Chris Van Hollen: “the plan had been for me to join with the Senator from Florida, now the Presiding Officer, to address our concerns in…”

“the plan had been for me to join with the Senator from Florida, now the Presiding Officer, to address our concerns in two areas. One has to do with the Chinese telecommunications company ZTE and the threat that it poses to the national security of the United States. The second is to discuss the urgent need for this Senate to take action to protect the integrity of our democracy by passing the bipartisan DETER Act, which Senator Rubio and I have introduced. Since the Senator from Florida is now presiding in the Chair, I will do my best to cover this for both of us, and I know that he will have an opportunity at some other point to cover these important issues as well. First, as for ZTE, it is a Chinese telecommunications company. It is a telecommunications company that has been exhibit A in the mix of Chinese companies that have stolen U.S. technology. In fact, when Secretary Pompeo was before the Senate a while ago, talking about the relationships between the Chinese Government and Chinese companies and talking about how they were stealing U.S. intellectual property secrets for their own purposes, ZTE would be on the top of that list. It is one of the most notorious thieves of intellectual property anywhere in the world. In the United States alone, they have been sued for patent infringement 126 times in the last 5 years.…”