Labour condemns ‘catalogue of waste’ on government ‘credit cards’
GuardianDec 27, 2022
The Facts
Britain will propose new procurement laws on Wednesday, which are intended to protect sensitive industries from cyberattacks. The policies plan to create a new unit to scrutinize suppliers and give the government new powers to ban suppliers from certain contracts.
The government will put forward changes to legislation next week — assessing the tie between the private sector and other nations regarding both infrastructure and supply chains.
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
The government is introducing this bill to protect Britain from China's techno-authoritarianism. The Chinese Communist Party aims to engineer Western dependence on PRC technologies and then use its security laws to force Chinese companies to turn over sensitive technologies and other intellectual property to Beijing. This bill is important to defend the British people.
Establishment-critical narrative
The UK and others are acting out of fear. The US and its allies are overstretching national security concerns to suppress competition from PRC corporations. Banning Chinese tech firms from Western 5G markets is political theater. Just because Western companies have put in so-called "backdoor" access when they build telephone networks around the world doesn't necessarily mean China is doing it. In fact, there is no hard evidence that China is actually using its tech firms for espionage.
