply from the Chinese giant was not long in coming. A Huawei spokesperson commented on the report stating that the group "understands these concerns and takes them very seriously". He also reiterated that the Chinese giant is committed, including financially, to the review of engineering processes and that “a high-level program map has been developed; we will continue to work with UK cyber security operators and authorities.”
In practice, the flaws are in the defects of the engineering software of Huawei products rather than in the intention, never demonstrated, of the Chinese government to have espionage aims on the West.
Pragmatically, the British therefore ask themselves the question of how to manage the presence of Huawei in the networks of the United Kingdom. A problem that the Americans and other European countries also have given that Huawei is the world's leading manufacturer of equipment for telecommunications networks, including those for the new 5G standard. For now, the British center on cyber security, the NCSC, intends to continue monitoring, as it has done for 15 years, the Chinese manufacturer with which it has established relations of collaboration and information. Huawei's presence on UK networks is also mitigated with that of other operators, which mitigates the risk.
For greater security, however, in a recent communication to Brussels, the NCSC leaders have clarified that the Asian manufacturer "is not present in any of the country's sensitive networks, including government networks". And its presence, where it exists, "is part of a supply balanced with that of other suppliers".
However, the arguments of the British Center for Cybersecurity provide an important assistance to the Trump administration which is calling for the Chinese manufacturer to be banned, on the model of what has been done in the USA. Indeed, one cannot forget the very close link between Huawei and the Chinese government which has a solid grip on the economy of its own country. On the other hand, the prudence of Europeans - and among them, of key countries such as Germany - is due to considerations on the consequences of a drastic downsizing of the Chinese manufacturer for the creation of 5 G networks: upon closer inspection, it would have serious repercussions on the digital advancement of individual countries, with a slowdown in the digitization programs that everyone is now committed to carrying out.
A nice rebus I must say. And you can't ignore it. Even if the Italian government, at the moment, does not seem to have understood the scope of what is at stake.
