The Bigger Picture
The US claims of 'national security' threats have never stood up to scrutiny. They are in fact quite ridiculous.
Internet data travels the world through gigantic fibre optic pipelines. Many of those are built, deployed and managed by Huawei and its partners or subsidiaries. Thousands upon thousands of kilometres. We all know that in case of a major worldwide conflict those lines will be cut. Until such a moment happens, let's look for cases of Huawei siphoning off huge chunks of internet transport data to China.
We may look until the end of time for any such evidence. None has been found in the last 35 years and Huawei now handles around a third of the world's ICT transport needs.
Is that surprising?
Of course it isn't!
The first sign of any such abuse (with evidence to support) would spell Huawei's instant and utter death. It would be the end. Is there a single reason for them to run that risk? Nope and believe me, if the US had any, it would just sit on it.
Government actors are another story but here, it is the US, with its habit of falling foul to some of the most gigantic and embarrassing leaks in modern history, that is carrying a huge 'Never trust us for anything' banner.
You can argue that, as a sovereign state it can do whatever it pleases with regards to China, just as China has done the same but we know what the US has been up to. We know about Operation Shotgiant. We know about Crypto AG.
But still, within US borders it's their country and their rules.
What is weird is that you can't buy a Huawei phone easily within the US for national security reasons but you can buy one from other Chinese vendors. Why? Isn't the Chinese government digging into all Chinese tech companies? That's the US claim, at least.
Huawei cannot ship phones with US 5G components but can buy 5nm processors from US companies. Does that make any national security sense? Nope.
The reason is not national security. The reason is protectionism because the US woke up with a jolt to Chinese advances in just about every area of modern technology and the supply lines to bring that technology to market.
The US just didn't see the importance of 5G until it was far too late and by then a lunatic had already taken over the asylum.
The ball was set rolling, and hawk after hawk walked up to the mic in Congress and any other political stage willing to give them a voice, to tell us how bad Huawei and the Chinese government was.
Trump, Barr, Rubio, Pence et al. All utterly clueless, as made clear by some of the most preposterous technology proposals ever made, in an effort to stop China from advancing.
Ironically, at the very same time, the US was demanding more trade from China.
Having failed in their ultimate goals, and in spite of knee-capping homegrown US tech interests in the process (just listen to what the CEO of Nvidia had to say on that this week), it turned its attention to sovereign nations and tried the age old tactic of pressganging. Using government bullying to push sovereign governments to impose limits on their own commercial interests via private or public companies, which invariably involve China as a major revenue source.
The usual 'it's us or them' rhetoric. Where have we heard that before?
So now we see, over and over again, that any international advance by Huawei or China is swiftly met by the sending of a US delegation of loons to throw some threats around.
Johnson buckled. Australia got itself in a right royal mess. Canada the same but they both got screwed for different reasons in the end. Just look at the Auckus Nuclear Submarine deal.
That's how the US does business. By pulling the rug out from underneath supposed allies to support its own cause. Expect Macron or who follows him to poke a finger up the collective US/UK/Australia ass for that mess.
At the earliest opportunity Macron was in China.
Was the US behind Nord Stream 2's sabotage? Nobody knows but Scholtz took no time to visit China either (with the CEOs of major German companies filing in behind him).
The CEO of Vodafone UK made it clear four years ago that eliminating Huawei from UK 5G networks (leaving just two major suppliers) would distort competition, increase prices and slow down the 5G roll out in the UK.
That in turn would put a stick in the spokes of the economic fruits to be had from 5G as part of the digital industrial revolution.
That applies to all nations that decide to follow US 'orders'.
There are now claims (Nikkei) that the Huawei ban has cost industry over one hundred billion US dollars around the world.
If Malaysia sticks two fingers up to the US, then that is admirable if they want to take their own decisions. Let them do it. Shame on Boris for not doing the same.
The middle east, parts of Africa and Latin America are doing just that.
Parallel to all this (and a direct consequence of US policy decisions) we may start to see the de-Americanisation of technology to 'free' companies from weaponised, extra-territorial sanctions of the US. That boomerang will be back.
Original estimates put the task at around five years. Counting from 2019, we may be seeing non-Chinese companies completely removing any remnants of US origin technology to free themselves of the shackles of unilateral sanctions.
Of course, the Chinese started that process years ago and have only accelerated efforts since then.
Rumours claim Huawei will be releasing updates to it's entire chip line in the second half of this year. That's Kunpeng, Tiangang, Kirin, and Ascend among others. The company has, in a rather round about way, denied the rumours so we'll have to wait and see.
In AI, Huawei's Pangu is making great strides with Pangu-Σ model already reaching the trillion parameter milestone (and on older Ascend 910 clusters).
Pangu was also used in the development of Drug X, currently undergoing clinical trials.