Canada can’t afford to let Huawei into our 5G networks
Opinion: Putting our systems into Huawei’s hands would allow Beijing to threaten us with massive blackouts causing billions in losses
National Post
Last Updated
May 31, 2019
By Ivy Li
Amid Beijing’s trade war with Canada, the anxiety over the financial consequences of offending the Chinese Communist Party deepens. But would appeasing Beijing by allowing Huawei into our fifth-generation (5G) networks make real economic sense?
With the emergence of 5G and the Internet of Things, communications technology will be overlain on our energy grid, connecting it with myriad devices and utilities. This would create numerous access points for penetration, and a cyber attack could easily be disguised with the large number and variety of sensors. Munk Senior Fellow Christian Leuprecht and Queen’s University professors David Skillicorn and Arthur Cockfield have shown how extremely difficult it will be to police the updates of so many network switches. Our grid might be smarter, but it will also be much more vulnerable.
Our grid might be smarter, but it will also be much more vulnerable
The first confirmed cyber-warfare attack affecting civilians occurred in Ukraine just before Christmas in 2015. Power was cut off to 103 cities and towns. In a repeat attack in December 2016, the malware managed to disrupt Ukraine’s grid without the hackers’ manual intervention.
Many of us still remember the Northeast Blackout. On Aug. 14, 2003, 50 million people in Ontario and eight U.S. states lost power. Traffic lights and electronic signs were out and rush-hour traffic was jammed. Airports were closed. Financial services were interrupted. Cellular networks were overloaded. Retailers discarded large quantities of spoiled stock. Calls to emergency services skyrocketed, and Ottawa’s Children’s Hospital alone cancelled 800 appointments.
Eight nuclear plants in Ontario were shut down, as were many auto and steel plants and pulp and paper mills. Industrial plants in the “Chemical Valley” near Sarnia, Ont., were all impaired, spewing out clouds of black smoke from flaring products. Waste-treatment facilities spilled raw sewage into local waterways, prompting 59 boil water advisories. During the blackout, deaths spiked 28 per cent above normal. Accidents and exacerbated chronic health problems brought about by the outage led to nearly 100 fatalities in New York City. There were three deaths in Ontario, and Toronto saw a sharp increase in personal injury accidents, mostly pedestrians hit by vehicles due to lack of traffic and street lights.
The blackout cost Ontario between $1 billion and $2 billion, and a net loss of 18.9 million work hours. The financial costs of an outage have increased rapidly since. The Ponemon Institute reported that the cost of an unplanned outage at a data centre in 2016 was, on average, more than US$8,800 per minute. And cyber crime is the fastest growing cause, rising from two per cent in 2010 to 22 per cent in 2016. Earlier this year, the Allianz Risk Barometer concluded that a “cloud service” provider in North America could lose as much as US$850 million in a 12-hour outage.
We need to understand what Huawei really is
To truly grasp the risk of allowing Huawei into our 5G networks, we need to understand what Huawei really is. Huawei is 99 per cent owned by a trade union committee — not by employees, as the company claims. Trade unions in China are controlled by the state.
Huawei’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, vows that he will “never do anything to harm any other nation.” But all Chinese companies and citizens are bound by the Chinese National Intelligence Law to “support, co-operate with, and collaborate in national intelligence work.” A former People’s Liberation Army engineer and still a senior Communist Party member, Ren’s loyalty no doubt lies with his party.
Thirty years ago in Tiananmen Square, Beijing sent tanks to massacre its citizens. Now, Beijing has imprisoned millions of Uyghur people in concentration camps. Beijing uses hostage diplomacy against Canada, and does not honour international agreements or arbitration rulings not in its favour. Allowing a company ultimately controlled by such a thuggish, dictatorial regime in our 5G is inviting uncountable Trojan horses into our grids and surrendering control of the lifelines of our economy and society.
A Canadian 5G network in Beijing’s ultimate control would result in not just the detention of two Canadians, as in the case of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, but would make all Canadians hostages, in our own country. A Canadian 5G system in Huawei’s hands could allow Beijing to threaten us with massive blackouts causing mayhem and billions in immediate losses, or with small-scale outages, inducing economic hemorrhaging, to bleed us to subservience. By then, it would be either politically impossible or financially prohibitive to rip Huawei out of our networks.
Yes, if we ban Huawei from the 5G rollout it might cost Telus a billion dollars. Huawei might sue. Beijing might ban more Canadian imports, or forbid Chinese students to study here, or simply stop all Chinese tourists from visiting Canada.
But allowing Huawei in our 5G networks could be fatal to Canada.
It would be billion-wise, trillion-foolish. Huawei is just too expensive for Canadians.
— Ivy Li is a core member of the Canadian Friends of Hong Kong.
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