US President Biden signs law to ban Huawei and ZTE from receiving FCC licences [telecom]

[Moderator]

The Secure Equipment Act of 2021 received bipartisan support prior to it being signed by Biden.

By Campbell Kwan

US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law bipartisan
legislation that will ban companies like Huawei and ZTE from getting
approval for network equipment licences in the US.

The legislation, Secure Equipment Act of 2021, will require the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt new rules that
clarify it will no longer review or approve any authorisation
applications for networking equipment that pose national security
threats.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-president-biden-signs-law-to-ban-huawei-and-zte-from-receiving-fcc-licences/

[Marco Moock]

Am Sat, 13 Nov 2021 20:43:43 +0000 (UTC)
schrieb Moderator
<telecomdiges...@remove-this.remove-this.telecom-digest.org>:

> The legislation, Secure Equipment Act of 2021, will require the
> Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt new rules that
> clarify it will no longer review or approve any authorisation
> applications for networking equipment that pose national security
> threats.

That's interesting. They don't want Huawei in that position, but Cisco
and Sony are fine (maybe because these are American companies that can
[be controlled by] their government).

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <20211114073934.4a6b2640@ryz>, Marco Moock <mo...@posteo.de> wrote:
>Am Sat, 13 Nov 2021 20:43:43 +0000 (UTC)
>schrieb Moderator

><telecomdiges...@remove-this.remove-this.remove-this.telecom-digest.org>:

>
>> The legislation, Secure Equipment Act of 2021, will require the
>> Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt new rules that
>> clarify it will no longer review or approve any authorisation
>> applications for networking equipment that pose national security
>> threats.
>
>That's interesting. They don't want Huawei in that position, but Cisco
>and Sony are fine (maybe because these are American companies that can
>[be controlled by] their government).

The PRC government implements a policy of military-industrial fusion,
wherein "national champion" industrial firms provide support for the
military and in return the government's external spy agencies perform
industrial espionage to support those firms. The US intelligence
establishment believes that this "support" on the part of
telecommunications companies includes secret remote access and/or data
exfiltration functions that can be invoked by the PRC intelligence
apparatus.

(It's perhaps worth noting here that the Chinese *state* does not have
a military. The People's Liberation Army is the military department
of the Chinese Communist Party, not the state, and to the extent these
are hard to distinguish it is because China is a one-party state. But
the PLA is answerable to Party leadership and not the government, to
the extent these differ.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)