FIRST ON FOX: Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are calling on the Department of Commerce to investigate Spain’s controversial decision to contract with Huawei — a company with bridging links to the Chinese Communist Party — to store judicial wiretap data.
They warn the agreement poses a serious threat to U.S. digital trade and national security.
In a letter this week to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Subcommittee Chairs Reps. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., and Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., warned that Spain’s contracts with Huawei to manage and store sensitive data related to the country’s wiretapping services were “deeply troubling.”
They noted that “Huawei and other Chinese firms maintain documented CCP ties, posing profound risks to national and economic security.”
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The lawmakers further warned that the decision “underscores a regrettable trend in the European Union (EU): governments tacitly embrace Chinese technology and hold American digital trade exports to double standards,” resulting in “significant uncertainty for American companies in every sector that engages in transatlantic commerce.”
They urged Commerce to “investigate the Spanish government’s decision, and similar actions by EU governments, that negatively impact U.S. digital trade, data security, and telecommunications interests, as well as the interests of American workers.”
Last month, Spain’s Ministry of the Interior quietly awarded a €12.3 million contract to Huawei to manage and store judicially authorized wiretaps using its OceanStor 6800 V5 enterprise-grade servers.
The move prompted top lawmakers on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to call on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to review intelligence sharing with Spain to ensure that Beijing was not intercepting secrets.
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House Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford called Spain’s deal “almost unimaginable” in a statement last month.
The European Commission issued a formal warning, stating that “Huawei represents materially higher risks” and urged member states to exclude high-risk vendors from critical infrastructure.
Sources within the Spanish National Police and the Civil Guard told Spanish news outlet The Objective they were uneasy with the partnership.
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“We are being asked to secure sensitive operations using systems that are not trusted by most of our allies,” one law enforcement source reportedly said.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) National Intelligence Law of 2017 requires PRC individuals and entities to support PRC intelligence services.
Chinese hackers breached U.S. court wiretap systems last year, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, China “remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks” and has targeted communications infrastructure specifically, recently through the hacking operation Salt Typhoon.
