Trump's National Security Team Wants to Stop Chinese Spying with 5G Network

The President's national security team is looking at options to counter the threat of China spying on U.S. phone calls.

• By Sydny Shepard
• Jan 31, 2018

President Donald Trump's national security team is considering options to decrease the threat of China spying on U.S. phone calls that include the government building a super-fast 5G wireless network, according to a senior administration official.

Reuters reported that the senior official confirmed the gist of an Axios.com report that said the 5G network option was being debated at a low level in the administration and was six to eight months away from being considered by the president himself.

The 5G network concept is aimed at addressing what officials see as China's threat to U.S. cybersecurity and economic security.

The Trump administration has created harsher lines on policies initiated by former-president Barak Obama. Just last month AT&T was forced to scrap a plan to offer its customers handsets built by China's Huawei after some members of Congress lobbied against the idea with federal regulators. In 2012, Huawei and ZTE Corp were the subject of a U.S. investigation into whether their equipment provided an opportunity for foreign espionage.

“We want to build a network so the Chinese can’t listen to your calls,” the senior official told Reuters. “We have to have a secure network that doesn’t allow bad actors to get in. We also have to ensure the Chinese don’t take over the market and put every non-5G network out of business.”

Major wireless carriers have spent billions of dollars buying spectrum to launch 5G networks, and it is unclear if the U.S. government would have enough spectrum to build its own 5G network.

Furthermore, Accenture has estimated that wireless operators will invest as much as $275 billion in the United States over seven years as they build out 5G.