In the first section of this piece I argued that the anti-Huawei litany only makes sense when one realizes that the Chinese state, not a global telecommunication equipment manufacturer based in China, is the target of this attack. China, in this view, is an integrated monolith and any Chinese firm...
On May 29, I attended an AEI event on “International economics and securing next-generation 5G wireless networks,” with Ambassador Robert Strayer, who heads the US State Department’s CIP team. But the focus of the talk was not really on 5G security, international trade or 5G development. In fact, there was no constructive agenda at all. The talk was an extended attack on China and the Chinese-based telecommunications...
IGP held a session at the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest with Stephen Ezell of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), Peter Swire of Georgia Tech, and Charles Duan and Bill Watson from R Street. The Internet and Trade track of this conference was organized by...
In Chinese online discussions, many people are using the expression “one sword throat-slashing strike.” [一剑封喉] This forbidding term refers to the United States’ seven-year export ban on China’s second-largest telecom supplier, ZTE, which threatens its very existence and has put the company “in a state of shock.” In the Chinese...
What's going on in China? I was invited there for a series of lectures at Beijing’s Communication University of China (CUC) during the week of March 18. Thanks to Professor Xu Peixi, who organized the tour, I got a chance to meet most of the academics, researchers and policy analysts...
Background The international trade in hardware, software, and content complicates many cybersecurity challenges. Domestic regulations and enforcement may fall short of their intended aims when foreign criminals and governments are out of their jurisdiction, and cheap insecure technologies proliferate worldwide. In response, some security experts have looked to restricting trade...
SETTING THE COURSE FOR A 21ST CENTURY DIGITAL TRADE POLICY On May 24-25, 2018, the Internet Governance Project (IGP) at Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy held its 4th Annual Workshop in Atlanta. This year’s workshop explored the scientific and public policy questions raised around digital trade. It aimed to help...
A profoundly important development in digital trade took place this week – and it was not a very good one. But it attracted much less notice and protest than it should have. We are referring to the decision by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to erect a...
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is going to hold a ministerial conference from 10 to 13 December 2017. This conference could be of high importance for e-commerce and Internet governance. The WTO ministerial conference happens every 4 years. Delegates have discussed the e-commerce work program at every ministerial conference since...
On October 6th a letter was circulated to the negotiators preparing for the World Trade Organization’s 11th Ministerial meeting (MC11), which will be held December 10-13, 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The letter purports to speak for all of “global civil society,” and singles out for attack the prospect of...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”