From Huawei to hysteria: the politicisation of 5G

The UK’s 5G net­work is not yet in place, but that hasn’t stopped the tech­nol­o­gy dom­i­nat­ing the polit­i­cal news head­lines twice this year, albeit for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

The first media scream came in April, when online con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries link­ing the 5G net­work to coro­n­avirus spilled over into the real world. Base sta­tions were van­dalised and set alight, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions engi­neers suf­fered phys­i­cal and ver­bal abuse, and cab­i­net sec­re­tary Michael Gove was forced to warn against the spread of this “dan­ger­ous non­sense”.

Then in July, Boris Johnson’s gov­ern­ment announced an unex­pect­ed ban on buy­ing new Huawei 5G equip­ment from the end of the year and stat­ed that any exist­ing kit from the Chi­nese tele­com giant would need to be removed from UK telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works by 2027.

Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Unit­ed States, the gov­ern­ment implied there was a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty from con­tin­u­ing to work with Huawei, though notably not an imme­di­ate secu­ri­ty threat, giv­en the time­line.

Why 5G networks got politicised

Gov­ern­ments have always par­tic­i­pat­ed in tech stan­dard ini­tia­tives around com­mu­ni­ca­tion infra­struc­ture. “The fact they’re involved in 5G is noth­ing new,” says Dr Robin Mansell, pro­fes­sor of new media and the inter­net at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence. “But that doesn’t explain the politi­ci­sa­tion of it.”

She believes the deci­sion to ban Huawei equip­ment was less about a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty and more to do with the wider geopo­lit­i­cal and trade issues between Amer­i­ca and Chi­na, tied into the enor­mous eco­nom­ic poten­tial of 5G. “Whether you can snoop using these tech­nolo­gies is the least of the trans­for­ma­tion that is tak­ing place,” says Mansell.

As The New York Times com­ment­ed in April, 5G has an “an out­size polit­i­cal impor­tance” because the tech­nol­o­gy could be rev­o­lu­tion­ary, pro­vid­ing a com­pet­i­tive edge for coun­tries with­in the glob­al econ­o­my, as ultra­fast wire­less net­work speed and laten­cy (data trans­fer­ence) enables all man­ner of vir­tu­alised inno­va­tion.

Accord­ing to Dr Mis­cha Dohler, pro­fes­sor of wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, who spe­cialis­es in 5G net­works, gov­ern­ments are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in this new enhanced lev­el of con­nec­tiv­i­ty and its abil­i­ty to pro­vide ser­vices on demand, as research sug­gests it could bring hap­pi­ness as well as pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to a pop­u­la­tion.

The diplo­mat­ic fire­works… high­light great pow­er rival­ries that are cur­rent­ly being fought in cyber­space

He says: “Look­ing back over the past 20 to 40 years, we’re able to build fair­ly reli­able sta­tis­tics on the direct cor­re­la­tion between the degree of con­nec­tiv­i­ty and hap­pi­ness as well as GDP.”

Thanks to Huawei equip­ment, Chi­na is already well ahead with its own 5G roll­out. By the end of the year, 300 of its largest cities will have 5G cov­er­age, and that’s when the inno­va­tion and result­ing eco­nom­ic growth could real­ly kick in.

So, it’s per­haps no sur­prise that an increas­ing­ly pro­tec­tion­ist Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tion want­ed to clip China’s wings and get in on the act them­selves. “The diplo­mat­ic fire­works… high­light great pow­er rival­ries that are cur­rent­ly being fought in cyber­space,” says a recent report titled Net­work and Geopol­i­tics, from cyber-intel­li­gence experts Oxford Infor­ma­tion Labs.

How the Huawei fallout impacted 5G rollout

For the Unit­ed States, and the coun­tries that fol­lowed in its wake includ­ing the UK and Aus­tralia, the big risk with remov­ing Huawei equip­ment from their net­works, aside from being cost­ly and time con­sum­ing, is it stunts their own 5G roll­outs.

For Mansell at the LSE, it’s less about how fast a country’s 5G roll­out hap­pens but “who moves slight­ly more quick­ly than oth­ers”. She says: “The US gov­ern­ment view has been ‘let’s Balka­nise every­thing and devel­op our own 5G stan­dards… we’ll catch up’. But I would be extreme­ly dubi­ous about that.”

Espe­cial­ly giv­en that Chi­na will be encoun­ter­ing no such delays. “Chi­na is poised to assume first-mover advan­tage in 5G tech­nol­o­gy,” says the Oxford Infor­ma­tion Labs report. This could help Chi­na quick­ly estab­lish its own inde­pen­dence in terms of knowl­edge, and the hard­ware and soft­ware they need to build out in oth­er parts of the world, be that in Asia, Africa or South Amer­i­ca.

This could be very suc­cess­ful for them, but also lead to a divid­ed, less-col­lab­o­ra­tive cyber­space, a “splin­ter­net”. The report goes on to warn it could lead to “walled gar­dens of devices and ser­vices, cap­ture of mar­kets, fur­ther reduc­tion in mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion and the emer­gence of a ver­ti­cal, Chi­nese 5G tech monop­oly”. Which, of course, pos­es a stark eco­nom­ic dis­ad­van­tage to coun­tries left behind, such as the UK, but also a new kind of secu­ri­ty risk as coun­tries pur­sue their own dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty.

Ger­many has a more-mea­sured approach to Huawei, in part because Deutsche Telekom uses a lot of their tech­nol­o­gy already, but a deci­sion on their future rela­tion­ship with the Chi­nese tele­com is expect­ed this autumn. “The pres­sure on them is enor­mous,” says Mansell.

How governments can help 5G networks in the future

Instead of wor­ry­ing about Huawei, Dohler from King’s Col­lege Lon­don advo­cates shift­ing the focus towards oth­er ways the UK gov­ern­ment can help facil­i­tate 5G net­works, such as by sub­si­dis­ing dark fibre roll­out, a vital com­po­nent in 5G con­nec­tiv­i­ty. He says: “In the UK, one metre of road costs £100,000, but a metre of dark fibre costs 50p. You could lay dark fibre along any road, adding 0.001 per cent of bud­get and actu­al­ly help rolling out a very strong fibre struc­ture, which is very expen­sive for the oper­a­tor.”

Dohler imag­ines Chi­na has such a frame­work already in place, while in India the gov­ern­ment is rolling out 100,000km of dark fibre every day. “They don’t dig tun­nels, they do it over roads, or through trees. But it serves a pur­pose; they are con­nect­ing their vil­lages,” he says.

Also, the UK gov­ern­ment could help with reduc­ing the admin­is­tra­tion for oper­a­tors around secur­ing base sta­tions. “Why not have a nation­al auc­tion frame­work? That would put the UK ahead of the game glob­al­ly very quick­ly,” says Dohler.

Help­ing oper­a­tors deal with the real-world con­se­quences of online con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries relat­ing to 5G is anoth­er task for gov­ern­ments all over the world, espe­cial­ly in the UK, Amer­i­ca and Aus­tralia, though notably not in Chi­na. Dohler adds: “Chi­na has a gov­ern­men­tal nar­ra­tive that they real­ly sup­port 5G… none of my Chi­nese stu­dents talk about 5G being the end of the world.”

How can you tackle conspiracy theories?

Nonethe­less, it’s a seri­ous prob­lem in the West­ern world, with the FBI even labelling fringe con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as “domes­tic ter­ror­ism” last year. Dr Daniel Jol­ley, senior lec­tur­er in psy­chol­o­gy at Northum­bria Uni­ver­si­ty, whose research dur­ing lock­down proved a link between vio­lent behav­iour towards the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor, para­noia and a belief in 5G COVID-19 con­spir­a­cies.

Why does he think these ideas gain such trac­tion? “They offer sim­ple solu­tions for com­plex prob­lems. Ideas that 5G caus­es harm have been around for a few years, so dur­ing lock­down in the whirl­wind of ‘Is this real­ly hap­pen­ing?’ peo­ple quick­ly linked that to COVID-19,” he says.

Chi­na has a gov­ern­men­tal nar­ra­tive that they real­ly sup­port 5G… none of my Chi­nese stu­dents talk about 5G being the end of the world

The gov­ern­ment has tried to counter the con­spir­a­cies with facts and urged local coun­cils to send out infor­ma­tion pam­phlets to “quell quack the­o­ries about 5G” by cit­ing UK com­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tor Ofcom’s research, which debunks claims that 5G car­ries health risks.

But Jol­ley points out that while edu­cat­ing the pub­lic is impor­tant in reduc­ing belief in con­spir­a­cies, the more hard­line believ­ers don’t trust the gov­ern­ment any­way, so are unlike­ly to take their advice. Per­haps the answer, when it comes to quash­ing 5G con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and deal­ing with the wider glob­al roll­out of 5G, is to try and focus on more col­lab­o­ra­tive and less polit­i­cal­ly charged approach­es that draw on the exper­tise across acad­e­mia, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works, media, tech, intel­li­gence agen­cies and inde­pen­dent reg­u­la­tors. All this at the behest of gov­ern­ments, but not in their name.

---