S8 Ep499: Jonathan Pelson proposes using Open RAN and Western strengths in cloud technology and software to break Huawei's dominance through permissionless innovation and diverse ecosystems challenging Chinese telecommunications monopoly. 4
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with Jonathan Pelson, the author of Wireless Wars, China's dangerous |
| 0:09.1 | domination of 5G and how we're fighting back. |
| 0:12.2 | John's made the case Huawei as a threat. |
| 0:14.2 | What is to be done? |
| 0:15.6 | He lists three possibilities. |
| 0:18.1 | Scale, change the industry standards, or go radical. And he rejects all three |
| 0:23.8 | because we come to the fact that what we have here is a challenge to the way we think and the way |
| 0:31.5 | we do business in the West and the way Huawei must because it's a product of the Chinese |
| 0:37.4 | Communist Party. It's a product of state security. |
| 0:40.6 | So recommendation, John, is built upon Huawei's weakness. |
| 0:46.0 | What is their weakness? |
| 0:47.6 | Well, this is the irony. |
| 0:49.5 | Their weaknesses are discipline and their focus and their scale of business. |
| 0:56.6 | It doesn't sound like a weakness. |
| 0:58.4 | I mean, our weakness when we were competing against them was that we were all every |
| 1:02.5 | man for himself and people were chaotic and they would just slice and dice us, |
| 1:07.0 | divide and conquer. |
| 1:08.1 | But if you really look at the opportunity here, the worst thing we could do |
| 1:12.0 | is say, well, let's just try to put all our resources into one big company and we'll get everyone |
| 1:16.5 | aligned on a better response to Huawei. Maybe we'll give $10 billion to Erickson or Nokia. That's |
| 1:22.2 | been proposed, in fact. That looks like China's model, but we're not as good at doing that as China is. |
| 1:29.0 | They will win. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

