The U.S. ratcheted up pressure on its European allies to ban Chinese-made gear from their telecom networks, asserting such equipment could be a shared national-security threat to the West and could compromise intelligence sharing.
Robert Strayer, deputy assistant secretary of state for cyber policy, warned allies that if they used “untrusted” suppliers to build out new telecom networks, Washington would “have to reassess the ability for us to share information and be interconnected with them in the ways we are today.”
Washington has all but banned Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s biggest telecom gear supplier, in the U.S. Officials argue that Beijing could push the Chinese company to use the gear to spy on or disable foreign networks. Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegation, saying it’s an employee-owned firm that doesn’t do Beijing’s bidding.
