Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith has called on the U. S. government to lift the ban on it supplying Huawei with Windows software for the Chinese company’s computers.
Huawei was blacklisted by the Trump administration back in July the implication of which is the China-US trade war and companies no longer able to sell technologies to the Chinese firm and by extension companies like Microsoft can no longer have their office applications on the Huawei laptop.
U. S. defence claims that Huawei technologies could potentially be used to spy on the government and therefore constitutes a threat to national security.
Brad Smith said he did not believe the US’s security would be “undermined” by letting Huawei’s customers use its operating system or Office apps.
“Governments around the world are going to address their national security needs,” he told BBC News.
“But we believe it would be a mistake at the same time to try to draw some new digital iron curtain down the Pacific Ocean – I think that would hold back the United States, would hold back the democracies of the world.
“We’re one of a number of companies that has applied with the US Commerce department so that we can continue to provide our software operating system to Huawei for devices like laptops.
“There may be some issues that require some approaches around 5G but one should ask whether that is the right approach for all of the equipment that a particular company might make.”
As a result of the ban, Huawei will launch its latest Android flagship handset on Wednesday without some of Google’s key apps, including YouTube, Maps and its Play Store.
In addition, Huawei intends to offer a service in phone shops to teach users how to load Google’s software on to the Mate 30 themselves.
Huawei maintains that it poses no cyber-security risk because the Chinese government could make it compromise its customers.
“Huawei’s devices and networks are not a threat to the United States, or any country,” its website states.
“We fully abide by all local laws and regulations in every nation we operate in.”
Source: BBC Technology
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