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© Government Information Press Service
Bulgaria and the United States signed framework documents on the security of 5G networks and nuclear energy, which took place in the presence of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and, through a video link, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the service of government press.
“Bulgaria has joined the Clean Network initiative. This is another big step forward in our relations. With this law, Bulgaria joins the growing coalition of countries and companies committed to protecting their 5G networks from unreliable providers.” He said. and in a statement from the United States Embassy in Sofia.
The two statements are defined as “key documents” and although they are in force as a memorandum of understanding and are not binding, from the tone of the fifth generation communication networks it can be assumed that Bulgaria accepts Washington’s position that the Chinese companies team is undesirable in them.
The problem is that the three main mobile operators in the country have built and are already testing their 5G networks based on Huawei technology. If the Bulgarian-American statement follows the government’s decisions to withdraw this equipment, it should be clarified how long it will delay mass access to such service. Also important is the answer on who will bear the costs of the change, which amounts to hundreds of millions of euros and is likely to reach and exceed BGN 1 billion.
You can read what they have decided so far in Europe and around the world about Huawei and 5G here.
Investing in the recent deployment of high-speed communications and 5G networks is one of the areas in which the European Commission encourages Member States to prepare plans under the anti-crisis fund to combat the effects of the pandemic. But it is unclear whether, if Bulgaria finally requests EU funds to replace the Chinese team, the EU Council would approve such plans.
© Government Information Press Service
“The Secretary of State of the United States highlighted the excellent work done to prepare the construction of the fifth generation networks and expressed his confidence that the signing of the declaration will guarantee the general security of the Euro-Atlantic family,” the government said in a statement. .
“According to Pompeo, secure networks for 5G technologies will allow all interested operators to be trained to work in such a way as to ensure secure networks not only for Bulgaria, but also for EU and NATO member states,” add your text.
© United States Embassy / Facebook
The European Commission has a position of principles and recommended tools for 5G network providers. But several countries, including Britain and, more recently, Sweden, have decided not to allow Chinese companies to enter. Germany still holds the door open for Huawei, the world’s leading supplier of this type of equipment, as it assesses the balance between security, cost and waste of time until a competitive European or American alternative emerges. If Berlin leaves the Chinese team, France and other countries, which are still waiting, will surely follow suit.
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“Our communications must be clean, secure, transparent, ethical and comply with all legal standards necessary for the protection of personal data,” said the prime minister. Borissov said that 5G networks “will be built on the principles of free and fair competition, transparency and the rule of law.”
Nowhere in the statement is China mentioned, but Undersecretary of State Keith Krak, who attended the ceremony in Sofia, described the moment as historic. “As the Prime Minister pointed out, the world is waking up and opening its eyes to the dangers that would be hidden by unreliable fifth-generation network providers. We must realize this risk. We must realize that a clean network is vital to the economic cooperation, for security and Bulgaria joins the EU countries, which are already part of the clean network ”, he added.
For Washington, a “clean network” without hesitation means one thing: no involvement of Chinese suppliers. The United States has even warned its partners that it will not fully share security information with those with Chinese equipment.
© Government Information Press Service
The Minister of Energy, Temenuzhka Petkova, and the Undersecretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation of the United States Department of State, Christopher Ford, signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the two governments, the content of which has not yet been published.
It is a strategic cooperation in the field of nuclear energy for civil purposes, and according to Minister Petkova the document “will contribute to the implementation of our main priority to achieve the diversification of energy sources” and reduce carbon emissions to through nuclear energy.
“We are signing a document with a fantastic partner like Bulgaria. Our partnership is strategic and important for many areas, including national energy security and diversification of energy sources,” said Christopher Ford, the Bulgarian government said in a statement.
The announcement of this bilateral cooperation memorandum, “given Bulgaria’s interest in new safe nuclear energy technologies for civilian purposes developed by the United States,” spoke of the EU. “In the context of the Green Deal for Climate Neutrality by 2050, Bulgaria intends to expand its nuclear program with safe state-of-the-art technologies”, because “the objective of the European Green Deal cannot be achieved without the use of nuclear energy” . for peaceful purposes. “
Who is Keith Krak and what are “clean nets”?
Keith Krak is practically the highest-ranking economic diplomat in the United States. He is Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment. This is the election of Mike Pompeo as the leader of Washington’s campaign against China’s entry into the US technology sector and the protection of the intellectual property of US companies and institutes. With high-ranking colleagues from other American institutions, Krak persuaded his allies to cut or severely limit their ties with Chinese companies in the name of so-called clean networks.
Clean Networks is an initiative announced by the Secretary of State in April as Clean Path to protect US data from “untrusted vendors.” In August, Mike Pompeo announced his expansion with Clean Network and called for “all freedom loving individuals and businesses” to join.
These are 5 areas:
– pure media: to ensure that no Chinese telecommunications company provides international telecommunications between the United States and other countries
– clean storage– Remove Unreliable Chinese Apps From Online Stores Like TikTok, WeChat, And Others That “Pose A Significant Threat To The Personal Data Of American Citizens”
– clean apps: Preventing Huawei and Other Untrusted Online Retailers from Installing or Allowing Downloads of the Most Popular US Mobile Applications “We Don’t Want Businesses to Be Complicit in Huawei’s Human Rights Abuse or the surveillance apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party. “
– clear cloud: Protect the most sensitive personal information of US citizens and business intellectual property, including COVID vaccine research, from being available in cloud-based systems by companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom and Tencent. –
– clean cables: to ensure that the Communist Party of China does not have access to information carried by undersea cables that connect the United States and other countries to the global Internet; Pompeo explicitly named Huawei Marine as a low-priced company that wins contracts to lay such cables around the world.
