This discussion continues the conversation around Huawei, 5G and the future of technology.
The true fear isn’t really technical at all: it’s economic. It starts from a perception – not altogether unfair – that the company grew so massive by leveraging state aid that would be illegal in Europe, selling equipment to markets in Asia and Africa that were paying for it with low-cost loans from the Chinese state, and receiving immense direct government support for research and development. Now, according to Franco Zaro of cybersecurity firm Valid: “Huawei has had a more global presence than Ericsson and Nokia combined.” It may be genuinely better and cheaper, in other words, but only because it didn’t play fair to get there.