The Clean Network and the Future of Global Technology Competition

In May 2019, amidst of an ever-worsening trade war between the U.S. and China, President Donald Trump added Chinese telecom giant Huawei to the Department of Commerce’s “entity list,” essentially forbidding American firms from doing business with the company. Huawei, along with another Chinese telecom firm, ZTE, seemed poised to lead the globe in 5G technology, a step-wise shift in mobile communications that would be rolled out everywhere from Beijing to Beirut to Boise over the early 2020s. In the last year of Trump’s presidency, a group at the State Department led by Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Energy, and the Environment, former Silicon Valley business leader Keith Krach, embarked on a global campaign to challenge the market dominance of Chinese firms. The Clean Network initiative, which recruited countries and companies into commitments to abide by a set of shared principles in technology adoption and practices, began with 5G but Krach and others had ambitions well beyond. The controversial program to some heralded a new era of multilateral, democratic governance of the internet and to others augured a “splinternet” where market participants and countries had to choose between the U.S. and China. Whatever the view, the competitive landscape for 5G was different at the end of 2020, and participants had to understand how and why.