HYDERABAD: Harold Furchtgott-Roth, former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is the regulatory body for telecommunications in the United States of America, on Wednesday said the presence of Chinese smartphones in India after the introduction of 5G network would pose as an “additional security risk” to the nation.
While interacting with reporters at a meeting organised by the US Consulate, Furchtgott-Roth said, “It (presence of Chinese smartphones) creates an additional security risk (after the introduction of 5G). I think Huawei is less careful about security than other equipment manufacturers, and that leads to opportunities for third-party actors to engage in bad activities, whether it is espionage or sabotage.”
It is important to note that the US is currently embroiled in a trade war with China, and its president Donald Trump has put Huawei on a trade blacklist since May. The source of the controversy is the belief that Huawei acts on behalf of the Chinese government, thus undermining national security and posing a cybersecurity risk.
Furchtgott-Roth, who is currently director of the think tank Centre for the Economics of the Internet in Hudson Institute, also explained how the 5G network would increase the scope of cyberattacks — espionage and sabotage — not just in India, but everywhere.“In terms of espionage, there would be massively more data than that of the present 4G network. This would be a much bigger opportunity target for collecting information for espionage purposes,” Furchtgott-Roth warned.