These features will require substantially more new infrastructure and, thus, won’t be rolled out widely until the mid-to-late 2020s. But they will have the biggest impact. Designers envision finely tuned grids powering “smart cities,” widespread adoption of industrial automation and 3D printing, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and highways packed with driverless cars, as well as massive, tightly integrated military operations involving swarms of unmanned fighter jets, submarines and surveillance planes in parallel with an equally intense cyber offensive.
Defense planners and spy chiefs are cautiously optimistic about the opportunities 5G will introduce. The Pentagon, for example, reportedly believes the F-35, the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, the P-8 Poseidon ISR planes and the Aegis Combat System won’t reach their full potential until 5G’s throughput capacity allows them to function as “data monsters.” Samsung is partnering with the U.S. military to develop a prototype mobile 5G battlefield network, using drones as antennas, for places with poor satellite coverage. Communications can be tightly encrypted without diminishing connection speeds.
On the flip side, though, there are fears that Chinese firms, at the Communist Party’s behest, could insert “backdoors” into 5G hardware, giving Chinese spooks unfettered access to sensitive communications or, at minimum, to the oceans of data being generated by the internet of things. The U.S. military, meanwhile, depends on complex logistics operations throughout the world, largely over commercial telecom networks. There’s concern that Beijing could simply turn off networks around U.S. supply lines just as the Chinese military is, say, making a move on Taiwan. Similarly, the more the U.S. economy is dependent on 5G ecosystems, the higher the risk that a cyberattack could grind the U.S. economy to a halt.
At this point, the risks are largely theoretical. Those sounding the alarm about Huawei and ZTE have not provided much hard evidence that China is already slipping malware into the systems its companies have exported. Germany and France, for example, are skeptical of the Five Eyes’ warnings about Chinese tech and are keen to determine whether technological safeguards can obviate the need to freeze out Chinese firms. (Considering their outsize influence in setting EU-wide regulations, the two will play a decisive role in determining whether Chinese telecom firms ever gain market share in the West. Beijing’s lobbying efforts are being concentrated on Paris and Berlin, accordingly.)
But to the Five Eyes, at least, proof matters less than potential. It’s clear that no Chinese firm can rebuff Beijing’s demands for cooperation on weaponizing 5G. China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law made this power explicit (as if it wasn’t already). It’s also clear that China is poised to export its technology far and wide.
China’s Strengths
Beijing has been preparing for the 5G race ever since the global rollout of 3G technology exposed the relative decrepitude of the Chinese telecom sector and its continued overdependence on foreign technology. In response, Beijing began focusing on dominating 5G intellectual property even before 4G/LTE had been widely installed, shoveling money into research and development and, notably, forcing Chinese telecom firms to collaborate as part of an industry-wide alliance with Chinese universities, arms makers and local governments. Since 2015, China has outspent the United States by some $24 billion in wireless communications infrastructure, according to Deloitte. The effort appears to be paying off; Chinese firms are expected to win as much as 40 percent of 5G patents, compared to around 7 percent of 4G ones. And the rollout of commercial standalone 5G infrastructure – what’s needed for the two features necessary to expand data-intensive applications – is expected to begin in China in 2020, five years before any other country is currently expected to follow suit, according to the Eurasia Group. The head start in field testing is likely to give China a considerable edge in development of 5G applications and exports.
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