Huawei or not Huawei, is that the question?

Globe and Mail reporters Steven Chase and Robert Fife have a front-pager in today’s paper about the trials and tribulations of the Chinese tech conglomerate. The gist of the story is that Huawei has been loading up with all kinds of lobbyists and strategists for a full-on assault on Canadian public opinion.

The reason for that lies in the controversy over whether or not US allies should be allowed to use Huawei technology in their 5G networks. Uncle Sam has said we’d better not if we know what’s good for us. Some US allies, like Australia and New Zealand, have fallen in line, while others, like the UK and Canada, are, at least for the moment, maintaining the fiction that they are sovereign nations who make their own decisions.

Being a Chinese company in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party, the official fear is that the commies are going to use their technology to spy on us. Probably true, but they’re going to spy on us anyway, as are the Russians. Most of our allies will be spying on us too. That’s just statecraft in the 21st century. Everybody spies on everybody.

Spying aside, there’s a far more important reason why we should go slow on the 5G roll-out. Google “dangers of 5G” and over sixty million results come up. I haven’t had the opportunity to review all of them, but it strikes me that the technology is a long way from having been proven safe.

The New York Times would have you believe that 5G health concerns are fake news invented by Russia’s RT network. After all, Russian and China are moving ahead with implementing 5G in their own countries. Would they be doing so if they really believed it was unsafe?

I don’t know, but it’s hard to believe that the NYT wants us to set our public health standards at the same level as Russia and China. Does that strike anyone as a prudent strategy?

The history of technological “progress” is littered with really bad ideas that were pushed on us by people who profit from them, from thalidomide to nuclear power to fracking, which in hindsight might not have been such great ideas after all.

The sensible thing to do is to take the focus off the politically motivated Huawei hysteria and pause while we get a better understanding of the health risks associated with this technology, instead of taking the promoters at their word about its safety.