On August 5, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a statement calling for a “Clean Network to safeguard America’s assets” against the threat of Chinese infiltration. The statement posted by the US State Department read, in part:“The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to guarding our citizens’ privacy and our companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.” It calls for: Building a coalition of “clean countries,” which only allow “trusted” vendors in their 5G networks; Removing “untrusted” Chinese apps from US app stores; Preventing Chinese smartphone manufacturers from offering “trusted” apps for download on their app stores; and Preventing sensitive information generated in the US from being stored on Chinese cloud-based systems.

(Comment: The Clean Network program is an expansion of the Clean Path initiative, a State Department effort launched in April to form an “end-to-end communication path that does not use any transmission, control, computing, or storage equipment from untrusted IT vendors, such as Huawei and ZTE.”)