Republican lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to impose new sanctions on Chinese internet companies linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
They are claiming that these businesses pose a threat to national security. Among the companies identified were Huawei, Alibaba Cloud, and other cloud storage companies.
They now demand for the administration to strengthen the regulations and eradicate the potential risk.
In a letter to the Biden administration dated April 25, nine Republican senators expressed their concern that Chinese cloud storage providers, such as Huawei Cloud, are “increasingly engaging with foreign entities.”
States like Russia may be among these foreign parties, and China may offer services like satellite imagery, which could obviously be useful for military purposes.
This could potentially facilitate Russia in hitting targets in Ukraine, which could in turn threaten the US also.
Biden should sanction Huawei Cloud, other Chinese firms -senators https://t.co/pMmQ0f1Myz @Reuters— Jim Stevenson (@VOAStevenson) April 28, 2023
Huawei provides assistance to Russia through the Sky Computing Constellation, a joint venture between Huawei and Spacety China. The Treasury Department has already sanctioned the project because of its connections to Russia. Currently, the Republican lawmakers are calling for the companies that run it to be sanctioned as well.
Senator Bill Hagerty, the leader of the group, believes that Chinese businesses’ activities “pose a threat to [U.S.] national security and economic security.” Senator Hagerty’s letter was inked by multiple Republican senators, including Ted Cruz, Steven Daines, Marco Rubio, Katie Britt, Joni Ernst, Dan Sullivan, Kevin Cramer, and Thom Tillis.
The Commerce, State, and Treasury departments have all received copies of the letter requesting them to take action against Huawei and other parties. This includes action against Alibaba Cloud, which is partially governed by a CCP committee, and is still working with Russia, but has two data centers in California’s Silicon Valley.
It has been observed that the Biden administration’s approach to China has been inconsistent so far. While they have already sanctioned some companies linked to the Chinese defense industry in 2021, however, many others that are under CCP control are still permitted to conduct business operations in the US.
These legislators are currently working to pressure Biden in addressing the inconsistencies in the nation’s security.