The relationship between China and the United States is becoming more complicated every day. Donald Trump's repeated complaints to Beijing about mismanagement, withholding information, and his refusal to investigate the coronavirus outbreak ended in an otherwise strained relationship.
Thus, the pandemic became another chapter of the "cold war 4.0" that confronts the main powers and whose splinters reach the rest of the countries.
Beyond the trade issue, which includes higher tariffs on the arrival of products from Hong Kong to the United States and the suspension of American agricultural imports on Chinese soil, the two powers maintain a crossfire in the technological field:
- Washington put the magnifying glass on Huawei and demands a license from its companies to allow them to contract products and services from oriental firms
- Beijing created a "list of unreliable entities" to restrict the operations of Apple, Cisco, Qualcomm, Boeing and other companies.
The dispute, which started as a trade battle and an escalation of tariffs and cross-penalties, very soon uncovered the biggest undercurrent of that fight: deciding which nation will impose the 5G "model" (which will later be replicated by other countries). And, associated with it, another more relevant question: which of the two will control information throughout the planet.
Although the White House has just allowed Chinese firms to collaborate in the design of the standards for this technology, it will try at all costs to prevent it from being the dominant supplier globally.
Patricio Giusto, director of the Sino-Argentine Observatory and teacher of the UCA Executive Program on Contemporary China, tells iProUP that the pandemic made an already existing war for technological supremacy escalate.
"China has long been surpassing the United States. Trump sees in that country a threat. Today we have a conflict that is going to increase and become increasingly tense," he says.
"It is not a trade war, but rather one of access to the network as a source of information and as a tool for commercial and geopolitical pressure for the manufacturing country. The debate involves choosing who is going to spy on you," says Emmanuel Jaffrott, consultant to iProUP. and a doctor in telecommunications.
Thus, the main dispute is over who controls 5G mobile networks, an area in which the Asian giant has more troops deployed and which will be vital for the economy of the future.
What is 5G?
5G is the fifth generation of mobile networks, as each of the stages that cellular telephony experienced since its birth is known:
- The analog 1G, which only allowed talking on the phone
- The 2G that introduced the SMS
- The 3G provided by the Internet
- The 4G that brought mobile broadband
5G offers:
- Higher speed
- Lower latency (time it takes two computers to communicate)
- More devices that can be connected to the same base
It will enhance:
- The Internet of Things (IoT)
- Smart cities
- Driverless cars
- Connected homes
- Virtual and augmented reality
Who do you prefer that I spy on you?
"The issue is key in any modern society, since we are not only talking about people with cell phones but the possibility of connecting all objects. The US proposal is not to cede strategic and sensitive infrastructure to whoever can use it in their against, "Enrique Carrier, a telecommunications expert, tells iProUP.
In December, the US Embassy in Buenos Aires issued a red alert: "China's telecommunications providers may be a threat to national security." Two weeks later, he sent a new message demanding to guarantee respect for individual freedom and privacy for the proper development of 5G.
"It is clear that this war is a kind of partitioning of the world," says Jafrott. And he adds: "Whoever has control of the infrastructure will have access to all the data and developments that the new technology will make possible. Globally, Huawei has already signed more than 60 contracts, while Nokia closed 63 and Ericsson, 32."
Far from promoting a ceasefire, the pandemic acted as a catalyst for the confrontation, as it brought forth what is coming: a more automated and less dependent production, in which 5G will play a central role.
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Truce? The White House allowed
China to work on 5G standards
"The challenge for manufacturers was to demonstrate the value of digitization in different areas of the economy and the government. And it was largely resolved by the forcefulness of COVID-19," José Otero, vice president of Latin America and the Caribbean, told iProUP from 5G Americas.
"5G will connect up to a million devices per square meter, 10 times more than 4G," he adds. Thus, it will ensure a network ecosystem capable of supporting the traffic generated by that amount of equipment and at much higher speeds than today.
According to GSMA:
- China today controls 40% of the mobile market
- It will have 70% of global 5G this year
- Already built more than 160,000 5G stations covering more than 50 cities
- Operators will invest more than US $ 160,000 million in their networks until 2025
And what happens in Argentina?
China has a great interest in entering with its 5G network in Latin America. In the particular case of Argentina, it has already carried out three real environmental tests with Telecom Personal and plans to repeat them with Claro and Telefónica.
"Our solution, Single Ran, allows the reuse of a good part of 4G equipment to reach 5G in a smoother way and save in the early stages," Juan Bonora, director of Institutional Relations at Huawei Argentina, explains to iProUP.
While telcos look at the price, there are issues of geopolitical alignment that will impact their decisions. According to Jaffrott, "The US is pushing for China not to win the local 5G market."
And he adds: "For the president of one nation to put pressure on the president of another, clearly there is another intention, which is to gain information and control networks throughout Latin America."
For Carrier, it will be a political decision, but the brand of equipment that the operators used for the deployment of 4G networks will have more weight.
According to market data, the Asian technology company is responsible for 70% of the national Telecom network and 100% of the fiber optic network that the provider owns in Capital and GBA. The core of the Movistar network is 100% provided by Huawei.
From Telecom they assure iProUP that they maintain commercial relations with the main international suppliers, exclusively attending to attributes of innovation, robustness and cutting-edge technology. Huawei has been one of its strategic partners for more than 15 years.
"With them we developed a large part of the process of updating our mobile network and the deployment of 4G since 2014, because their solutions comply with standards of robustness and scalability, not only to have the fastest network in Argentina, but to be prepared when 5G is commercially available, "remarked from Telecom.
Without missiles
Analysts understand that 5G will not only be a source for intelligence gathering, but also one of the fields in which cyberwar will unleash - that is, remotely executed attacks on critical infrastructure of nations and companies.
In fact, the Cybersecurity Ventures firm assures that the damages to companies and States will represent $ 6 trillion this year. This is equivalent to 7% of the world gross product and 11 times the Argentine GDP.
"The US and China generate mutual cyber-aggressions on a daily basis. Of course: they impeccably manage an escalation of their conflicts because it is not in their interest to provoke conventional responses," Roberto Uzal, director of the UBA's Master in Cyber Defense and Cybersecurity, explains to iProUP.
For Giusto, we are already in a cyber war. "The difference is that they are not declared battles, soldiers, tanks or planes, but that the attacks are fired from private intelligence agencies so that it is not known where they come from," he explains.
He adds: "China's cyber infrastructure network receives 30,000 attacks per day. Taiwan, which is in conflict with that country, about 100,000. Russia uses this strategy a lot."
With regard to Argentina, Uzal trusts that large-scale terrorist attacks have already been received and it cannot be ruled out that these same groups are not in possession of cyber weapons.
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All internet-connected devices across the planet can be used by virtual militias to launch cyber-warfare attacks
"Nobody can affirm that it is impossible for constituent elements of our critical infrastructure to become targets of transnational cyberterrorism," he remarks.
For his part, Gustavo Linares, General Director of Computer Security for the Buenos Aires government, tells iProUP that "all companies and governments suffer many daily attacks, of different dimensions." And he emphasizes: "Anything connected to the Internet will suffer instantly because there are robots that seek to find a victim or include it within their network."
This means that people's cell phones and computers can be used by "4.0" militias to attack government or corporate platforms without the user realizing it.
Linares reveals that, since the pandemic began, complaints increased 110% compared to the previous year. And they will become more frequent with the greater adoption of technology. In this sense, Huawei's Global Industry Vision (GIV) document lists 10 trends that will define societies in the medium term and in which 5G will be crucial, for example:
- 2,800 million people will use this service
- 15% of vehicles will use C-V2X, a technology that connects cars with each other, with the environment and pedestrians
- There will be a robot for every 100 employees in factories
- 90% of the population will use personal assistants
- 20,000 million smart appliances will be in operation
- 100 billion devices will connect to the Internet
Thus, it is likely that sooner rather than later, the wars of the future will cease to take place in one country to be in everyone, in cyberspace and without openly declared enemies. And that we are all soldiers without knowing it.