Virtual Networks Boosted as Answer to China Threat on 5G
The pandemic has been a “huge wake-up call” for industry on the supply chain for critical communications equipment, underlining vulnerabilities, said Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis. Others on an American Enterprise Institute webinar Friday stressed network virtualization's growing importance.
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“It’s easy to take critical supply chains for granted up until the minute you no longer have them,” Gallagher said: “In America, we lack key industrial capacities for the mass production of essential technologies, including 5G.” Congress is often “slow to act” but is starting to recognize supply chain problems, said the cybersecurity expert. Concerns are bipartisan, he said. “Regardless of what happens in November, there’s going to be some inevitable momentum.”
The U.S. has been playing defense on 5G for the last four years, Gallagher said. “This has amounted to a consistent argument that Huawei and ZTE are bad.” Countries care about security concerns, “but they’re more interested in just getting cheap internet, and Huawei and ZTE can obviously undercut their international competitors … because they get massive state support,” he said. Other nations like Huawei because it offers “5G in a box” and is easier to deploy, he said. Developing a response with reliable trading partners is “easier said than done,” Gallagher said. “We’ve played defense well; now it’s time to go on offense.”
“There’s a lot of confusion” about how China is “bad,” said AEI’s Shane Tews. “Almost everything on my desk came from China,” she said: “Where is it bad? Where is good? Where are we having collaborative efforts?” The Chinese “have a collaborative effort that is global, and we need to be on point at all times,” she said. China's embassy in Washington didn't provide a new comment for this article, instead citing past remarks on TikTok. Huawei didn't comment right away.
“Government can facilitate, incentivize, make it easier to collaborate” but shouldn’t pick the winners on 5G, said Robert Strayer, Information Technology Industry Council executive vice president-policy and ex-Trump State Department official. “There still should be competition.” Strayer forecast a growing focus on open radio access networks and virtualization, which can spur competition.
Standards should focus on interoperability, and not just for 5G, said Kathryn Condello, Lumen senior director-national security/emergency preparedness. “Ethernet, in essence, runs cities,” she said. “We need to be talking about the underlying thing that’s running everything,” which is “software-defined networking and network function virtualizations,” she said. “We have to be able to develop a strategy together,” she said: Policymakers should recognize that getting more networks will occur over numerous administrations.
When she worked for the Senate Commerce Committee 10 years ago, there were questions about whether broadband stimulus funds should pay for Huawei gear, said Maryam Cope, Semiconductor Industry Association director-government affairs. Many rural carriers used the gear, she said: “The U.S. government really needs to make sure that it has a cohesive policy moving forward to make sure we don’t repeat similar mistakes.”
The administration is “largely headed in the right direction” on TikTok and WeChat (see 2009180051), Gallagher said. “At some point, we have to insist upon reciprocity in our relationship” with China, “particularly when it comes to technological competition,” he said: Forcing the sale of the U.S. part of TikTok with the parent company still controlling the underlying algorithm would be “problematic.”