Deep Dive: The Geopolitics of 5G

Last year, the United States Commerce Department amended its direct product rule to limit China’s Huawei Technologies’ access to advanced microprocessors – chipsets that are critical to virtually all of the company’s equipment and services. The US agency also denied Huawei a general license extension, further limiting the company’s access to American products and services. These actions were just part of the escalating confrontation between Washington and Beijing over 5th-Generation (5G) wireless networks. 

China is responding with threats to place Apple, Boeing, and other US firms on its own “unreliable entities list,” which would constrain their business in China and likely be followed by monopoly and cybersecurity investigations. Many business and political leaders in the United States, China, and elsewhere believe both nations are recklessly endangering the global telecommunications market and the broader geopolitical relationship. Certainly, each country has a lot to lose if relations worsen; so then, what justifies this 5G brinkmanship?

Put simply: This geopolitical competition over 5G will determine who shapes the fundamentals of the new economic order and who builds the technical infrastructure of modern governance.

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