China is conducting an “economic blitzkrieg” to surpass the U.S. as the “world’s preeminent superpower,” Attorney General William Barr told a group at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum Thursday in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A “centerpiece” of the effort is its Made in China 2025 industrial policy for “domination of high-tech industries like robotics, advanced information technology, aviation, and electric vehicles,” said Barr. “Backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, this initiative poses a real threat to U.S. technological leadership.” It defies World Trade Organization rules prohibiting quotas for domestic output, he said. It sets targets for domestic market share as high as 70% “in core components and basic materials for industries such as robotics and telecommunications,” he said. It’s clear that China “seeks not merely to join the ranks of other advanced industrial economies, but to replace them altogether,” said Barr. The Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry didn’t comment.

The U.K. followed the U.S. lead in banning Huawei equipment on national-security grounds (see 2007140023) “without any solid evidence and under the excuse of non-existent risks,” said a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Wednesday. The U.K.’s action “blatantly violated” free trade rules and “eroded mutual trust underpinning China-U.K. cooperation,” she said. “China will evaluate this development in a comprehensive and serious manner and take all necessary measures to protect the legitimate and legal rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.” President Donald Trump’s disclosure Tuesday that he personally “convinced many countries” not to use Huawei as a condition for doing business with the U.S. was “further proof that decisions to ban Huawei are not about national security, but political manipulation,” said the spokesperson. Trump's remark “also shows the world that it is not China, but the U.S., that has been intimidating and threatening others and sowing discord all across the world,” she said.

Spotify expanded into 13 markets, including top-20 market Russia, it said Tuesday. Other new markets are in the region, including Kazakhstan, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The company is in 92 markets worldwide.

The U.K. government followed the U.S. lead in banning Huawei equipment Tuesday. “The best way to secure our networks is for operators to stop using new affected Huawei equipment to build the UK’s future 5G networks,” Media Secretary Oliver Dowden told the House of Commons: “From the end of this year, telecoms operators must not buy any 5G equipment from Huawei.” Dowden conceded the ban will delay the U.K.'s 5G rollout by two years and cost up to $2.5 billion. This “threatens to move Britain into the digital slow lane, push up bills and deepen the digital divide,” Huawei said: "We remain confident that the new US restrictions would not have affected the resilience or security of the products we supply to the UK." The announcement is “good news for the safety and security of 5G networks,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr tweeted. Others at the FCC agreed. “There is an overwhelming consensus that Huawei is in a position to exploit network vulnerabilities and compromise critical communications infrastructure for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The U.K. "has taken a necessary step to safeguard its national security as it builds out advanced networks,” he said. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., welcomes "these developments in the UK" and reiterates his hope that the Trump administration "will begin to engage multilaterally with like-minded allies on promoting secure and competitively-priced alternatives to Huawei equipment,” he said Tuesday. “My bipartisan legislation, the United Strategic Allied Telecommunications Act, would be a major step in the right direction and I hope to see it included, fully funded, in the eventual defense authorization act," said Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The EU Court of Justice should uphold standard contractual clauses and maintain the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, Information Technology Industry Council Senior Manager-Policy Alexa Lee said Thursday. A decision in the so-called Schrems II case is expected July 16 (see 1912190001). Any other scenario would “erode trust” in the EU’s general data protection regulation, which “codified several different mechanisms for the predictable outbound transfer of data,” Lee wrote. She outlined four other potential scenarios: the court maintains SCCs as valid but strikes down the PS; invalidates certain SCCs transfers to the U.S. and maintains the PS; invalidates some SCCs transfers to the U.S. and strikes the PS; or invalidates global SCCs transfers and strikes the PS.

The Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control fined Amazon more than $130,000 for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions. The company processed online orders sent to a range of sanctioned countries in the Middle East and Asia, and didn't follow reporting requirements for more than 300 transactions done under a Crimea general license, OFAC said Wednesday. The company also processed orders for people “located in or employed by the foreign missions” of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Amazon’s sanctions screening program “failed to fully analyze all transaction and customer data,” which led to gaps in compliance, the U.S. said. The maximum penalty was more than $1 billion, but OFAC said Amazon self-disclosed the violations. Additional mitigating factors included that Amazon hadn't committed a violation in the previous five years, cooperated with the investigation and conducted an internal probe. The company didn't comment Thursday.

The Chinese shot back at FBI Director Christopher Wray for accusing China of waging a "massive" cybersecurity war against the U.S. “We regret that U.S. foreign policies are kidnapped by FBI officials like Wray and other anti-China forces,” said a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Wednesday. “The words of some U.S. officials are full of political lies in negligence of basic facts, exposing their deep-seated Cold War mindset and ideological bias.” Americans are the “victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” Wray told the Hudson Institute Tuesday. “If you’re an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data.”

The U.S. and China should “redouble” efforts to “implement all aspects” of their phase one trade agreement (see 2001160022), especially “where implementation appears to be lagging,” 41 trade and business associations wrote Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. “Significantly increased” Chinese purchases of U.S. goods in “the coming weeks and months would be mutually beneficial," said CTA, the Information Technology Industry Council, National Retail Federation, Telecommunications Industry Association and others. “We strongly support and encourage” increased Trump administration efforts “to work with the US business community and stakeholders in China to increase export promotion efforts at this critical time” of COVID-19, they said Monday. They hope successful implementation of phase one “will create the necessary conditions” for the start of phase two negotiations “as soon as possible,” they said. Phase two is needed to “address important outstanding issues,” including cybersecurity, digital trade and standards setting, they said. USTR, Treasury and the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry didn't comment Wednesday.

NTIA launched the communications supply chain risk information partnership (C-SCRIP), as required by 2019's Secure and Trusted Communications Network Act and effective Wednesday, says that day's Federal Register. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, FBI and the FCC are working with NTIA. “This program is aimed primarily at trusted small and rural communications providers and equipment suppliers, with the goal of improving their access to risk information about key elements in their supply chain,” NTIA said: “C-SCRIP will allow for regularly scheduled informational briefings, with a goal of providing more targeted information for C-SCRIP participants as the program matures.”

Google and Sonos “meaningfully narrow[ed] the claim construction disputes” in the International Trade Commission’s intellectual property probe into Sonos allegations that Google devices infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents (see 2002060070), Google said (login required) Thursday in docket 337-TA-1191. “Several critical differences remain with respect to terms.” Google filed to persuade Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock to resolve the disputes in its favor. Sonos didn’t comment Monday. Two of the Sonos patents “purport to present a solution to two alleged problems in the audio synchronization field,” said Google. The patents “overstate their technical contributions” because they rely on “well-known techniques,” said Google: “Synchronization concepts” used in a local area network “long predate the patents’ claimed inventions.” Sonos “now seeks to narrowly interpret the claims” about LAN to avoid “the abundance of prior art,” said the brief. Google proposes defining a LAN by its “plain and ordinary meaning,” and ITC staff agrees, it said. Sonos proposes regarding a LAN as a data network that links devices within a limited area, said Google. The sides agree another of the patents describes different techniques that might be used to perform “equalization of audio data,” said the brief. “Dispute lies in whether each of these techniques necessarily result in equalization every time.”