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Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain. It’s long and I’ll link it and everything else relevant in the description, but the gist is he thinks foreign adversaries are creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in network infrastructure and that doing business with them augments the security risk, potentially catastrophically, so doing that kind of business is being prohibited.

It’s general and broad in language but is widely believed to be very specific in intent: To prevent the deployment of Huawei networking infrastructure in the U.S., including and especially the current 5G rollout.

Huawei, which US intelligence has accused of being a front-end for Chinese intelligence, a way to get backdoors into the carriers and bugs into the hands of the American people. Which U.S. law enforcement has accused of violating intellectual property rights and stealing the technology of American companies. And which the Trump administration is engaged in a volatile and unpredictable set of trade services, if not quite yet on the cusp of an actual trade war.

In the immediate aftermath, we’ve already seen Google suspend some of its business with Huawei, including working with them on future Android updates and device certifications. Though it’s been clarified that Google Play and Play Protect will keep working on existing devices, and the U.S. Commerce Department has granted a temporary license for Huawei to operate existing networks and provide software updates to existing devices.

Huawei has also put out a series of statements on its contributions towards everything from Android to 5G, and its commitment to existing implementations and customers.

So, is this about protecting the security of the United States of America? Hurting the viability of China’s premiere technology company? Both? And what, if anything, could or would China do to retaliate against the American tech company with the most exposure in China — Apple?

To help me — to help all of us — figure out exactly what’s happening here, I’ve got industry analyst and Techpinions founder Ben Bajarin on the line, live from Silicon Valley.

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LINKS:

Ben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/benbajarin

Techpinions.com: https://techpinions.com

Android Central: https://www.androidcentral.com/huawei-losing-access-android-updates-google-support-after-trump-trade-ban

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