II Cold War. The geopolitical face of technology.
By: Pedro Del Rio
Tags: International Relations, Trade War, Technology, Tiktok App, Huawei

Technology has been always a hot topic for any country but, especially, to the United States of America. This 21stcentury brought us a lot of things that we were expecting and other tech advances that we haven’t even imagined in our finest dreams. Anyone remembers the sound of a 56kbps router turning on? Well, if you aren’t from this generation you can listen to it. What happens today? We got bored if Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa doesn’t speak in our mother language. We are angry to our ISP if we don’t have at least 1GBPS of download speed via ethernet/WiFi connection. Or, a better example, we got mad when our we blow up our 30GB mobile data plan from our carrier.

In this article I’ll explore what are the main differences as of today and why are we living in a II cold war. Now, between the United States and China presenting facts that will help you to be informed in these uncertainty times.

#5G. The hoax behind Donald J. Trump and WH claims. What is 5G? This is a brand-new technology being implemented in the upcoming years that will allow any person with a 5G compatible device (Smartphone, Tablet, etc.) to navigate in the internet and download content at speeds of 1GBPS or more. This, naturally, depends of some aspects such as the carrier you have contract with, which device do you use to access (high-end smartphones, e.g., will probably grant you better internet speed rather those which are cheaper due to the hardware built-in).

Who is responsible to implement 5G and why is this fuzz around Huawei caused by the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump? The responsibility to implement the 5G technology is, in first hand, every country which must promote auctions of frequencies to carriers explore and install their technology. These types of bids allow the carrier to secure a certain number of frequencies where they will base their offer to their clients. Here it’s important you know that how much bands do you carrier secures faster, better and reliable will be your 5G connection. This isn’t the news because it’s literally the same as the 4G, 3G or even the EDGE technology.

So why is this fuzz? Two years ago, in 2018, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, started to impose tariffs on Chinese products and commodities alleging that China was practicing “unfair trade practices” which would lead to the destruction of the world’s and American economy. In the mid of this trade war, you will find the company currently leading the 5G implementation in the world. The reason that the President of the United States alleged this is that Huawei posed a “risk to national security” as according to him there was evidences — never presented — that Huawei used its routers, servers, devices, etc. to spy the United States and its citizens and send this data over to the Chinese Government.

However, as everything in our life, it’s also broader than what’s being said to the press. Huawei is actually “the second-largest global seller of smartphones, surpassing Apple, Inc. (AAPL) for the first time, coming in behind number one Samsung Electronics Co. Inc.”[1] which means that for the first time the leader of tech industry isn’t an American company. According to Huawei[2] there is no history of sending over any data to the Chinese government nor to any other security agency in the world.

In order to better comprehend this whole situation, the company produced, this year, a document presenting facts about why the claims made by the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump are false and misleading. In this documentpresents 9 facts that explains in detail why the allegations from the government of the United States ae false and what’s the potential impact that halting Huawei would have not only for its almost 200,000 employees but to worldwide economies who rely on Huawei technology and R&D.

Source: visuals on Unsplash

Other interesting example of why we are living a second cold war is also related with Chinese/USA trade war through TikTok. We almost know the coolest social media where we all post those amazing videos who made us laugh so much through the first quarantine, right? According to President Donald J. Trump, like Huawei, TikTok is being used by the Chinese Government to spy on the United States and its citizens. One more time with false allegations lacking evidence by the government of the United States.

What matters now? The evidence or the perception? What really matters, in my opinion, is facts. It’s a fact that the current President of the United States is a lying machine. According to the Washington Post, the President told 22,510 false or misleading claims in 1,323 days. This is more than 17 false claims per day since he took office. Note that this count isn’t up to date as the newspaper wasn’t able to keep up the rhythm as of September, 3rd so you can count the last two or three months of the Electoral Campaign which would put him at an average of 50 false or misleading claims a day and overturning the milestone of 25,000 false allegations or claims in his presidential term(!!)!

What counts, in the end, is naturally the evidence. And talking about fact check and especially about the spying we can bring up the example of Edward Snowden who was bold enough to report what were the United States doing with NSA or CIA programs. He reported that both agencies were using networks from telco companies to monitor, acquire and store millions of GB of data including SMS, phone calls, e-mails, instant messaging service (WhatsApp, etc.) and other devices including the microphone of our tv’s to listen to our conversations without a warrant.

With this statement I’m not defending that the Chinese government is an example of freedom, Quite contrary. The Chinese Government is the opposite of a freedom defender. Like all the governments in the world proactively spies on its citizens and those who are inside their boarders. The Chinese Government is one of the fiercest dictatorships worldwide and one of the countries where the individual liberties are more suppressed. As citizens we must fight against all types of dictatorship even if it’s masked up or not. We have to understand the importance of privacy and what to do to protect ourselves because the idea that our country or government would protect us is false. We must fully understand these topics so we can make the world a better and safer place.