On the matter of whether former defence secretary Gavin Williamson was the real ‘H’ in Line of Duty, I admit I may have lost the plot. But meanwhile the rest of the media has rather lost sight of the key issue with Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant whose involvement in UK 5G networks was allegedly opposed by Williamson and others at a National Security Council meeting chaired by the Prime Minister. The nub of this isn’t whether or not Huawei is closely linked to the Chinese government: let’s just say that objective China-watchers are unpersuaded by assurances to the contrary, while acknowledging an element of trade-war jingoism in the way US politicians bandy the accusation. It’s also fair to acknowledge that so far as we know, Huawei hasn’t actually been proved to provide covert surveillance of US or other states’ secret communications.
The real problem is that the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre at Banbury has been unable to certify the company’s equipment as secure against sabotage.
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