Donald Trump and the Huawei Affair: A Dangerous Bet?

The president’s unilateral decision to ban the Chinese giant in America and to order Google to end its relationship with the firm will have effects in the worldwide digital field, including in Europe.

Even wishful thinking is useless: technology remains a convenient pretext for closing off the world. In 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised to tear down “a new information curtain,” referencing China’s vast system of online censorship. Nine years later, it is neither a question of discourse nor censorship, but of a presidential decree and a technological war. By deciding to ban the Chinese giant Huawei from America and intimating to Google that it ought to end its relationship with the Shenzhen firm, Donald Trump has bestowed upon the United States vast powers over the global technological value chains.

Since they are widespread, the lessons from this escalation between Washington and Beijing should be an incentive to evaluate the range of the White House’s actions. The Huawei affair simultaneously illustrates America’s technological withdrawal, which is in sharp contrast to the United States’ traditional doctrine regarding digital matters, and Washington’s fear of losing its technological superiority over Beijing. For two decades indeed, Washington has made the control of data the priority axis of its economic strategy, which is centered around its tech giants, and of its security strategy. These two elements worked together in a traditional open-door policy with the goal of opening markets and maintaining American preeminence. The policy which symbolized Barack Obama’s administration is now contested by Trump.

When it comes down to it, the Huawei affair is a typical case of “militarizing interdependence,” a method of weakening one’s adversary by way of interdependent economic links between two countries. In the present case, Chinese-American technological interdependence has been largely underestimated by both sides. Proof of this underestimation is the spotlight now on the semiconductor industry – one of the most globalized – which is consequently becoming a hostage of bilateral tensions, at the risk of destabilizing supply chains.

A few years ago, the American intelligence community was alarmed by Huawei’s vague hopes of building submarine cables, fearing that the United States would lose its preeminence in signals intelligence. Via the landing points and the interconnection points of cables – themselves a little known mechanical stake in the ongoing technological battle – governments can carry out espionage operations, hacking and intimidation. Some take advantage of the opportunity. America’s fear of losing a competitive advantage as far as surveillance is concerned has been bundled into a larger trade war between Washington and Beijing. By putting Huawei under heavy pressure, the Trump administration is looking for other opportunities to “militarize the interdependence” between the two countries. The debate from here on out will center on the extent to which such pressure is exercised. By giving Huawei three months to continue using certain Google services, the White House is putting a noose around the Chinese giant, which it intends to tighten or loosen as it pleases.

As a corollary to this more coercive diplomacy, the Chinese-American tension around Huawei is a fast-track illustration of the logic of fragmentation that has been observed in the digital domain for almost a decade. In a certain way, we are witnessing the end of the era of global tech, characterized by the erasing of borders and the unprecedented power of technological actors beyond national boundaries. Features of the global tech era are being replaced by the logic of blocs, a strong rejection of multilateralism and exacerbated protectionism.

Let’s not underestimate another parameter: if the digital confrontation between China and the United States is about technological leadership in the 21st century, its main stage for the moment is Europe. Most of Huawei’s impressive growth in 2018 came from the Old Continent. Since 2013, Europe has also been Huawei’s largest market in the world after China – a sign of the first successes of a qualitative technological approach that is a top priority of Beijing authorities. On the American side, it is just as necessary to counter China’s progress toward uninhibited power as it is to keep Europe in the United States’ digital lap. Trump’s ambition is to carry out a full economic decoupling of the West and China – not only in regard to 5G, but across the entire digital field. Finally, on the European side, Trump’s edict runs the risk of setting a precedent: Europe will realize that the very future of its industrial jewels depends on the American president’s mood. The president, therefore, is approaching the limit of what he can do – while paradoxically giving Europeans the opportunity to confront their own vulnerabilities.