- 'standard essential patents' necessary to implement the technical standards in question, all other companies will have to license the patent.[1] As well as an immediate commercial gain, such influence can also have long-term, strategic consequences, as future technology development may rely on the same or similar patented technology, thereby helping to embed a commercial and strategic advantage. In other words, if China has influence over the technical standards, it can influence the long-term direction of travel for technology development—with all the economic and national security implications that this would have for the UK and its allies.
- One example of this is the use of Chinese technology in so-called 'smart cities' (or, as the NCSC has referred to them, 'connected places') which rely on Information and Communication Technology and the Internet of Things devices to collect and analyse data to improve municipal services.[2] The online forum 'Just Security' has reported that smart cities are an integral part of what it describes as China's "AI-driven domestic repression, with highly escalated surveillance capacities" and that China is shaping the international debate around normalising the use of such technology "by flooding the zone of multi-lateral tech-related diplomacy". It cites China's "ability to exert influence at tech-standard setting bodies, like the International Telecommunications Industry (ITU) where interoperability standards for the future are set [and where China's] aim has been to push China's preferred protocols as the global default for Internet of Things and other emerging technologies".[3]
- MI5 told the Committee that Chinese dominance of technical standards would *** create opportunities for China to influence the future of the internet:
if China, say, were to be in a position to substantially influence or even control the future generations of technical standards, with large parts of the globe then essentially following a Chinese technological agenda … that would inevitably … ***, because at the moment the global standards essentially were set in the US in the 70s around the internet protocols and so forth.
If gradually over the next few decades you were to shift to a model where states control the internet, that has huge obligations for freedom of speech and very long-term national security implications in that sense, because … China could be in a position to persuade a lot of other states to side with it around having a more kind of authoritarian view, not just on the standards of how the internet runs technically, but what control states are able to have over content within their own borders.[4]
BBB. China's joined-up approach can be clearly seen from its use of all possible legitimate routes to acquire UK technology, Intellectual Property and data from buy-in at the 'front end' via Academia, to actual buying-in through licensing agreements and Foreign Direct Investment, to the exertion of control over inward investments and standards-setting bodies. Each represents an individual threat, but it is the cumulative threat that can now be clearly seen.
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