So a couple of weeks ago something quite extraordinary happened in London and that was that the

United States and a group of half a dozen senior administration officials, and I have to

call them that because I met some of them and I'm not allowed to say exactly who I met.

That's Dan Sabah.

He's the defense and security editor for the British newspaper The Guardian.

And they came to an offer a series of meetings firstly with ministers and an extraordinarily

almost minutes later with the group of journalists including myself.

The group of Americans was there to lobby the British government and then the press

to ban the Chinese telecom company Huawei from being part of Britain's new 5G network

infrastructure.

So the Americans sent over this last minute delegation and they had all these sort of

lurid warnings, one of which was it was nothing short of madness to allow Huawei into

British 5G networks.

The madness because the US contends that Huawei is too close to the Chinese government.

Indeed, the Trump administration has moved aggressively to limit Huawei within the US.

Now that might be a bit easier in the States but the problem in Britain is that we've been

big users of Huawei since 2000.

Three companies leading supplier in 3G, 4G networks and Britain was heading towards allowing

Huawei into the future 5G as well.

The British spy agencies have long been of the view that whatever the risks there are

in Huawei, the theoretical risk that the Chinese could engage back door surveillance or get

hold of sensitive British data some way, shape or form through 5G.

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