Biden extends US telecom supply chain order aimed at Huawei, ZTE
President Joe Biden on Thursday extended for another year a Trump-era executive order that declared a national emergency and prohibited U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment produced by firms posing a national security risk.
The 2019 order invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which grants the president the authority to regulate commerce in response to a national emergency that threatens the U.S.
In this instance, the order targeted Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE — part of an overarching effort to secure the country’s technology from companies potentially under the sway of adversarial governments.
The “unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of information and communications technology or services designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries augments the ability of these foreign adversaries to create and exploit vulnerabilities in information and communications technology or services, with potentially catastrophic effects,” Biden said in a statement.
“This threat continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” the president added.
Martin Matishak
is the senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. Prior to joining Recorded Future News in 2021, he spent more than five years at Politico, where he covered digital and national security developments across Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. He previously was a reporter at The Hill, National Journal Group and Inside Washington Publishers.