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So it turns out the ban on Huawei was not (just) because American companies lost competition on equal terms; it was Huawei’s unwillingness to “cooperate”, ie install backdoors for US agencies.
Yeah, it was obvious from the start that "they are so insecure and have all the backdoors" actually meant "they dont have backdoors for us" :D
I don't think you can draw any of those conclusions as the alternative to Huawei is equipment from Nokia and Ericsson, neither of which is American.

Since the UK is one of the Five Eyes they already have information sharing agreements with the USA, so no need for backdoors either. GCHQ will just give them anything they want to know.

>Nokia and Ericsson, neither of which is American.

Both can be easily forced to cooperate. Compare with ASML.

And sure, UK can get those data already, but UK's role in all this was to provide media and political support for USA's ban. It never was about Huawei in UK's infra.

> GCHQ was confident it could work safely with the Chinese tech firm

Huawei had agreed to work with the British government and to provide their devices to CGHQ for analysis before deploying them in the UK.

But of course the key issue here is that the US does not want to lose supremacy.

The article seems to suggest the alternatives were Nokia and Ericsson. AFAIK these are EU firms.
Sweden and Finland are minuscule. They will do what the US tell them (and arguably they already do), not least now that they just happen to want to join Nato...

The issue is that China is in a position to threaten America's supremacy and so the US are trying to prevent them from increasing their influence in all areas, especially with key allies. The UK is a satellite of the US and the US want to make sure it stays that way.

In Denmark atm there is a massive hush hush spy scandal involving an imprisioned spy chief and a former high ranking opposition politician. All acused of leaking what has been know for decades. That there is a massive hitech espionage program targeting the rest of Europe, run by the US, running out of Denmark. All agreed in secret at highest government level.

It is anything similar going on in Sweden or Finland? I don't know but it wouldn't be surprising.