that floated into American airspace. China has claimed it was a weather balloon that got blown off course and accused the Americans of overreacting.
Fast-forward 15 years and the firm, now known as HMN Tech, has become the world’s fastest-growing manufacturer and layer of subsea cables, according to TeleGeography data.In 2019, Huawei Technologies came under fire from the administration of then-US President Donald Trump. The Commerce Department banned Huawei and 70 affiliates from buying parts and components from US companies without government approval.
The following account of how that deal fell apart for the Chinese players is based on interviews with six people directly involved in the SeaMeWe-6 contract. They all asked not to be named as they were not authorised to discuss potential trade secrets or matters of national security.Large undersea cables cost several hundreds of millions of dollars.
But behind the scenes, SubCom and the US government were sowing seeds of doubt about whether HMN Tech was the best company for the job. One senior Asian telecom executive recalled a meeting in mid-2020 with a top US diplomat and an American digital trade attaché. The US officials explained how sanctions on HMN Tech would render the cable virtually worthless, providing him a printed spreadsheet with an economic analysis showing just that.Two other Asian telecom executives in the consortium told Reuters they met with both Chinese and US diplomats, who urged them to back HMN Tech and SubCom, respectively.
China Telecom and China Mobile threatened to walk off the project, taking tens of millions of dollars of investment with them. But the majority of the consortium picked SubCom, and the two Chinese state-owned firms departed. Two new investors - Telekom Malaysia Berhad and PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International - joined the deal, and some of the original members raised their stakes to make up the shortfall, the people said.
Team Telecom is run by the National Security Division of the Department of Justice . That division is headed by Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen. Nominated to that position by Biden in May 2021, Olsen has worked in a string of intel posts. He served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center under former President Barack Obama from 2011 to 2014, and before that as general counsel for the National Security Agency, the US spy nerve center.
If US loses they will bomb the cable.