US fears Huawei will pass information to Chinese govt: Pompeo

Press Trust of India  |  Washington 

The is opposing as it fears the State-controlled telecom giant will pass on information to the of which it is an "instrument" and deeply connected with, US of State has said.

Earlier in the week, US said there was a possibility of including the issue in the ongoing trade negotiations with

"Huawei is an instrument of the They are deeply connected," Pompeo told Fox Business in an interview on Wednesday.

Responding to a question on the US efforts to oppose Huawei globally, Pompeo said it was something that was hard for Americans to understand.

The US cooperate with the government, they comply with its laws, but no directs an American private company, that is very different in China, he noted.

"They just simply operate under a different set of rules. That's the most fundamental thing I think people need to try and get their head around.

"If it's the case that the wanted to get information from technology that was in the possession of Huawei, it is almost certainly the case that Huawei would provide that to them," Pompeo said.

He said a "deep connectivity" exists inside the way China's political economy operates which is very different from the US.

"That's the threat that Trump sees from Huawei," he said, asserting that the US is telling the same to other countries.

"They are becoming educated as well. They are learning. It's not a critique; we were slow to see it as well. It's important that we continue to share information. There'll be places where they have better information than we do, and we ought to share the information about those risks," he said.

"We are interdependent in terms of our with them. We have Western-based, rules-ordered, privacy-focused systems that we jointly engage in. That's what technology needs to look like in the next 10, 20, 30 years as well. We need Western values embedded in these systems," Pompeo said.

It would be an important topic of discussion when Pompeo travels to later this week.

"The is going to reiterate that the security of our allies' has a direct bearing on our mutual national security, something we're concerned about not only for American national security but for our allies and partners," a senior State Department told reporters during a conference call.

"I think we've made clear that if the risk of sharing information exceeds the threshold for the United States, we may be forced to limit information sharing, and that's what we continue to discuss and highlight for our allies, including Germany, about vulnerabilities there," the said.

"This may be something that comes up as well with the Swiss, not only with the government but also with business people as well, who have insights or questions on that," the said.

Huawei has filed a lawsuit against the challenging the decision of the to limits on purchases of its equipment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Thu, May 30 2019. 07:40 IST