布鲁金斯学会-华为遭遇历史：1840-2021大国与电信风险（英文）-2021.3正式版.doc

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1、SECURITY, STRATEGY, AND ORDERMARCH 2021HUAWEI MEETS HISTORYGREAT POWERS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS RISK, 1840-2021RUSH DOSHI AND KEVIN MCGUINESSHUAWEI MEETS HISTORYGREAT POWERS ANDTELECOMMUNICATIONS RISK, 1840-2021RUSH DOSHI AND KEVIN MCGUINESSEXECUTIVE SUMMARYIn late 2018, amid American concerns about

2、whether Canada would welcome Huawei into its telecommunications networks, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a series of statements that captured conventional wisdom across much of the world. “It shouldnt be a political decision,” he declared at the time, and Canada would not “let politics

3、slip into decisions” about Huaweis role in its network.1The notion that power politics could be removed from questions over telecommunications was not only optimistic, it was also out of step with the history of telecommunications. This report explores that history, and it shows how power and teleco

4、mmunications have almost always been closely linked. When states ignored those linkages and were cavalier with the security of their own networks, the results were disadvantageous and at times even disastrous.This report examines several major cases of great power competition in telecommunications d

5、ating back to the earliest inception of electrical telecommunications in the 1840s. These cases demonstrate that many of the questions policymakers confront today have close analogues to the past. While the present debate over network security and 5G infrastructure may feel new, it in fact echoes fo

6、rgotten disputes dating back to the dawn of electrical telecommunications some 150 years ago. Moreover, many of the familiar elements of telecommunications competition today such as the use of standard-setting bodies, state subsidies, cable taps, information warfare, developing country markets, and

7、encryption to gain advantage were developed more than a century ago, with important lessons for present debates.A list of these key lessons is provided below:1. Control over global telecommunications networks is a form of political power.5G networks are expected to form the foundation of a smarter,

8、connected economy linking countless devices and sensors together. Eager to build these networks worldwide, China has subsidized its 5G champion companies and projects aroundForeign Policy at Brookings | 1HUAWEI MEETS HISTORY: GREAT POWERS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS RISK, 1840-2021telecommunications comp

9、anies and their host governments made similar promises publicly while privately breaking them and working together in both peacetime and wartime. For example, British dominance in undersea cables led the French, Germans, and Americans to advocate for keeping the lines neutral, even in war. British f

10、irms publicly declared their neutrality but in actuality deferred to British political interests, particularly at moments of great tension, and gave up neutrality entirely during periods of war. The power that comes from disrupting or intercepting rival information flows has generally been too allur

11、ing for even sincere claims of neutrality to endure.6. States often seek their own telecommunications champions once they recognize the vulnerability of relying on a competitor or adversarys firms. The United States currently lacks a major manufacturer of 5G base stations, which has prompted debates

12、 about whether it should invest in its own companies or rely on allied companies. It has also spurred disagreement over to what degree Huawei is itself a de facto state champion. These debates have some precedent. In the early 20th century, many states reliant on others for telecommunications equipm

13、ent or networks began to build their own systems. For example, Germany pushed two German companies with competing radio efforts Siemens & Halske and AEG together to establish a German alternative to British dominance in radio. Many other leading states backed companies that, while ostensibly private

14、, were intertwined with the states that supported them.7. The struggle for telecommunications standards can determine which states will wield network power, and it often requires enlisting allies and partners. States whose technology becomes the dominant standard can wield that leverage over others.

15、 The current contest over information communication technology standards is, in this way, similar to the Anglo-German contest over radio networks. Britain, through the Marconi Company which it supported, was so dominant in wireless radio that all other great powers had to pass messages through Brita

16、ins wireless network, which refused to engage with any other wireless stations. Germany ultimately found success breaking that dominance at a standard-setting body that prohibited this “non-intercommunication” policy with the help of other powers, including the United States and France a demonstrati

17、on of how similar coalitional approaches today could be used by liberal states to set or preserve favorable information and communications technology (ICT) standards if they work together.8. States turn to encryption as their communications become easier to intercept, but encryption often has limits

18、 due to determined adversaries or user error. Some argue that anxieties over Huaweis role in networks or over the general vulnerability of devices connected to the internet is ameliorated by modern encryption. These kinds of arguments have a long history. At the dawn of telecommunications a century

19、ago, the possibility that telegraph messages could be read by others who controlled network nodes, or that radio could be intercepted by passive listening equipment, led to major encryption advances that bred occasional overconfidence.Germanys complex rotor cipher machines were believed to be unbrea

20、kable, but user error and British industrial-scale efforts allowed Great Britain to compromise German codes. Low-cost updates to German equipment and ciphers could have ended Britains advantage, but Berlins overconfidence in its encryption forestalled those alterations, yielding intercepted intellig

21、ence that reshaped the course of the war. End-to-end encryption is significantly more advanced than prior efforts at encryption, but history suggests some humility is necessary.Foreign Policy at Brookings | 3HUAWEI MEETS HISTORY: GREAT POWERS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS RISK, 1840-20219. Many states disc

22、ount the degree to which an adversary may make extraordinary efforts to compromise their networks. Amid debates over modern telecommunications, it is worth noting that states that prioritized convenience or commerce, and therefore took security shortcuts, have often been unpleasantly surprised by th

23、e efforts a determined adversary will make to compromise their networks. In World War I, Germany was surprised by the speed and ruthlessness with which Britain cut all the cables Germany used to access the outside world; similarly, Russian commanders were surprised when their radio indiscipline led

24、to a disastrous defeat at Tannenberg. In World War II, Germany did not expect the British to build a highly-centralized, industrial-scale code-breaking operation that could exploit German communications errors no matter how trivial or fleeting to break German codes.And during the Cold War, the Sovie

25、ts never encrypted an internal underwater telephone line they believed was outside the reach of the United States, but Washington nonetheless found a way to tap it gaining an invaluable source of intelligence.10. Network security is not only about interception, but also about denial. Some of the deb

26、ate over Huaweis role in networks emphasizes questions of data security but could benefit from greater consideration of network denial, which has been an important part of great power telecommunications competition. The dawn of telegraphy saw great powers seek to cut cables and deny communications,

27、culminating in Great Britains unprecedented and well-planned operation to sever all of the cables around the world that could connect Germany to the outside. Sometimes, a state may harm itself in pursuing network denial strategies, but will nonetheless proceed if it believes the harm is greater to i

28、ts opponent.Foreign Policy at Brookings | 4HUAWEI MEETS HISTORY: GREAT POWERS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS RISK, 1840-2021THE GREAT POWERS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS“Large empires went to great lengths to speed the flow of information,” notes one history of telecommunications. “The Romans built roads, the Per

29、sians and Mongols established relays of horses, the British subsidized mail steamers.”2 But even though states craved information, flows of it remained limited until the dawn of the modern telegraph. The electrification of information flows created modern telecommunications, and with it, familiar pa

30、tterns of great power rivalry over it.Those first decades of modern telecommunications, which spanned from 1840 to World War I, share important characteristics with the present moment. That period, like the current post-Cold War era, was one of relative great power peace that made leading states “le

31、ss sensitive” to questions of politics and security in telecommunications networks.3 As great powers built out national and international networks in the 19th century, many were initially content to leave industry in charge, ignore the nationality of private companies, and downplay the risks of an a

32、dversarys control over telecommunications networks. The benefits of revolutionary changes in telecommunications what some at the time called “the annihilation of time and space”4 were so obvious and overwhelming that “ownership of the cables was seen as a minor issue.”5 Telegraphy was about business

33、 more than politics in that period, notes one historian in an observation that might justAs great power tensions heightened, states around the world awakened to find that some namely Great Britain had managed the long peace well, and through their private firms, gained a stranglehold on internationa

34、l communications.as easily have applied to some of the initial excitement about modern information technology and its latest incarnation: 5G.6The period of relative great power complacency was not to last. States like Peru in 1879 and then the United States in 1898 were some of the first to cut off

35、a rivals telecommunications networks.As great power tensions heightened, states around the world awakened to find that some namely Great Britain had managed the long peace well, and through their private firms, gained a stranglehold on international communications.Increasingly fearful of dependence

36、on British undersea cable networks, states like France and Germany heavily subsidized the development of their own networks in a development not so dissimilar from Chinas own subsidization and protection of its information technology champions like Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Huawei. And as histori

37、an Heidi Tworek documents, Britains rivals also made large bets on the next generation of telecommunications technology “wireless telegraphy,” better known as radio hoping to decrease dependence on British-owned undersea telegraph cables.7 While the British led in this field, Germany refused to rely

38、 on British networks. It built its own network with state-backed champions plowing into less-connected parts of the world Latin America, Africa, Asia in what today might mirror the expansion of Chinese technology companies into the developing world and Beijings determination to lay the foundations f

39、or 5G networks.Throughout this period, many of the elements of great power telecommunications competition sometimes neglected today were often taken quite seriously by that eras states. Germany, frustrated with British dominance in radio networks, used a standard-setting body to break British domina

40、nce a tactic that demonstrates that those bodies were no less important in that era than they are now. And as telecommunications wentForeign Policy at Brookings | 5HUAWEI MEETS HISTORY: GREAT POWERS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS RISK, 1840-2021wireless and became even easier to intercept, great powers put

41、their faith in encryption sometimes foregoing disciplined operation of their networks under the assumption that “ciphers” detailed steps to encrypt or decrypt messages would solve the problem, a belief that almost always proved erroneous due to user error. That view has striking parallels to modern

42、assumptions about the general insecurity of telecommunications networks, and the belief articulated by some in debates over Huawei that encryption would largely neutralize the risk of Chinas access to ones telecommunications network.When the great power peace ended and war erupted, the political imp

43、ortance of telecommunications not always clear in peacetime was suddenly evident. German success in intercepting Russian transmissions in World War I produced a victory so thorough in the Battle of Tannenberg that it changed the course of the war and helped precipitate Russias exit from the conflict

44、. British dominance of undersea cables in World War I was so complete that it cut off Germany from the global telecommunication system, routed German cable traffic through its own networks, and ultimately uncovered the Zimmerman telegram, which helped bring the United States into the conflict. In Wo

45、rld War II, Britain scored another intelligence success by breaking German encryption that had been presumed unbreakable, leading to unparalleled intelligence that Britains official histories argue shortened the war in Europe by years. These cases demonstrate that telecommunicationsTelecommunication

46、s, as this brief series of cases shows, has always been political.security is not simply a matter of battlefield tactics but of political competition, one that can dictate the fates of great powers and the shape of world history.As the world moved into a U.S.-SovietCold War, British advantages wered

47、islodged not only by American power but by shifts in technology that made older networks less relevant, demonstrating the importance for great powers to remain at the forefront of technology. In that new era, telecommunications competition continued along familiar lines. For example, the United Stat

48、es pioneered new ways to tap submarine cables that were buried so deep and considered so secure that messages across them were often left unencrypted. Competition moved into other domains, too such as satellites and internet infrastructure though much of this history is still being written and, in most cases, remains classified.Telecommunications, as this brief series of cases shows, has always been political. The exploitation of these technologies and capabilities h