Huawei

The Capitol Hill Club, home to DC's most high-profile Republicans since the 1950s, is on thin ice with its conservative members. Cockburn, who has enjoyed many a cocktail inside the oak-lined walls of the club, is hearing that Republican members of Congress are incensed at the Capitol Hill Club for complying with DC mayor Muriel Bowser's vaccine mandate. As of January 15, DC restaurant and entertainment venues are required to check that all of their patrons are fully vaccinated. According to a GOP insider, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise warned the Republican conference at a meeting last week that members should not go to the Capitol Hill Club if they are not prepared to show their papers. In essence, comply or be quiet.

Monday night’s House of Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate. The problem for the UK government is not just the actual danger of our security being breached by Huawei, real though that is. It is also strategic. The government is not treating the subject this way, but sees it as merely a matter for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This is a bad mistake. We have achieved Brexit. We are making our own way in the world. Our closest allies in terms of trust, language, cultural links, democratic values and shared interests are our four partner nations in the ‘Five Eyes’ deep intelligence partnership — the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. Vladimir Putin, as we all know, has become chief electoral strategist in the western world. When he wanted Donald Trump president, he merely set his army of trolls to action and the American public was fooled into backing a candidate who would never have got anywhere near the White House otherwise. That is what the media has been telling us since 2016, anyway. But the idea that Russia can swing a sophisticated electorate of 300 million people with the aid of a fake-news tweet factory in St Petersburg was always fantastical. Even the Mueller inquiry could not prove it — not for want of trying.

Trump’s decision to lift the ban on US companies doing business with Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company, is a stunning defeat for him. It’s also a major reversal for the US intelligence community, which has been concerned for years about what it considers to be Huawei’s wholesale theft of American technology.Lifting of the ban reinstates Huawei at the leading edge of China’s global spying. It undercuts months of private attempts to encourage America's allies to join in what the US hoped would be something close to a worldwide ban. And, over the long term, it also threatens America’s strategic advantage as a leader in new technologies.

Established in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in 1987, it didn’t take long for Huawei Technologies to become a top player in global telecommunications. Since 2012, it’s been the world’s biggest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. Last year, Huawei displaced Apple as the world’s second-biggest smartphone maker, after South Korea’s Samsung. Active in 170 countries, Huawei matters – to China and to the global economy.Yet there have long been questions raised about the company, starting with the fact that Huawei’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, is a former senior technologist for the People’s Liberation Army.