British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thrown down the gauntlet to U.S. President Donald Trump with last week's decision to defy his warnings and allow Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, to be part of the United Kingdom's next-generation 5G telecom infrastructure.
The controversy surrounding Huawei's role in national telecommunications grids is the most immediate expression of what I call the "new national security economy," and offers insight into a larger set of problems that governments, companies and societies will confront in an era of deep connectivity and the big data that it generates.
The push to deny Huawei access to 5G telecommunications networks reflects three concerns: fear that its equipment can be used to observe data that it transmits (espionage); fear that the company could manipulate data or install a "kill switch" that would cause equipment to fail in an international crisis, both of which would damage if not cripple a communications system (sabotage); and worry that Huawei benefits from a special relationship with the Chinese government that provides an unfair advantage in market competition.