GOP Senators send letter to Microsoft addressing Huawei questions

A group of Republican senators sent a letter to Microsoft President Brad Smith to address questions he raised about Chinese telecom company Huawei.

The letter was in response to comments Smith made recently in Bloomberg Businessweek on how the U.S. government should provide more evidence of wrongdoing by Huawei so that business leaders can decide whether to continue doing business with the company.

The letter – issued by Sens Tom Cotton (R-AR), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rick Scott (R-FL), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) — outlines publicly available evidence of Huawei’s spying, technology theft, and economic warfare. It illustrates what the senators call the threat Huawei poses to the national security of the U.S. and its allies.

“We appreciate Microsoft’s communications with our offices and your understanding of the threats posed by Huawei,” they wrote to Smith. “We also understand that many American companies have conducted business in good faith with Huawei and other Chinese telecommunications companies. While the U.S. government and American industry must take certain steps to protect our people and our telecommunications infrastructure, we do not want to cause undue harm to those American companies. We believe, however, that a review of publicly available evidence indicates that the security concerns about Huawei are real and urgent.”

The senators say they sympathize with Smith’s concern that Microsoft and other businesses are not privy to this intelligence.

“We believe the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the intelligence community could share more of this intelligence in an appropriate fashion to affected businesses. We would welcome further conversation with Microsoft and other businesses about coordinating such briefings,” they added.