The strategy therefore goes beyond rules governing cyber conflicts and focuses on U.S. efforts to secure control of physical technologies such as undersea cables that connect countries, companies and individual users to cloud services.
Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has sought to dominate the cable-laying business in the Pacific and around the world. But Mr. Fick insisted that U.S., Japanese and European companies still dominate the market and “this is still an area where we can compete fiercely.”
Blinken made clear in his speech that he envisions diplomacy that includes persuading countries not to rely on Chinese suppliers or other countries in China’s technology orbit for supplies of undersea cables, data storage or cloud computing. He described an increasingly zero-sum competition in which countries would be forced to choose between signing up to a Western-dominated technology “stack” or Chinese-dominated technology.
“These are areas where the United States currently leads the world, but providers from authoritarian countries are becoming increasingly competitive,” Mr Blinken told the RSA conference. “It is critical that we work with trusted suppliers and exclude untrustworthy ones from the ecosystem.”
Blinken made clear that he labeled Chinese companies as untrustworthy.
He cited a U.S.-backed effort with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan to connect the 100,000 people living on the Pacific islands – which, while small in population, are vulnerable to China due to their strategic location Goal – Its efforts are to expand its influence in the South Pacific.
