The Los Angeles Post

Huawei downplays order

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Senior executives for Chinese telecommunications group Huawei said Wednesday they would “welcome” the U.S. banning use of technology deemed a national security risk, as President Trump considers signing an executive order on the matter.

“Making America safer from a national security perspective, we welcome it,” Andy Purdy, the chief technology officer for Huawei Technologies USA, told The Hill in an interview.

Purdy’s comments came shortly before the president signed the executive order on Wednesday afternoon.

Don Morrissey, the head of congressional, state and local governmental affairs for Huawei, told The Hill that it’s Huawei’s “firm desire to be able to talk to the government and look at solutions on cybersecurity that cover all vendors, that look at risk mitigation.”

Scrutiny from the Senate: Huawei’s potential impact on the rollout of fifth generation wireless technology, or 5G, was a focus of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearingTuesday on national security threats stemming from 5G. Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested that the U.S. should consider severing business ties with other countries that use Chinese technology, telling reporters that “until China stops being a communist dictatorship, we are not going to support working with a country that uses their technology.”

Huawei executives pushed back on those comments, with Purdy saying the Senate hearing “really manifested a misunderstanding or lack of understanding of the role of equipment vendors and the role of the network operators and how those relationships are managed, how risk is managed. They misunderstand the relationship of the equipment vendor like Huawei with customer data.”

During Tuesday’s Senate hearing, there appeared to be bipartisan support and an understanding of the dangers posed by allowing Chinese companies access to 5G networks in the U.S., or to those of the American allies.

“If our allies decide to trust Huawei, they are deciding to trust the Chinese government with their big data,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said.