In order to effectively mitigate the security risks posed by Huawei, the U.S. Department of Defense needs to fund and integrate cutting-edge technologies from the private sector.
Although concern over Huawei’s implications for national security remains high, current U.S. strategies against Huawei have largely been framed as a counter to Chinese spying and focused on retrospective actions, such as lobbying allies against adopting Huawei’s 5G kit (when those allies’ mobile networks are already dependent on Huawei infrastructure), and using the Department of Justice (DOJ) to hold Huawei accountable for intellectual property theft and sanction violations. Unnoted by many, however, is that Huawei’s actions are part of the military competition between Beijing and Washington, a cycle of technology offsets and counter offsets to offsets.
Prepared by Perri Adams, Dave Aitel, and Sophia d'Antoine for the Council on Foreign Relations
