I find it all rather hypocritical when numerous countries are far from innocent when it comes to already having involved some of their own network/comms providers and electronics/engineering companies to spy on their behalf. NSA has been found guilty several times using network providers to obtain intelligence data and illegal surveillance.
Anyone who believes only certain countries have the potential to spy is pretty naive. It's not conspiracy theory stuff to believe that any/all countries have the potential to enlist the help network providers and equipment manufacturers under the guise of being patriotic. It is a conspiracy theory if you think only one or two countries have the potential.
As I said in my previous post this has been bubbling for many years, and as B*cat said it's rose to the surface again when Trump was in power. Trump has a thing about China. You can tell by the way he pronounced the name when talking about covid. Trump also has a thing about Russia and Putin, but this time its more like a strange love affair when your eyes are blinkered at how destructive they can be. The result is Americans who deny Russia's interference in the 2016 US elections and believe 2020 results were rigged. They believe Fox & RT and have a weird concept about what Communism really is. It also seemed to take away some of the heat away from what was happening with Snowden.... oh and you had the UK newly Brexited and looking at forming new trade deals. Here was an opportunity for Trump not wanting the UK to use Huawei and force us to steer clear of Chinese equip. This last sentence comes out stronger than I mean it to be but Im struggling to find the right word(s)... so before things get too jumbly, I'll just say that any country has the ability so the reminder is you have to consider who your allies are.
There is also one stonking big problem in that as far as equipment for the infrastructure Huawei currently leads and has the more advanced technology. Stripping out everything would be time consuming & costly... and put us further behind by several years.
When it comes to home consumer equipment, then the choice is extremely limited when most manufacturing is done in China.
[B*cat edited to remove the unintended markup code.]
