Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague, the Senator from Arkansas, for his longtime leadership on a range of important national security issues, including his attention and focus on the threat posed by Huawei and ZTE, which, as he explained, are two Chinese telecommunications companies that pose a risk not just to our security but also to the privacy of American citizens. This is a threat that is here and now, and it is not one we have not been aware of for a long time. I think it is important to look back because this didn't sneak up on us overnight. If you go back to the year 2012, the House Intelligence Committee sounded the alarm on Huawei and ZTE in a bipartisan report that stated that ``China has the means, opportunity, and motive to use telecommunications companies for malicious purposes'' and that ``based on available and classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems.'' That was a House Intelligence Committee report in the year 2012. Since then, the evidence has grown even stronger. We know that the Government of China exercises significant control over its telecommunications firms and that ZTE and Huawei have close and very longstanding ties to the government. We also know that China is one of the world's most active perpetrators of economic espionage and cyber attacks in the United States.…”