US House speaker Pelosi warns allies against working with Huawei

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi warned NATO allies against allowing Chinese tech giant Huawei into their 5G networks.
During her visit to Brussels, where she met with leaders of the EU and NATO, the Democrat lawmaker said integrating Huawei into Europe’s 5G networks would be “like having the state police, the Chinese state police, right in your pocket”.
“While some people say that it’s cheaper to do Huawei – well yeah – it’s a People’s Liberation Army initiative using reversed engineering from Western technology. So, of course it’s going to be cheaper to put on the market. And if it’s cheaper, then they get the market share and then they bring in their autocracy of lack of privacy”, Pelosi said.
“You cannot sell the privacy of the people of your country down the river”, she added.
Washington added Huawei to its trade blacklist in May, amid concerns that its 5G equipment enables the Chinese government to spy on other nations.
Despite the warning, the UK government last month allowed limited use of the tech giant into its 5G networks. It announced that Huawei, as a “high-risk vendor”, will be excluded from sensitive geographic locations, such as nuclear sites and military bases.
A group of House Republicans introduced a resolution denouncing the UK’s decision: “Huawei equipment is absolute poison, providing them access to any aspect of a 5G network compromises the integrity of the entire system and will result in network data being sent back to Communist Party leaders in Beijing”, the lawmakers said.
Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations, saying it operates independently of the ruling party of China. However, last year, two US senators pointed out that private Chinese companies are required to adhere to Chinese law.
The senators expressed their concerns over China’s “vague patchwork of intelligence, national security, and cybersecurity laws”, that compel Chinese companies to cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. They warned that there is no legal mechanism for Chinese companies to appeal if they disagree with a request by the government.