US replacement of Chinese IT equipment will cost billions of dollars more, analysts say
- US-China Economic and Security Review Commission hears extending ‘rip and replace’ programme beyond Huawei and ZTE rural systems carries a high price
- ‘Eliminating all designated Chinese [technology and services] from every US network would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible,’ one says
The US will need to pay tens of billions of dollars more to expand its ban on the use of Chinese IT equipment to reduce national security risks, analysts said on Thursday.
“There are often few alternatives to designated Chinese [information and communications technology and services] available at comparable prices,” Jack Corrigan, senior research analyst at Centre for Security and Emerging Technology of Georgetown University, told the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) in Washington.
The commission is a US advisory panel on China policy, focused on national security implications of trade and economic ties between the two countries.
“Eliminating all designated Chinese [technology and services] from every US network would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible,” Corrigan testified.
Washington has already rid the country of telecoms infrastructure made by China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE, alleging that those systems might contain spyware to transfer personal US data to Beijing.
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