Allies consider using Huawei

America’s global campaign to prevent its closest allies from using Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, in the next generation of wireless networks has largely failed, with foreign leaders publicly rebuffing the U.S. argument that the firm poses an unmanageable security threat.

Britain has already called President Donald Trump administration’s bluff, betting that officials would back away from their threat to cut off intelligence sharing with any country that used Huawei equipment in its network. Apart from an angry phone call between Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Britain appears to be paying no price for its decision to let Huawei into limited parts of its network, under what the British say will be rigorous surveillance.

Germany now appears ready to follow a similar path, despite cajoling and threats by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other U.S. officials at a global security conference in Munich last weekend.

In public speeches and private conversations, Pompeo and Esper continued to hammer home the dangers of letting a Chinese firm into networks that control critical communications, saying it would give the Chinese government the ability to spy on — or, in times of conflict, turn off — those networks. The security risks are so severe, they warned, that the U.S. would no longer be able to share intelligence with any country whose network uses Huawei.

“If countries choose to go the Huawei route,” Esper told reporters Saturday, “it could well jeopardize all the information sharing and intelligence sharing we have been talking about.”

Yet officials sense their continued drumbeat of warnings is losing its punch in Europe, so the administration is shifting its approach. The U.S. is now aiming to cripple Huawei by choking off its access to the American technology it needs and trying to cobble together a viable American-European alternative.

The Huawei fight is just one part of a bigger U.S.-China battle, as Washington tries to contain Beijing’s influence and power and ensure that the world’s second-largest economy does not come to dominate advanced industries that could give it an economic and military edge. That includes the next-generation telecommunications networks that Huawei is building.

The U.S. is also trying to limit China’s access to U.S. technology more broadly and is considering restricting sales of microchips, artificial intelligence, robotics and some types of advanced software, along with preventing tech companies from teaming up — or even sharing research — with Chinese firms.

But the effort to handicap Huawei has been complicated by the lack of an alternative to the company, which offers lowcost telecom equipment partially subsidized by the Chinese government. The only real competitors are Nokia and Ericsson, two European firms that claim they have deployed more 5G networks than Huawei, but are struggling to match its prices or keep up with the Chinese firm’s research and development.

In private meetings, Trump has been urging American firms to get into the competition themselves. But the administration is divided internally over whether the U.S. needs to invest in the technology or leave the market to sort it out.