Forget Huawei, the real danger to the West is TikTok
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says it needs a further $5.6 billion on top of the $1.9 billion it had originally estimated if it is to comply with the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act signed by Donald Trump in 2019 and replace all hardware components manufactured by Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE in infrastructure used by US telecom companies.
This seems a strange measure, considering that we are talking about hardware bought by US telecoms players from Chinese suppliers because it was cheaper and more advanced, and that is easier to control than software components of the same origin, such as TikTok, which is widely used by young Americans.
If a US telecommunications company wants to monitor possible backdoors or unapproved use of its hardware, all it has to do is implement traffic monitoring systems. Monitoring hardware can be difficult when we do not know what we’re looking for, but less so when we expect to find irregular access or unexpected communications.
In contrast, monitoring software is much harder, especially when applied to social networks like TikTok: in fact, TikTok’s security director, Roland Cloutier, has just resigned ahead of the company having to use Oracle servers based in the United States. The problem with TikTok isn’t so much China accessing…
