Jonathan Pelson - Wireless Wars: Chinas Dangerous Domination of 5G and How Were Fighting Back

Contents

Praise for Wireless Wars

Wireless Wars captures the totality of the decades-long commercial and government effort by the CCP to dominate telecommunications infrastructure and operations across the entire globe. By avoiding technical jargon and highlighting key concepts through pithy summaries of hundreds of insider interviews, Wireless Wars translates a complex subject into a clear, articulable framework on how we got into this predicament and how we can get out of it. Jon Pelsons thirty-plus years of in-depth experience within the US telecommunications manufacturing and operations sector fused with well-researched and meticulously documented source material on Huawei, ZTE, and other PRC telecommunications companies makes for an extremely compelling must-read for industry experts, intelligence professionals, policy makers, and concerned citizens interested in protecting our nation.

William Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence Center

Wireless Wars shines a bright light on the ongoing battle for national supremacy and global security in cyberspace, with China and the United States being the primary actors, and 5G networks providing the latest battleground. Jon Pelson has an insiders knowledge of this territory, and his book has important implications not only for policy makers, defense leaders, and technology investors, but for interested citizens, as well.

Geoffrey A. Moore, international bestselling author of Crossing the Chasm

In Wireless Wars, Jon Pelson accurately depicts the transfer, both consciously and unconsciously, of US wireless equipment manufacturing to China. Having been at some of those meetings he depicts in the late 1990s and early 2000s and scratching my head, asking, Whats really going on here?, he fills in a lot of blanks that now, in retrospect, make sense. He touches on some important points about how seemingly benign behaviors, such as increased standards participation, global manufacturing, and investment policy, have turned out to have sinister motivations and results. As he notes, this is not just about getting cheaper network infrastructure. This is about what happens when a hostile government subsidizes vendors to take over a market, force the bankruptcy or mergers of vendors who played by the rules and had millions of dollars of R&D stolen, and the resulting national security threats of having untrusted vendors subject to government control with their equipment sitting in some of our most sensitive networks.

Eric Burger, former chief technology officer of the Federal Communications Commission and professor at Georgetown University

Wireless Wars chronicles how America squandered a virtually insurmountable technological lead in the telecommunications equipment market, allowing China to gain preeminence. It makes a compelling argument on the necessity of the US regaining leadership in this vital sector. More important, it charts a path for achieving that goal. A must-read for anyone interested in 5G, innovation, and national competitiveness.

Joseph B. Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and cofounder of Monitor Group

Chinas rulers are waging a war for global dominance on many frontsthe technological battlefield prominent among them. In Wireless Wars, Jonathan Pelson brings clarity to how we got here, how high the stakes are, and how we can win.

Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Wireless Wars copyright 2021 by Jonathan Pelson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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First E-Book Edition: September 2021

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021020938

ISBN 978-1-953295-61-3 (trade cloth)

ISBN 978-1-953295-95-8 (electronic)

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To my father, who taught me how to write.

CONTENTS

W hen the COVID-19 virus first emerged in December of 2019, the Chinese government sprang into action, deploying a suite of world-class technology to keep people safe and prevent the spread of the disease. Within weeks of the first cases, mobile smartphone applications had been created and pushed out to protect the countrys 1.4 billion people, using Chinas superior wireless data networks integrated with publicly deployed body-temperature sensors, facial-recognition devices, and building-security controls. tied together using artificial intelligence technology that made sense of the massive flood of information and enabled authorities to impose restrictions on end users while notifying police of lapses in citizens behavior.

These mobile-based controls tracked peoples locations by using the GPS feature of their phones to aid in contact tracing and determine when they were in close proximity to others who were at high risk of infection. used to generate health scores for each person and to block citizens from entering buildings or leaving their own homes if they scored too low.

It was a masterful use of mobile technology to serve the public good, though some observers were puzzled at how quickly the country was able to pull together such a comprehensive suite of monitoring and tracking applications. In fact, it appears that China had been forced to make public the full capabilities of the technology-driven surveillance state that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had spent the past several years putting in place: deploying a combination of mobile technology, public sensors, and artificial intelligence to observe and control everything its citizens said, did, or bought, even who they met and communicated with. The result, in this case, was an abrupt reduction in the spread of the disease. , the city at ground zero of the deadly pandemic, escaped the worst consequences felt by the rest of the world.

Globally, a shortage of personal protective equipment exacerbated the crisis, and medical centers around the world discovered that many of their supplies came exclusively from Chinese factories, and they were arriving with serious quality problemsor not at all. China, not interested in experiencing its own internal shortages, or simply flexing its muscle over trade rivals, wasnt shipping on its contracted agreements.

, in its investigation of the WHO, found that China had delayed notifying global health authorities of the details of the disease for weeks, hastening the spread of the illness from Europe to North America and then to the rest of the world.