Securing America's Networks Against Chinese Security Threats

welcome to csis online the way we bring you events is changing but we'll still present live analysis and award-winning digital media from our drakopolis ideas lab all on your time live or on demand this is csis online good afternoon to everyone and welcome to csis we're lucky today to have commissioner brendan carr along with my colleagues ding chung and nuri turkey of the turkle pardon me of who will speak on the issue of securing america's networks against chinese security threats uh this is something that all of us have been working on for a long time there's many issues as you know the run of show today is that commissioner carr will make some opening remarks and then dean and nuri will follow i'll give brief intros their full bios are available on our websites but commissioner brendan carr is the senior republican on the fcc and he was previously the agency's general counsel he's led its work to modernize infrastructure rules and accelerate the build out of high-speed networks a crucial area for competition he's also done a lot on expanding the skilled workforce we'll need for future networks he brings years of experience in the private and public sectors in communications and tech policy so we're lucky to have him here today he'll be followed by ding chong an old friend from the heritage foundation who has been doing research on china's political and security affairs for um law as long as i've known him which is a long time he specializes in china's military and foreign policy and in particular the racial relationship with the united states and the rest of asia dean's written extensively on china's military doctrine and technology policies he previously worked at saic the center for naval analysis which is an ffrdc and prior to that i didn't know this at the congressional office of technology assistant assessment so there's a real blast from the past finally we're lucky to have nuri terkel who's a lawyer foreign policy expert and human rights advocate uh in may 2020 he was appointed as a commissioner to the u.s commission on international religious freedom he's a senior fellow with the hudson institute and a member of the council of foreign relations uh nuri serves as the chairman of the board for the weaker human rights project so again a new perspective to this and i think this will be a good discussion the format is pretty straightforward we'll open with commissioner carr so if you're ready please go ahead great well uh thank you so much to you james and to csis for hosting this event and inviting me to speak great to be uh joined by these distinguished panelists and after i give a couple remarks um i'm happy to join with them and take some questions as well um what i'm going to lay out here today are two additional steps that i think the fcc should take to ensure the security of our communications networks against the threats posed by communist china and also some targeted action that we should take at the fcc to address the genocide uh that's taking place in xinjiang right now and help put this in context i'll start uh two years ago i had the the privilege of visiting malmstrom air force base which is all the way up near great falls montana i spent time there with colonel jennifer reeves and she's the commander of the 341st missile wing colonel reeves and her team have one of the most significant and weighty missions in government and their charge are 150 intercontinental ballistic missiles loaded in underground silos spread across northern montana these are missiles that when launched can carry warheads almost ten thousand miles colonel reeves told me that her job is to make sure that they're always ready to go now set against that destructive power is a completely serene and wide open landscapes it's just wheat fields in big sky country except for one thing there are cell towers all around those montana missile fields that have been running on huawei equipment now this is not just a concern for the military everything that we do in modern society now runs on interconnected networks from banking to transportation even our power grids and this will become only more so as we continue to see 5g networks spread out across the country if these networks are threatened everything that we have come to rely on is threatened now we've acknowledged the threat posed by telecom equipment vendors with ties to communist china going back as far as 2012. that's when a house permanent select committee on intelligence issued a report recommending that companies avoid using huawei zte because of the threats that are posed and that government agencies themselves should remain vigilant and focused on that threat and i would say over the past three to four years you know we have really turned the page in this country in the u.s on the weak and timid approach that we took to communist china in the past and frankly that was a bipartisan failing uh and we now have a bipartisan commitment um from my perspective to show the strength and the resolve needed to address communi communist china's threat we've been doing our part at the fcc a couple years ago we launched a proceeding to take a look at huawei zte and other carriers with ties to communist china and we started proceedings to make sure that carriers in the u.s that receive federal dollars universal service funds are not using those funds to put insecure huawei or zte gear into their networks i also call for the fcc to do a top to bottom review of every carrier that has a 214 authorization which is a an fcc authorization to to operate a communications line here and look at them to see if they have ties to communist china we've now moved forward with that proposal we have a number of carriers that we're looking at proposing to revoke their authorizations now when we adopted these rules that require telecom carriers to remove and replace equipment that pose an unacceptable national security risk that was an important step and it made substantial progress in terms of securing u.s national security but the rules that the fcc adopted only apply to equipment as i noted that are purchased with federal funding again known as the universal service fund the fcc rules expressly allow carriers to use private funds to purchase and use that exact same equipment so in my view it is time that we close this glaring loophole once we've determined that huawei or any other gear poses an unacceptable national security risk it makes no sense to allow that exact same equipment to get purchased and inserted into our communications network as long as federal dollars aren't involved it's the presence of this insecure gear in our networks that's the threat not the source of funding used to purchase them yet if you look back at the fcc's equipment authorization regime we continue to review and approve give our stamp of approval to thousands of applications from huawei and other entities that we've deemed national security risks so what i'm calling for is for the fcc to move swiftly to eliminate communist china's back door into our networks i think doing this is going to be consistent with decisions made on a bipartisan basis in the secure network act of 2019 again we have this equipment authorization process that disallows any device from being marketed sold or used in the us unless it goes through that approval process and i think we need to carry through our decisions on huawei and zte with respect to federal dollars and apply it to our equipment authorization regime so we close that loophole that allows these insecure devices continue to get inserted into the u.s communications network i also think we need to take a second step and that's the other idea that i'm gonna throw out there today which is we need to adopt measures to ensure devices made with forced labor do not enter the u.s market you know there's long-standing general rules that prohibit goods made with slave labor generally from entering the u.s market uh senator rubio and others in congress have gotten together on a bipartisan basis and have introduced legislation to strengthen that existing prohibition i think it's very clear that we aren't doing enough and when you step back and you look at the genocide that is taking place in xinjiang right now there's a number of studies that look at this and including at least one that points to the potential for slave labor to have been used in the supply chain of a u.s company um it's not enough for all of us to sort of wait around and see what happens i think it's incumbent on all of us to take some action so what i think we need to do is we need to look at that same equipment authorization process that the fcc has and again this is a process that applies to any electronical electronic device that comes into the u.s market and we should strengthen the safeguards to make sure that when companies seek to apply to get their electronic devices approved by the fcc and therefore approved to be used in the u.s that we apply a heightened review to make sure there is not any forced labor there particularly devices that are tied back to xinjiang so i think we need to track the approach put forward by senator rubio and a bipartisan group of senators that was a bill on the house side at least that passed through the house during last congress i think the ccp is very plainly committing genocide and crimes against humanity in xinjiang and so we need to take a more dc without waiting for that bill to pass through congress and start a proceeding that would look at how we use our equipment authorization process to to to make sure that type of forced labor isn't in the supply chain relatedly communist china has made clear that it wants to dominate the global market for semiconductors and chipsets and there's certainly no reason to think that they will not refrain from using forced labor in pursuing that goal so i think this is yet another reason why we must require companies to be more vigilant not to look the other way and take additional actions across their own supply chains to make sure that we're not supporting communist china's human rights abuses that they're not profiting from those practices by the production of chipsets or really any other electronic devices that we at the fcc ultimately review and approve you know with that i'm happy to turn to uh the rest of the panelists for their remarks i'm happy to engage more directly on these two ideas that i've thrown out closing this loophole so that we have no devices that get into our networks regardless of the source of funding that we've already determined to be a national security risk and that we apply a heightened review to make sure that we're not allowing any devices from garage door openers to network gears to cell phones that we review and approve at the fcc that we are making sure that the companies are submitting these applications are doing even more work to make sure that forced labor is not involved this is a very topical issue and i've actually been thinking about it in light of recent chinese actions to push back against uh companies that have taken a position on these issues so um we'll have a good discussion nuri can i ask you to make some remarks then after the commissioner yes thank you very much um i'd like to thank cscis organizing this event and inviting me to be part of this important conversation that we should have more often uh my name is nuri turkel i'm a commissioner at the united states commission on international religious freedom usurp is a bipartisan independent legislative branch agency that makes recommendations to the president secretary of state and congress on ways to advance freedom of religion and belief worldwide we have nine commissioners appointed by the majority and minority party leaders in congress and also president of the united states whose work supported by 20 staff members at the commission what am i doing here uh why am i why my commission is interested in this issue this is one of the ways that the technology specifically is one of the ways in which the chinese communist party has been successfully carrying out the ongoing genocidal campaign that commissioner carr eloquently described to us today's topic on china telecom firms and forced labor uh uyghur forced labor the implications of their intersection with the u.s national security is certainly a timely one china's brutal domestic oppression of ethnic and religious minorities and its over expanding influence abroad presents an inseparable security and human rights challenge to the united states and to our international partners and allies which rightly warrant warrants immediate attention and action on part of the biden administration and u.s allies i argue that both security and human rights are integral part of the us national security interest and we must address them as such as we counter the china challenge the reality is that it is rather difficult to separate the two especially when it comes to chinese telecom companies like huawei and zte which presents simultaneously a security and human rights threat to the united states as many of you know china's digital authoritarianism and uighur forced labor are two key means through which the chinese communist party used the used to oppress the uyghurs and other turkic muslims that have been widely reported in the media while the international community and the u.s government including my own agency have paid significant attention to foreign companies complicity in this regard we must also zero in on chinese companies role in the horrific human rights abuses committed against the uyghurs and this has been expanding last year my commission hold a hearing one of the witnesses told us that the digital authoritarianism is metastasizing and now have been adopted over 80 countries around the world first of all we must also let me go over why we have to focus on these issues first of all we must be aware that the chinese technology companies including telecom are not independent they often have intimate ties to the chinese communist party with party branches deeply embedded in their corporate structure huawei for example has several hundred ccp committees when needed these chinese companies will uphold the party's leadership and carry out the party's policy in their business operations additionally these companies have also have key actors in promoting china's internet governance model internationally as a new norm if left unchecked china will become an internet superpower that is able to shape the standards and norms of the global internet a trend of enormous implications for u.s national security interests and world stability second when it comes to china's digital authoritarianism chinese telecom companies like huawei and zte have long played a vital role in facilitating and implementing china's oppressive policies in the uyghur and tibetan regions huawei is a key provider of sophisticated surveillance technologies used in xinjiang including facial recognition it also provides technology technical support and training to xinjiang public security bureau which has been added to commerce department's entity list and alarmingly huawei has been exporting its surveillance technology solutions called smart cities projects abroad to countries with poor human rights records such as venezuela zimbabwe where oppressive regimes can use these technologies to persecute human rights activists and political opponents and finally chinese telecom companies like faber and zte along with other well-known chinese technology tech companies such as lenovo uh hyacinth ifly tech and have been complicit in the use of uyghur forced labor in their supply chains forced labor abuses involving these technology companies mostly occur in involuntary and exploitative labor transfer programs in which uyghur were wiggles were transferred from xinjiang to work at supply factors suppliers factories in eastern province of china so when they said oh we're going to stop the forced labor practice in xinjiang doesn't mean that this ca this problem can be solved because they can relocate it and and use it and do it in other places in china there's a one example that has been in the news a lot the case of full film a supplier for chinese telecom and tech giants lenovo and huawei where the uyghur workers have been involuntarily recruited and performed forced labor in a fourth uh port fortified compound with security cameras and guards at the entrance their moment that their movement is severely restricted and they're not allowed to pray or engage in any religious worship activities in conclusion i'd like to note that china's telecom industry presents both human rights and security challenges to the united states and the world at large chinese telecom companies complicity in uighur forced labor and digital authoritarianism threatens human rights both in china and abroad china could exploit its pioneer status in emerging technologies to form forming artificial intelligence quantum computing to 5g networks to influence how the technologies are developed and used as well as to shape the standards and norms associated with the with these technologies china is in fact leveraging its economic geopolitical influence over countries where its technologies are deployed to its own advantage and to undermine democracy and threaten human rights worldwide to engage in espionage intellectual property theft and military aggression and i appreciate uh today's opportunity for me to share the human rights aspect of chinese tech authoritarianism and the uh and misuse of that advanced advantages to uh threaten democratic norms and civil liberties around the world thank you nuri i i should note that this is clearly a good topic because we've already gotten a lot of questions from the audience we'll come to them after we hear from dean so dean uh please could you offer us a few remarks uh yes thank you to csis for the opportunity to be here uh this afternoon uh my comments are going to be a little bit more on the chinese policy aspects um that are influencing both what uh commissioner carr and nuri kell were just talking about um i think it's important to begin by recognizing that china sees the world as entering a new period that the world has shifted from the industrial age to the information age because from the chinese communist party's perspective what that means is information is now the currency of power both domestic and foreign notice that i don't use the term cyber because it's not just about the bits and bytes the software or hacking viruses it is about information and from the chinese government's perspective it is about controlling the generation the transmission the access to exploitation the interpretation and the credibility of information and this is both internal and external implications uh when we look at the chinese domestic information environment it's important to recognize again the foremost parc priorities ccp priority chinese communist party is to keep keep itself into power this is an authoritarian government that brooks no real opposition so in the domestic context the issue is how does how can china use information to essentially help monitor 1.3 billion people and the ccp recognizes that the vast majority of these people frankly have no particular position or opinion they are not out to overthrow the government not necessarily particularly enthusiastically supporting the government either but that it is widowing through that 1.3 billion people who the key elements that might oppose whether it is certain ethical minorities whether it is human rights activists more broadly whether it is people who are unhappy about consumer product safety or corruption how do you get at that and so the chinese have demonstrated a very comprehensive approach to domestic and this is reflected in the social credit scoring system that you may have uh read about this ties together all sorts of information uh your uh medical records your internet searches your banking records your uh how well you do paying off your credit cards um your internet searches where you eat where you are working um the geolocation on your cell phones all of this data is tied together so that the chinese surveillance system can build a remarkably comprehensive picture of people down to the individual level should they need and here what we see is that chinese internet service providers hardware manufacturers software designers all of these can be made to comply with chinese law and part of this goes to the reality that in the chinese system there is no civil society there's nothing beyond the reach of the ccp so whether you are a state-owned enterprise or whether you're a private company as nori turkey noted those companies nonetheless are penetrated are have party committees that oversee every aspect every operation and this comprehensive approach coupled with what the chinese term abc artificial intelligence big data and cloud computing allows them to manage this huge pool of data that they have collected in order to maintain surveillance over this population the same approach is then applied internationally chinese information monitoring and surveillance serves multiple functions and again the highest priority is keeping the ccp in power so on the one hand this includes the typical uh espionage aspect of trying to find out other people's military secrets uh your war plant your fighter aircraft designs or transportation plans but in addition to that is monitoring what the chinese would consider anti-china elements now whether that is the tibetan government in exile and weaker dissidents abroad or organizations that advocate religious freedom or whether it is simply you know groups that oppose the ccp what china has demonstrated is that to them these are all of a peeps they are all targets they all must be penetrated and this is an ongoing effort um when google first tried to go into china and set up servers in hong kong and for a while there's a google.cn domain what they found was something called project aurora that the chinese under project aurora were trying to penetrate uh the google email servers because they wanted access to tibetan and other dissident emails to find out who was talking to whom who was communicating what the chains were who was funding this goes to the reality that the chinese are constantly trying to gain intelligence on a variety of topics it's very holistic because it's never quite clear where a line can be drawn between military issues economic issues political issues diplomatic issues and so we see the chinese engaging in essentially the almost hoovering up um data on all sorts of groups people or organizations they want to know not only who is in an organization but how that chain of command works how items are coordinated so that they can then go and attack the links as well as the individuals and organizations and part of the purpose of this is the chinese concept of what we would call deterrence what they term waste which is really coercion that if you know that your emails are being monitored if you are pretty sure we can't be certain how secure your communications are then you may be more redis you may choose not to write things you may choose not to email them and from the chinese perspective that's all to the good it's not that they necessarily that you have to agree with them is that you shut up and so in that regard what we see then is the chinese information monitoring and control which goes beyond what some of you may have seen about the great firewall of china it's not just about keeping adversarial or negative information out certainly that's something they want to do but it is also getting access to other people's information that they would prefer to keep secure well one of the key things that rarely is talked about for some reason is the border gateway protocol hack that the chinese have done um to hyper grossly oversimplify essentially the chinese have used their positions their physical location of china telecom uh highest level telecom company in north america to essentially redirect chunks of the global internet to china and it goes in and it eventually comes out the other side but you can be pretty sure that the chinese have probably reported a lot of that for future breakdown decryption and exploitation i mean we're talking percentages of the global internet and internet traffic being deliberately redirected this gives you a sense of the scale and the mere pathological need to find out everyone else's information this is one of the reasons why huawei is a challenge because if huawei produces the hardware for internet servicing then in that case what we are looking at is all of this data is passing over physical servers and routers so that you can potentially redirect things almost automatically so let me conclude here by noting that the parc challenge when it comes to information whether it's about surveillance whether it's about information about dissidents whether it is about intellectual property is a holistic one driven by the view that information is the key to modern national power this focus on information goes beyond bits bites viruses malware trojan horses the hardware software and apps it touches on aspects such as space because so much information transits across space gathered from space as well as terrestrial aspect and monitoring and surveillance is a global not just chinese local phenomenon and it is aimed at any and all might challenge the continued dominance of the ccp thank you very much great thank you dean um it sounds like we're in violent agreement which you might think would mean it's going to be the uh easy session but i i we've gotten more than a dozen questions while people were talking so let me let me start working through the list and the first one might be for you commissioner carr what's the reaction been to your proposals what do what do people say i mean are there obstacles are there people who are reluctant tell us what the reaction has been please well pieces of this idea i uh included back in 2019 when the commission was looking for further comment on removing what we call subsidized that's a shorthand where you subsidize huawei zte gear meaning subsidized by federal dollars when we were looking at that i said let's include in there seeking comment on uh getting this gear out regardless of where the source of funding is there's been some record developed on that uh and we'll see where it goes you know traditionally i think people have viewed the equipment authorization process at the fcc as a sort of fairly technical process right sort of what spectrum does this work at what power levels does it work at but i think given the fact that you know we've used our universal service dollars authority to go at huawei and zte so far i think it makes perfect sense to look at updating our approach to the equipment authorization process and at least in these unique circumstances inserting there um you know carrying through the usf decisions into our oet process and then also adding to it this check for uh forced labor so i think it would require the fcc as a full commission to seek comment on this um have a robust debate and then move forward but but i obviously think you know we should be heading in this direction great thank you uh let me ask a question to the whole group which isn't in the last week or two we've seen china retaliate by calling out companies that have taken actions against them by sanctioning individuals i think all of us were probably a little disappointed that we weren't sanctioned but in the in the face of this chinese pushback um how would you respond what would you what would you do back to the chinese commissioner i don't know if you want to start or we can start with your dean but the chinese have clearly decided we know the names of the companies uh calls for boycotts on their social media uh sanctioning of think tanks and private citizens in europe and the u.s what would you do back um since uh my commission my fellow commissioners were sanctioned over the weekend um maybe i should comment um it appears that uh our strategy has been working uh on two fronts one calling them out uh public education uh and showing that this is a bipartisan concern for the united states and american people not only that the chinese technology surveillance techniques have been threatening the international norms democratic systems and also it is creating a sovereignty concern they are right here using that very technology to threaten harass uh american citizens and and and posing creating the uh the anxiety uh and fearfulness uh here at home among our fellow citizens so my commit to uh my two commissioners uh chairwoman um uh gail manchin and uh weiss chair tony perkins were sanctioned over the weekend uh and i can tell that uh even though we are international religious freedom commission we've been focused on this issue because this this particular techniques have been used by the chinese authority and also china's allies our friends supporters for religious and human rights uh abuses religious persecution human rights abuses so we hold hearing we've been writing speaking on these issues so apparently we got their attention and also this is this is a sign of desperation in chinese attempt to try to change the narrative try to turn this into what about is them trying to call the united states or objective professionals who have training and knowledge on this as liars so when you have nothing to say when you're cornered uh this is what they do what what you do uh bring up uh play the waterbottism game and and uh and and and calling others liars so i this is this is what is happening in my mind so what we need to do is uh exactly what the biden administration is doing push back with uh with our partners and allies this is end of the day is a global concern in the past during the trump era chinese successfully promoted anything against china's technology as part of trump's uh china policy but this has become bipartisan issue now uh secretary blinken was right in in saying in his confirmation hearing that he wants to focus on two things forced labor and stop our technology going out to china to either wittingly unwittingly facilitate the ongoing ongoing genocidal campaign even though those things have been already in the works i was pleased on my personal capacity and official capacity that the biden administration is prioritizing these issues rightfully so yeah i'll simply you know pick pick up there and add you know there's there's nothing that uh that a communist communist likes less uh than hearing the truth spoken freely uh so i think it's a great sign that there is you know bipartisan um agreement here uh including through the biden administration on you know the atrocities in the the genocide that that we're seeing in xinjiang i think it's incumbent on all of us look for decades we've always said uh never again when it comes to this type of activities that we're now seeing uh in xinjiang and yet uh here we are again and so i think we need to you know all of us speak up i think we may make sure companies that are sourcing materials uh from that region uh need to be held to a higher bar i think that's what the rubio bill would do i think that's why we need to track that at the fcc and obviously i think i think nuri brings um a lot of um an authoritative voice here he hasn't shared his his personal story i think people that know his background or have read his bio can understand the you know the the very sort of um valuable personal perspective that he brings to these issues thank you um i think that uh several to build off of both the previous uh statement first off um i think that the idea of the democracy summit that uh president biden has fled offers an excellent opportunity for like-minded countries to signal beijing that its behavior is has gotten our attention and is something that is not going to simply pass by whether it is prohibiting slave labor produced items whether uh from being sold whether it is uh demanding more transparency with regards to the treatment of uyghurs tibetans other dissidents in china a uh a group of nations enunciating this will be absolutely more powerful than just the united states saying that alone and so i certainly hope that this would be one of the issues that would be on that agenda um one of the things that uh we should keep in mind is that chinese companies have been able to list on the american stock exchanges with not even all of the financial disclosures typically required of american companies under sarbanes-ox uh this was an uh this was an agreement reached quietly between the united states and china around 2014 or 2015. if i remember correctly clearly that should be revoked and one of the things that probably should be required certainly of chinese companies but perhaps more broadly is certification that you are not knowingly certainly engaging in the purchase and use of forced labor products um i do want to point out one source of concern with these sanctions with these uh various uh declarations by the china we assume that really this is the chinese would do this and so if you do not go to china then you know members of the us commission on international religious freedom don't go to china then they are going to be safe but keep in mind that china has through its belt and road initiative built ties to an enormous number of countries and just as canada was uh was willing to step in and detain moan joe the cafo for huawei on american charges there is now the distinct possibility that americans uh commissioners government officials or even private officials when they are transiting some third country that is a heavy recipient of chinese funding and keep in mind this isn't just central asia this is africa this is the middle east this is central and south america this is even europe could potentially suddenly find themselves being detained to be handed over to chinese authorities because china just provided a multi-billion dollar telecommunications network or pipeline network or bill deport so china has the real ability with these sanctions with these warrants to reach out and touch americans on a scale that we have not seen before uh back during the cold war and certainly during the post poll so a number of questions that we've gotten and we continue to get questions uh revolve around the issue of how do we work with other countries how do we build coalitions how do we perhaps come up with common standards for the use of telecommunications equipment how do we work to close loopholes and you know one of the questions even when to say if a device is in transit from china to the u.s you know how do we ensure that it isn't tampered with on route so i think the focus for many of the people in the audience has been what's the role with other countries where do we where do we do uh find ways to cooperate with them and moving ahead so i i don't know who wants to start commissioner do you want to start on you know if a couple years ago when we you know started our efforts at the fcc and otherwise the state department um you know was very active in the u.s they engaged in this approach called the clean networks approach and we engage a lot particularly counterparts in europe and at first people even some people inside the u.s said that you know america is going in alone we're pitching everyone on banning huawei but no one is following suit but the state department and the fcc uh leadership at the time kept at it and lo and behold um you know the tide turned and now you see europe in countries there taking a much tougher approach aligning themselves with the u.s so i think the state department efforts with the clean networks approach um has been successful we need to keep keep engaging as you said you know this is a belt and road initiative i've been in um uh you know in africa myself i've been um you know a couple hour drive down a bumpy road outside of any uh major town you get these small little communities and there's you know huawei banners all over the place and so they're playing a very long game um with respect to this belt and road initiative in huawei zte is is the digital component of that i think that's why also at the fcc we got to go and close this loophole because we didn't go around the world telling people this clean network initiative you know keep huawei and zte zte gear out provided that you know your country's federal dollars aren't involved we did the right thing which you got to get this stuff out and that's why we need to hold ourselves now to that exact same standard moving forward and close this loophole if i may uh james this is um this is an interesting question yeah we're seeing some positive development uh multilateral in nature but we have not heard from the tech companies yet i think part of the effort should be taking this matter from the situation room to the boardroom why why the technology firms are still either feigning ignorance or not doing anything uh and and we do know it very well that uh even u.s government uh imposes various measures uh adding them to the entity list and provide protection as uh as the excellent point that dean was making to protect our government officials travel to some countries uh if the silicon valley does not step up to the plate the chinese can manipulate they can't change the names they can use their own ways to bypass sanctions uh or any measures that our government or our partners take so this has to be uh this has to be tackled as part of the the governmental effort in the company level uh the engineers for example have a huge role to play if the engineers resist uh especially in our in our tech firms then the the the upper manage management will start paying attention because those engineers those talent are not replaceable they're not easily replaceable they're not someone they can train overnight or with the one or two year extensive training so so this has to be societal governmental and and and and business uh collaborated effort this this is this is you know it's easy for me to say it and people may think oh this guy happened to be weaker he can just uh exaggerate as much as he wants but i i'm saying it as a human from the human perspective this is a serious matter that everyone should be screaming from the rooftop exactly right there i think you know corporate america has been uh far too silent for far too long on this issue um silence as far as i can tell principally because you know they want to maintain access to a market of a billion plus people there's a new organization representing a lot of these silicon valleys launching in dc i think right now called the self-stylized as the chamber of progress i think a great first step for that type of organization would be to speak out against the the uyghur genocide and take a tough stance on on forced labor uh forgive me if i'm rather pessimistic about big tech um i mean this is the big tech whose engineers certainly were willing to speak up at google for example and say we do not want to participate in american government activities like project maven but for the longest time has been no qualms whatsoever about helping china develop its own search engines under project dragonfly which would conveniently censor an awful lot of of results if the chinese government didn't particularly like them so um i i am not holding my breath for big tech to to speak up that being said i do think that with the trade war between the united states and china and a number of companies and countries more broadly looking to reset supply chains uh really a bifurcated supply chain now one going to the united states one going to china or in more in many cases i suspect one going to china won't go into the rest of the world there is an opportunity to extend the clean network concept because if you're going to start from expression you're going to build new supply facilities in indonesia or mexico then you can try to at least from the get-go for these facilities then have chain of custody have monitoring uh sort of of where are items coming from and where are they going to uh to basically try and at least have some transparency and insight into your workforce um it's not perfect obviously there's always an opportunity to to get in and mess with the system but i do think that the irony is that this trade war that has done some resetting of global uh trade directions coupled with covert of course um does offer a potential opportunity moving forward we're down to about the last 10 minutes or so and have a ton of questions let me uh break them into two categories that might be easier to respond to the first set of questions is building on the proposals that commissioner carr made what are the next steps for the u.s both internationally on clean networks domestically on the work in improving closing the loopholes as you put it what is the next set of things the u.s needs to do to improve the security of its telecommunications networks commissioner i don't know if you want to that's sort of a softball for you i hope i don't know if you want to pick it up we're proceeding on a couple of fronts back in 2018 when i i put this idea out there that we see comment on rip and replace that's taking the huawei zte uh other insecure gear out of the network we're now doing that in fact congress just funded those efforts we denied the application of china mobile which came up earlier to enter the u.s market and at the time i called for the fcc to do a top-to-bottom review of every carrier that has received authority in the past to connect to the u.s network and we are now engaging in that process of looking at whether we should revoke those authorizations as dean mentioned earlier we've seen that evidence evidence in our record for instance of a carrier with ties to communist china that was took traffic data that was originating in uh california destined for washington dc and through guangzhou china in the california guangzhou washington dc route is probably not the most efficient way that you would direct traffic uh you know matter so we're engaging in all that and i think you know these next two steps in terms of carrying through our decisions to all equipment regardless of funding and looking at the the forced labor issues for our oet are going to be two of the important steps going forward the other one i'll add out there is you know we're engaged in this process looking at what's called o-ran which is um sort of virtualized software-defined networks we think that's an opportunity for a lot of us-based companies to compete where previously you had to be a you know multi-billion dollar entity like huawei or zte to enter the the sort of equipment space in in the 5g market right yeah and i noticed that there's a number of chinese companies that are interested in oran when you talk to some of them uh they'll say well they're not they're not eager to see huawei become a monopoly either just for price reasons so it's a the move in technology is really interesting the second set of questions revolves around china's own plans we got a question on how does what we're talking about fit in with the five-year plan we've brought up the belt and road initiative many times we've gotten several questions on that where do you see and this might be a good place for dean and nuri to start what's the long term here i mean what are the chinese thinking what do we need to do to build on commissioner cars proposals but what's the planning behind all this so let me take a first quick cut of this made in china 2025 laid out 10 key technology areas that china openly said we do not want to depend on the rest of these technologies uh it included microchip manufacturing but it also included a lot of fairly what we would consider anodyne technology railway technology agricultural machinery why this matters is because this plan was published in 2015 anyone who has worked in bureaucracy knows something largely like this doesn't just spring up overnight so the chinese were already thinking about how to essentially recreate mercantilists where they sell to the rest of the world but they don't buy from the rest of the world other than perhaps certain raw materials beginning in 2013 or 2014 this was not about donald trump this was not about the current trade war this is something the chinese started thinking about at this point over eight years going forward we see something called china standards 2035. in a nutshell china wants to help write standards for a variety of products that will have global impact probably so that chinese goods cannot be kept out of markets but also in the co in the area of things like information protection that you wind up with lower standards so that china can more easily break in all of this is to say the chinese have a very long-term plan it isn't one year or two years this is going forward at least out to 2035 and it is about again securing information dominance while also paying attention to key industrial technologies so that china can basically insulate itself from foreign economic pressure supply chain pressures but do the same impose pressures influence supply chain on other parts nuri do you want to add to that i'm good let's go to the next question okay we have a couple more um some people are asking is bifurcation of the global economy then inevitable is it going to be two camps is is decoupping to coupling gradual how fast will it be so what are your views on bifurcation the inevitability of it is is a hard one because this is driven and a good measure by chinese behavior and that makes it hard to see how we get out of this but maybe you could talk about your views on decoupling and bifurcation the no you're right uh when when people uh criticizing uh the trump administration china policy they forgot that in early on trump administration actually wanted to work with the chinese their behavior uh they their conducts their influence operations around the world even at home resulted in that response so i think the the coupling is inevitable because it's not only illegal it's unethical for the american consumers continue to export tainted products from china there have been a report that we as a country rely on china for more than 80 critical products that includes ppes being exported to the united states and made through forced labor so the united states has to take a hard look at the supply chain issues to either to relocate it uh to somewhere else uh another country that can be uh that can be following international labor standards uh or bring it back home uh so so so it's inevitable uh and also um because of the ongoing uh discussion uh media scrutiny uh we're seeing a growing concern in the united states congress so i reasonably anticipate that united states government particularly congress will put in place additional legal tools measures or resources as we speak at the cbp there about 15 government officials investigate the potentially tainted products considering the amount of product coming to the united states and and that little team is is untenable and also based on uh csis report done by amy lair in 2019 2020 last year during the period of april 2019 through april 22 at 20. the export volume from xinjiang to the united states increased nearly 250 percent during the same period the export volume from xinjiang to italy increased by nearly 200 percent that can give you a kind of idea of how serious this problem is so this is not something that we can ignore anymore great dean do you want to add anything the numbers are astounding 250 percent it was interesting you know wall street journal op-ed over the weekend uh i met pottinger uh who covered these issues in the white house the last couple of years he talked there about you know targeted decoupling as opposed to wholesale decoupling as being you know something not only on the table but something that we have to pursue uh particularly in the tech sector yeah it turns out to be really complicated we've done a lot of work at css on semiconductors and i think one of the things that's changed is that you know companies now see political risk and they're seeking to shield themselves by diversifying out of china the the issue is is that fast enough for the problems we face let me see uh since we're at the witching hour um if any of you would like to make any final remarks on this topic it's we covered a lot of ground it's a big subject but i can tell from the volume of questions holy cow we've got even more while i was talking i can tell from the volume of questions that this was a timely discussion uh final remarks from anyone you know from my from my perspective at the fcc i think you know the steps that that have been taken frank on a bipartisan basis um the last couple of years are the right ones and we need to build on it uh from there i mean the the threats posed by communist china or communist regimes in general i think is one that most people are most familiar with cracking open you know dusty foreign policy magazines and reading about and i think particularly over the last year and a half or so that's changed it's now a kitchen table uh conversation for so many americans for a variety of reasons um and i think it's one that we need to continue to pursue and again maintaining our focus on you know the oppressive uh communist party itself you know while holding up uh the people of china the uyghurs as as people that we are advocating for defending and supporting and making sure that we're always careful with our words to draw that important distinction i'd like to add that on a genocide question um please understand that this is uh this it was a bipartisan uh decision um made by secretary pompeo endorsed by anthony blinken so so talking more about it trying to open it trying to make it a subject for law review articles would only help the ccp to continue its genocidal campaign it only helps them to buy more time it only helps the good-faced conversation being injected into the official propaganda so be very very careful when you criticize the us government for that determination only in our history since the united states ratified the geneva convention 1988 similar decision has been made only five times number six to uighur genocide and the united states government does not and cannot just make casually designate any country for committing genocide we're talking about world's second largest economy uh it's it's it's not a matter of joke so those of those people who are trying to engage in good faith quote unquote conversation as the economist magazine did be careful uh your good faith conversation you disagreement with with the united states government may be misused by the by beijing for propaganda campaign yeah one of the points i make to european and asian audiences is uh this is an issue on which americans are united not only in the congress but if you look at the public opinion polls among the population at large so the example i usually use is the chips act uh 94 to 6. when was the last time you saw something like that um so we are uh moving towards the unified position on china we're developing the tools to deal with it commissioner carr thank you for your work and moving this forward uh we've got a lot more to do and so let me thank our panelists commissioner brendan carr dean chung and nuri turkell we'll have the recorded version of this up available on the csis website i apologize to the many people whose questions i was unable to get to but thank you all for listening in thank you to the panelists and talk to you soon

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 2,147

Rating: 4.609756 out of 5

Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, politics, FCC, China, Huawei, 5G, Uyghur, telecom, commissioner

Id: 49I_2toMLFg

Length: 60min 8sec (3608 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021