Security News > 2022 > October > Federal bans aren't stopping US states from buying forbidden Chinese kit

Only a "Handful" of US states have stopped buying Chinese technologies deemed by the government to pose security threats, according to a report from a Washington policy research group.

The Georgetown University think tank paper, published this week, says that "Thousands" of public officials are still purchasing prohibited tech from "Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese companies" and that most state and local governments simply haven't bought into existing federal actions by making any changes to their procurement policies.

Measures regulating buying foreign ICTS on the grounds of national security: Section 889 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which prohibited federal agencies from using equipment and services from five Chinese tech companies or working with contractors that use covered equipment.

Title 2 of the SECURE Technology Act, which created a federal council to analyze supply chain security threats and recommended orders to remove or exclude certain technologies from federal networks.

The third is the obvious - as "Chinese companies gain market share, the United States and its allies may find themselves relying on their biggest geopolitical competitor for access to key technologies," and the authors note that as America began to put the federal laws into place, "Some Chinese firms, like Huawei, commanded markets with no viable US competitors in the first place."

The US government has also put pressure on its allies to exclude hardware from Huawei and other Chinese companies from 5G network buildouts across the world with claims that it is a security risk.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/10/28/federal_bans_china_law/