Opinion

Former UK surveillance head says calls to freeze Chinese companies out of 5G telecoms in Western countries are ‘short on technical understanding’

Britain’s former surveillance chief has characterised the “chorus of voices” calling for a blanket ban on Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies from telecommunication networks in Western countries amid perceived cyber threats as being “short on technical understanding” of cybersecurity and the complexities of 5G networks.

While the Government Communications Headquarters’ National Cyber Security Centre “has been blunt about Huawei’s shortcomings in security engineering and in its general attitude to cybersecurity,” it has “never found evidence of malicious Chinese state cyber activity through Huawei,” Robert Hannigan, who was director of GCHQ from 2014 to 2017, wrote in the Financial Times on Tuesday.