Five Eyes and 5G: the Huawei debate

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Now that Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling has been handed over, what should Congress be doing? And has the whole messy affair been good or bad for America's democracy. And the sprawling campuses of Silicon Valley? Businesses used to be the objects of envy and of ridicule in equal measure, but they hit early on, an idea that's now spreading globally. Both the inside and the outside of your workplace matter. First up, though, British ministers are demanding an investigation after high level discussions about the country using Huawei technology were leaked. Approval has reportedly been given for the Chinese technology giant to supply equipment in the rollout of 5G, the fifth generation of mobile Internet. 5G allows much faster data speeds, wider coverage and more stable connections. But the question of who should supply the technology for 5G has divided the closest of allies.

5G networks must be secure, they must be strong, they have to be guarded from the enemy. We do have enemies out there.

America has encouraged its allies not to involve Huawei in its 5G networks. Britain, it seems, has gone against that advice.

So it's agreed to let Huawei build at least some of its 5G networks, to let the firm be involved in the construction to some degree.

Tim Cross is our Technology Technology editor.

It's limited. They're not going to allow them anywhere and everywhere in the network. They're going to restrict them to the sort of least sensitive parts of the network, but they have basically given it the go ahead.

Tim, why are the Americans so worried about Huawei helping to build these 5G networks?

I think there are two reasons why people are so worried about this. The sort of more immediate, more short term one is increasingly mobile phone networks are pieces of critical infrastructure like the power grid or the water supply or something, and that allowing a company from China, potentially one of your strategic rivals, to install all these things is potentially quite unwise, because it might give them avenues to spy on you or even sabotage your networks. And the second one is that it's basically about superpower rivalry. And ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, we've lived in a world dominated by America, and one of the pillars of American power is its technological expertise. China is very deliberately and very straightforwardly challenging that. So it's partly about the immediate threat of spying. In the longer term, it's about how you deal with an increasingly powerful and increasingly assertive China.

But if the British government intends to restrict Huawei from the core of the network, isn't that enough risk to restrict it altogether? Do you think the British have made the right decision here?

Well, that's the question. And this is the point that lots of other people, chiefly the Americans, have been making. It's difficult. You have to balance these things. There's an argument that because of Huawei's provenance, because they're a Chinese company, because China is potentially a sort of big strategic rival, and we know they're very keen on hacking networks and compromising things. And because of all that, there is an argument that the safest thing to do is just say, well, why bother with them at all? Before you even get into the geopolitics, the just sort of pure security counter argument to that is there aren't that many companies out there who sell this stuff, who sell the sort of kit that goes into mobile phone networks. And if you freeze Huawei out, you're really only left with two options, which is Ericsson and Nokio, or Finnish and a Swedish firm. But one of the principles of building a sort of safe and secure and resilient network is to try and have equipment from as many suppliers as possible. So to the extent that you want to do that, that sort of butts up against the worries that you've mentioned about letting Huawei in.

And you mentioned that this decision is quite in contrast to what America has decided. How have two security partners, longtime security partners, diverged so much on this kind of decision?

Well, so this is the big geopolitical question. So America has made it pretty clear in the last few months that it would like as many of its allies as possible to freeze Huawei out as much as possible. Britain's not the only one that's sort of pushed back against that a bit. Germany has said that they seem to be happy, at least in principle, for Huawei to be involved. But yeah, Britain is maybe the most significant one, partly because there's so much intelligence cooperation between the two countries and it's really hard to do much more than to speculate. There are possibly some technical reasons to do with because Britain's small and relatively densely populated, because of the nature of how these networks work, it might be easier to manage the risk and to limit Huawei to bits of the network that you aren't so concerned about. On the other hand, there's a sense that at least some of America's criticisms of the firm are motivated by a sort of broader question of wanting to restrict China's technological power. America is the incumbent superpower, so it has one set of incentives that Britain, which is a sort of medium sized country with a medium sized economy, maybe doesn't face. And it might be that Britain thinks to some extent it's worth trying to stay on the good side of both America and China, if it can.

And so if America does feel that strongly about it, will Britain's decision to let Huawei in strain relations with them?

Well, again, we'll have to wait and see. I mean, you've already seen some commentators in China saying this is a split in the five eyes. The five is being the sort of big electronic spying pact that Britain, America, New Zealand, Canada and Australia are involved in. Again, I don't have access to secret briefings or anything, but I would be surprised if it did. I mean, Britain's decision in a way is sort of a continuation of its existing policy. We've already got Huawei gear in most of our mobile networks already. This sort of model that Britain has of allowing it in, but tearing down all the equipment when it comes in and going over it with a fine tooth comb and looking for any evidence of foul play that's existed for a long time. So you might take the view that, well, despite all the sound and fury, has anything really changed? But there's also the question of what everybody gets from membership. And Britain's electronic spying agency is the second biggest in the Firefly's location is very useful because a whole bunch of Internet trunk cables come ashore in Britain, which is a great place to do some spying if you want to. So it's hard to say for sure, but all these threats you've heard from America about cutting back on intelligence sharing, I'd be surprised if they amounted to too much.

In sum, then you aren't too troubled by Britain's decision then to let Huawei into its networks?

I think the decision to ban or permit Huawei, purely by itself isn't all that likely to have much of an effect on how secure your computing networks are. If you ban Huawei but don't take any other action, there are still plenty of ways in. I think what's interesting about it is it's finally brought to the fore something that lots of computer security experts have been agitating about for a long time, which is that we're connecting more and more of our societies to the Internet. We don't really know what the full implications of that are. We don't know what a full on cyber war looks like. We don't know what kind of havoc is possible if you're really determined to cause it. And so while this is sort of front and center in people's minds, it feels like a good opportunity to try and do some things that would improve security, whether you have Huawei on your networks or whether you don't.

Tim, thanks very much for your time.

Thanks, Jason.

It's been a week since Robert Mueller's report was released, but it's clear the fallout will continue for some time.

We just went through the Mueller witch hunt where you had really 18 angry Democrats that hate President Trump. They hate him with a pass.

He claims that total exoneration, which we.

Already know is not true, but par for the poor.

We do not believe there is evidence.

To support a charge of obstruction of justice.

The report concluded there was substantial evidence that President Trump attempted to prevent an investigation into his own camp, into his campaign and his own conduct.

The long awaited report from the special counsel brings no charges against President Donald Trump for conspiring with Russia, but it leaves open the question of whether he obstructed justice. In essence, Mr. Mueller has passed the decision about the next steps to Congress. So now Congress is pondering what to do. Some Democratic presidential candidates have been calling for impeachment. Among them Elizabeth Warren.

It's my responsibility to speak out. We have a constitution in the United States and it says when a president engages in this kind of activity, then.

It'S time for impeachment.

But the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, says she's inclined to hold off impeachment proceedings for now. Republicans, meanwhile, are standing by the president. Mr. Trump said this week he would fight any subpoenas issued by the Democrats and tweeted that he would go to the Supreme Court if Democrats tried to impeach him. So in a country so politically polarized, led by a president who's still facing multiple congressional investigations, what comes after Mueller?

He made it very clear that the ultimate arbiter of the President's wrongdoing was Congress.

John Fasman is the Economist's Washington correspondent. Like so many other people, he spent his Easter weekend with all 448 pages of the Mueller report.

This is a political endeavor, not a legal one, that this is not something to be resolved in a courtroom. This is something to be resolved in Congress and at the ballot box.

And so, with that being, I guess, an almost explicit handover here, Congress, it's yours to do with what you will. What do you think it will do?

I think it will do what it has been doing, which is. Which is continue digging into what the report has laid out. Jerry Nadler, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has already subpoenaed the full report and its underlying materials. He also subpoenaed Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, who comes out of this looking pretty good in the report. I imagine that we will see them pull on other strings that the report leaves open. You know, I imagine that they will want to hear from Don Jr. And Jared Kushner, who the report, who the Mueller team apparently did not talk to. I imagine they'll want to know. At one point, he says that they were impeded because a lot of people they were talking to destroyed records of conversation. I imagine they'll want to know who destroyed what and why. I imagine they'll want to know why the president, if he is as innocent as he says he is, refused to sit down for an interview with Robert Mueller. So I think they will treat this as sort of as a roadmap for where their next investigations can go.

So, John, the Democrats will have some tricky decisions to make here. What are the different parts of the party, and what do they sort of separately want? They don't act monolithically, and they only have one house of Congress. What are the wants and desires at this point?

Well, they don't act monolithically. I think you have the House leadership is temperamentally quite conservative. You have Nancy Pelosi sort of backing off impeachment. You have Steny Hoyer saying outright, I don't favor impeachment. But then you have members of Congress like Al Green, a congressman from Texas who has introduced repeated articles of impeachment. And you have, I think, a younger, more progressive wing that thinks impeachment is justified. It will be interesting to see how those two factions get along in the coming months.

There's been a lot of talk about how impeachment might actually be quite politically tricky for the Democrats. Even if they could get support to start a process like that that, well, distracts everyone from the business of governing it. Do you have a sense for how much it's a question between what's right and just and what they ought to do anyway.

I think that, I mean, that's the question that motivates politics generally. What is right and just versus what is politically advantageous. I think that the Democrats are right to be somewhat gun shy now. I think they're also right. As we saw during the midterms, most voters don't particularly care about the Russia investigation. Most voters care about health care and jobs. And so to the extent that pursuing impeachment would be a distraction from them laying out a sort of practical argument for why a Democrat would be preferable to Donald Trump in 2020, they're right to be nervous.

And do you think they should pursue impeachment?

I think that impeachment is the verdict at the end of a long process that is just beginning. I think that they introducing articles of impeachment starting down that path now is a mistake. I think the Mueller report left a lot of threads that they can pull a lot of paths to investigate. As they pursue these investigations, public opinion may shift, and if it does, if impeachment can really be a bipartisan process, then it should be pursued. But as long as it'sas long as it is partisan, I think that the risks to the Democrats and the risk to the political system outweigh any benefits.

So if Congress did pursue impeachment, how likely is it they'd be able to get anything through? Can you walk us through what the process would be?

The crucial factor about the impeachment process is that removing a president by impeachment requires a two thirds vote in the Senate, as currently constructed. As the partisan identification in the Senate currently exists, that is extremely unlikely to happen. You need, I would think, 17. I think it's 17 senators to cross party lines. I don't see that happening. I mean, as an aside, there have been three presidents against whom articles of impeachment were voted and introduced, and none of them were removed by the Senate. So that's always been an extremely high bar. That's always been an extremely high bar.

Look, in prior administrations, the revelations in this report would have been incredibly shocking. But a lot of this came out bit by bit, piecemeal. Do you suppose that that was kind of helpful to the administration in terms of the impact of the report?

You're quite right that the president has been helped by having this information come out in Dribs and drabs. I mean, imagine that we were only discovering, we only discovered all of this stuff last week. That would be shocking. But because we've sort of become inured to this, you know, to use a terrible cliche, because we are the frogs in uncomfortably hot water, I think that lessens the actual blow of the report itself.

Well, and by extension, any onward investigations, of which there are many.

I'm not sure that that's true. I'm not sure that that's true. I think that there can still be, you know, if there is still information that can be put out there in the public sphere that can, that can, that can change public opinion. I mean, remember that Richard Nixon did not lose majority support until a couple of weeks before he was removed from office. And that was the process. That was after a very long, ongoing public set of hearings and trials.

It seems like the reception of the report highlighted once again the polarization within America.

Right. The partisanship is baked deep into the system. And I think that was one of the lessons that we learned from the Mueller report and from the investigation is that the Russians were deceptive and dishonest, of course, but they had some pretty fertile ground to sow their seeds in. This is a deeply polarized country with people ready to believe the worst about their enemies. The depolarization of America is really not good for the health of the American body politic.

So on balance then, the fact that everyone now knows all of this stuff has been good or has been bad for the body politic of America.

Oh, has been good. There's no question. Sunlight is always good. Sunlight is always good. It's much better that this stuff is known than unknown. It's better that it didn't happen, but since it happened, it's much better that it be known than unknown. No question.

John, thanks for joining us.

My pleasure entirely.

The modern office looks very different from the spartan cubicle forms of the past. Plenty of offices are airy, open plan affairs with standing desks or yoga balls for chairs. But for all the innovation inside, nothing compares to looking outside.

After we've been sitting at our office concentrating for a long time, then we suffer attention fatigue and our cognitive ability decreases.

Alison Greenwood is a psychologist who's been researching how nature impacts our brains.

When we go outside, then we rest our attention. Looking at things like leaves in the wind, clouds, sunsets, just grass outside seems to enable our brains just to relax and so enable us to return to our offices and concentrate again.

In the past, lots of workplaces have changed to get employees to work more collaboratively with shared spaces and fewer offices, Dr. Greenwood would change them again.

So we'd have lots of natural light and so I'd have large windows looking out onto nature as much as possible.

The economists offices in London do have some pretty good views of the city, but they aren't shared equally. I have a view of a drab brown brick building. Others are more fortunate.

My office is packed with books and overflowing papers, but it does have a view of the river.

Philip Coggin writes our Bartleby column about workplace culture. He's been looking at how more natural offices have been sprouting up.

It's something to gaze at when you're trying to get inspiration. And if it were a view of some rusty cars and barbed wire or litter strewn streets, it would be probably harder to get inspiration. So as the internal condition of the offices can help with productivity, then the external environment can too.

And we know already that office environments, at least the inside, do have an effect on productivity.

We do studies of things like the light and the sound and the air quality and the space you have seem to show an improvement in productivity. You only have to look at what companies do, companies with lots of money do to try and attract staff. And you start to think that the external environment matters too.

Well, that's the sort of apotheosis of this idea that this Silicon Valley business where it's not only a nice looking place, but it's quite a catered place. Right. There's games, there's food, there's whatever, there's dry cleaning that can be done for you and so on.

Yes, exactly. So everything you could possibly want is there so you don't have to leave. So it's partly like the Venus fly trap. Once you get in there, it's very hard to get out and they want it to be that way. But still I think that offering such an attractive environment still counts. Right? It's not just Silicon Valley, of course. In India you have Infosys, you have Tata with these big out of town headquarters, any of these multi multinationals where they have been attracted to an area where they're allowed the space to build these kind of facilities is trying to do this kind of thing.

You suggest in part that this is a matter of inspiration. But some people don't need creative inspiration. They, you know, their bosses need them just to sit and you know, put small boxes in larger boxes or whatever it is that isn't necessarily inspired.

So we may end up, I think with a divide between people in multinationals, tech companies where they have high profit margins, they can afford to offer workers attractive environments, and people who are in low paid, low margin businesses who are stuck in dingy blocks with those views of barbed wire that I was mentioning earlier. Trends can spread. If it's clear that the way to attract workers is to have nice office surroundings, then smaller companies will need to take part in this. And just as in WeWork where you have freelance workers and small companies in a nicer office space, you could get the same effect in a campus type environment where smaller companies own little space within that environment and get the benefits of the general overview that the SAI provides. And let's hope it spreads to more sectors of the economy. We've seen plenty of changes in office work before. Twenty years ago we thought it odd that people in the tech industry didn't wear suits and ties. And now you and I are sitting here without a tie between us. So trends within office work and office environments can change.

Phil, thanks very much.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you could subscribe to the economist@examiner.com radiooffer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.