søndag 11. oktober 2020

It will take more than attacks on Huawei to win the tech cold war

In the 1970s, the women’s movement had a slogan, “The personal is political”, to make the point that what went on in personal relationships between men and women also reflected wider imbalances of power. Today, an equivalent slogan might be “The technological is political” – and for much the same reason.

If you doubt that, ask Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, which currently finds itself on the receiving end of the new cold war between the US and China. Huawei is a huge and hitherto very successful company that designs, develops and sells telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics (mainly smartphones). By all accounts, it’s pretty good at what it does. Rather too good, it seems, for the government of the US and possibly the UK as well.