Abstract

Against the backdrop of the global US–China–EU technology competition, this working paper examines the security–economic nexus as European policymakers prepare for the rollout of the next-generation mobile technology network or 5G. Using a comparative approach, it will explore how various EU institutions and EU members approach the tradeoffs between their technological and economic–industrial policies and the inherent cybersecurity risks in 5G technology, notably, the risks in the prospective involvement of the Chinese company Huawei in their 5G rollout. It will particularly look at the approaches of the United Kingdom, Germany and France. The key question that will be addressed is whether the UK government’s turnaround in July 2020 to ban Huawei from its 5G rollout and the increasingly assertive stance of several EU member states against Huawei and China are merely the result of American political pressure or the consequence of the changing EU–China relationship or both.

About the Author

Dr Frank Umbach has been an Adjunct Senior Fellow of RSIS since September 2017. He graduated from the University of Bonn with an MA in Political Science and a PhD. He is currently Research Director at the European Cluster for Climate Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS)/Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) at the University of Bonn; and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bonn; a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Natolin (Warsaw) in Poland, where he teaches “EU energy (foreign) policies”, and an Executive Advisor at ProventisPartners, Munich (an M&A company). He is also a consultant for NATO, giving regularly presentations at high-level NATO conferences and seminars, and the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) and Wikistrat.com. He is an internationally recognised expert on global energy security, geopolitics, critical (energy) infrastructure protection, and (maritime) security policies in Asia–Pacific as well as Russia/Central Asia.

From 2014 to 2017, Dr Umbach had been an independent subject matter expert on international energy security for NATO’s annual “Strategic Forecast Analysis”. Between 2012 and 2015, Dr Umbach was a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. From 2003 to 2007, he was Co-Chair of the European Committee of the Council for Security Co-operation in Asia–Pacific (CSCAP–Europe). From 1996 to 2007, he headed the “Security Policies in Asia–Pacific” and “International Energy Security” programmes at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Bonn and Berlin. Earlier, he was a Research Fellow at the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies (BIOst) from 1991 to 1994 and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs in Tokyo from 1995 to 1996.

Dr Umbach has done consultancy work and testimonies for: the German Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence Policies; European Commission and European Parliament; US State and Energy Departments; the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission of the US Congress; the Lithuanian Government; the House of Lords of the British Parliament; the Polish Foreign and Economic Ministries; Hungarian Foreign Ministry; South Korean Foreign Ministry; NATO; United Nations; Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); World Energy Council; and the Federation of German Industries (BDI). He has also consulted for several energy and consultancy companies (including APCO and Roland Berger) and has advised international investors through GLG.

Dr Umbach is the author of more than 500 publications in more than 30 countries. These publications include the papers he has written as a contract author for the Geopolitical Intelligence Service (GIS) in Liechtenstein since 2011.