Huawei and 5G

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Richard Drax

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I am not an expert in this field, but as the technology catches up, the Government intend to reinject our technology into 5G. I assume that once the Chinese are in there, we will never get them out.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

That is the point. Each time, we are told that they will reduce, but, in fact, we get more and more addicted to them and are unable to change.

When the Government announced the figure of 35%, they made the point that the plan to exclude Huawei products from the core of the 5G infrastructure meant that we would solve the problem by restricting them only to the edge, as it was described. This position critically rests on the assumption that the core cannot be compromised from the edge. Most cyber experts whom I have spoken to know that this is an unsafe assumption, because they know that the whole 5G network can be attacked starting from the compromised edge, given the nature of change to the technological capability of the edge.

The edge components can be compromised. Indeed, there is some evidence that such attacks have already taken place on a limited scale elsewhere. For example, a hostile adversary might disable our 5G network by simply shutting down our antennas and/or routers at the edge by remotely activating the malware already buried inside many of those processors. Those embedded in the edge will have kill switches, which are currently nigh on impossible to detect and, therefore, to mitigate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is right. He also comes to a point that I will make shortly. My concern is that there are other logical reasons in play, which I want to talk about in a second.

[Richard Drax]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I will give way one last time. I am aware of Mr Paisley’s guidance.

[Richard Drax]

I am so grateful. This is my second intervention, and then I will sit down and shut up. On the list that my right hon. Friend just gave, one thing he did not mention was trade. As the UK leaves the EU, we desperately seek our friends and allies to make a good trade deal. As I understand it, the US is now thinking not to sign up to a trade deal if 5G is linked to any part of it.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

There is no question that the US Administration are very exercised by the UK’s decision to go ahead with 5G and Huawei. In fact, I cannot think of any other time when we have been so separated from most of our allies that we respect. The thing I cannot get is that even Vietnam, for God’s sake—a communist country next door to China—will not have Huawei in their systems.