Obvious irony aside...
He's right that China is accelerating faster than we are. I live in central Reading (UK home of Oracle, Microsoft etc) and the best OpenReach speed I can get is 22MBps. No FTTP. That's laughable in the East. Infrastructure needs to be powered by government policy and if there isn't an appetite for sorting out the basics then it's fair to assume that the more nuanced ideas of security and privacy won't either.