Wait, you think the Swedish secret service is going to coerce Ericsson into installing backdoors that let them spy in the UK?
I mean, sure, possible, but a bit further fetched than China doing exactly that, no?
Fortinet is American.
I used to work in telecoms myself about 20 years ago, and at least at the time, much of infrastructure was insanely insecure -- I could have backdoored much of the internet's backbone as a lone programmer had I wanted to: our software was used by most big telcos. Not once was our code audited (at least openly). I very much hope that security is taken more seriously now.
[1] V. Prevelakis, D. Spinellis, The Athens Affair. https://web.archive.org/web/20070704193410/http://www.spectr... The pdf is also available through Spinellis' Google Scholar page.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2...
I've got some bad news ...
What's relevant is what China will do to advance its geopolitical and economic interests. And how it uses 5G as an espionage tool to do so. And in my opinion, the US _is_ just as bad as China. I don't trust the US to be any more ethical than China. I completely expect the US to cheat and steal and ruin foreign corporations to advance its own.
I think many nations would be equally as bad if they had the capability of the Americans or Chinese or Russians, too.
The US is a _liberal democracy_ and at least when it comes to Europe, they have been a valuable ally.
Saying that the US is just as bad as China, a comunist country that routinely violates human rights and keeps its people in the dark via censorship, I for one don't think it's a rational thought process.
And I'm speaking as a citizen of an ex comunist country in Eastern Europe. I know what censorship and living with fear of the state looks and feels like.
When the US infects the world with their ideology, what we get is freedom of speech, Hollywood and Coca Cola. I'm horrified however of a world in which China's policies are normalized and their values exported.
And before you say anything, think about how we wouldn't be able to have this conversation in China without fearing reprisals against yourself or your family.
It’s flatly insane and is destructive to liberalism. These people clearly don’t understand how bad a bad place can be.
China, while diverging much more on political or humanitarian issues, is a much more globally connected economy. The Asian-European trade already dwarfs the European-Atlantic trade, and that is only increasing, and China has very little incentive to change that deepening integration. I'm a sceptic that liberal values alone (which also seem to be in somewhat short supply today) outweigh the deeper trade relations between Europe and Asia.
Indeed^ and this is precisely the problem. The US is behaving shamefully right now because our leadership does not understand (or value) that fact. However, this is precisely the point that I am trying to make: It is only people who have enjoyed post-war, liberal peacetime who think that trade relations should be able to threaten this whatsoever.
Chinese dominance does not yield the same life that US dominance yields (imperfect as it is).
... who spied wholesale on our citizens and politicians. Their destabilization campaign in the Middle East and North Africa isn't anywhere close to European interests.
What they have done is take all three offerings and limit what percentage of the market they can have - effectively having the country 5G networks provided by a three supplies all having an equal amount of kit in the field.
They are also taking the approach of presuming it is potential bad-actor and proactively planning around that.
So a bit like putting an IDS/Firewall in place before you realise you need one, you could say.
Is it ideal - nope, but the lack of local offering make that impossible anyhow. So plan for the worst and hope for the best, is not a bad plan of action in this instance.