Shane Tews, Danielle Pletka
A specialized UN agency called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is holding its plenipotentiary conference later this month, where members will vote on a new secretary general and group of high officials. If China’s favored candidates succeed, Beijing—with the support of other authoritarian nations like Russia—will continue to dictate the rules, standards, and best practices around emerging technologies such as 5G networks. Failure on the part of the US to thwart this effort will have tangible effects on how our networks operate in the future. As two of our guests today have warned, “What is at stake is secure air travel, privacy in every sphere of modern life, and the ability of the US military to protect the American people. The stakes could not be higher.”
On the latest episode of Explain to Shane, I sat down with AEI Distinguished Senior Fellow Danielle Pletka and Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Brett Schaefer, who co-authored a report titled Countering China’s Growing Influence at the International Telecommunication Union. We were also joined by Dominique Lazanski, a global internet governance expert and previous Explain to Shane guest who last came on the show to discuss her 2020 essay, Standardising the Splinternet: How China’s Technical Standards Could Fragment the Internet. My distinguished guests discussed the upcoming ITU election, reminded us of its high stakes, and explained how China’s quest to dominate the ITU is emblematic of a larger strategy to intimidate rivals and erode the United States’ global influence.
Shane Tews: To get us started, Brett, tell us: Why should we be worried about what’s happening at the ITU? Why does this matter?
Brett Schaefer: It’s become increasingly clear over the past 5–7 years that China is trying to modify the international system to its benefit in ways that are harmful to how we believe the international system should work. The ITU is just one example that Dany and I focused on in our latest paper. This is the organization that sets standards for a number of different areas including radio frequencies, orbital slots for satellites, broadband, and, importantly, standards for internet communication and technological devices so they can operate internationally.
These standards, while they sound boring to develop, are incredibly important. They’re worth billions of dollars to companies that have the patents these standards are based on. Once these standards are set, it gives the company that develops those standards a leg up in terms of international competition because other companies are then incentivized to adopt those standards for their own purposes and devices around the world.
China is attempting to influence this process so the standards for the next several decades aren’t European standards or US standards, but instead are Chinese standards and give their companies and their government—because in China, not everything, or very little, is separate from the government—the economic and technological advantages to set the stage for our global economy.
Dominique, you spend a lot of time in these ITU meetings. Give us some context as to what is going on.
Dominique Lazanski: As US companies like Cisco and others have downsized in the past 10 years, standards have been the first thing to go. So engagement from US companies in the ITU process has decreased because it’s a cost thing—a budget issue. Brett correctly noted that there isn’t a difference between the public and private sectors in China. In a standards organization, Huawei or Tencent will always be sufficiently funded by the government or themselves.
I’m currently in Geneva at Study Group 17, which is on security. In the ITU, there are a number of study groups on security protocols, Internet of Things, the environment, and various others. Now, we have to remember that the ITU’s remit in its constitution is for telecommunications. This does not include internet protocol addressing, the internet, or anything related to what goes over telecommunications networks. That is a historical thing that happened quite a long time ago. So all these study groups should be focusing on telecommunications.
However, the remit has expanded to the point where nothing is rejected anymore. And so I’ve seen the ITU become a place to fight out this kind of thing where the US, UK and all of our allies and people that are aligned together are trying to prevent certain things from happening. China, meanwhile, is trying to bring their national standards to an international forum to gain legitimacy.
Dany, let’s step away from the tech geekiness here. Tell us about the national security and international policy implications.
Danielle Pletka: The Chinese government—as we have tried to enmesh them in a global rules-based system from which it is very difficult to stray without costs—has flipped the game on us. They have used that system to impose themselves inside the rulemaking of the international order. So it has become very difficult for us to fight back.
We see this not just inside the ITU but also inside a whole variety of international organizations. And even within the ITU, you’ve got not simply the internet and telecommunications aspect; you’ve got satellites and air traffic control, which are both regulated by the ITU. And a lot of the study groups inside the ITU are all about joining. There are private-sector groups, but stakeholders in China are not private. They are doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.
As Brett and Dominique alluded to, it costs money to join these groups. It costs $50,000 to pay the ITU and $300,000 per engineer. You can understand why Cisco and Verizon aren’t eager to go tell their fiduciaries, “Hey, we have to spend a few million bucks getting our engineers into this thing that we really don’t want to explain to you, but we swear it’s really important.” And so the Chinese have owned that standard setting because we have to pay for those privately, but the Chinese pay for Huawei and ZTE to send their engineers. They have simply outtalked, outbid, outregulated, outsuggested, and outpatented us in their effort to dominate this space.
We’d call the ITU’s expanding remit “mission creep” in the national security world. Here, it’s almost impossible for us to push back because we’re not paying attention most of the time and we don’t believe in industrial policy in this country. We don’t like giving Cisco and Verizon extra taxpayer dollars in to be an ITU stakeholder.
Everybody likes to think this war is taking place in the South China Sea or over Nancy Pelosi going to Taiwan. But it really takes place at the micro level. The Chinese are always there playing the game, and we are not there full time.
Russia is also playing a huge role here, especially with regard to the upcoming ITU election. But unless you spend time thinking about the ITU, nobody is paying attention. So, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, an American citizen currently in Geneva, is going up against a Russian named Rashid Ismailov for the secretary general position. What is going on there?
Dominique Lazanski: In addition to the secretary general, there will also be a vote for the head of the three sectors, the deputy secretary general, the radio board, and a few others. But on the secretary general side, Bogdan-Martin is an American who has worked for the ITU for a long time. Four years ago, she was elected as director of the development sector (ITU-D), which is responsible for capacity building, best practices, and regional initiatives concerning telecommunications. I personally think she did a fantastic job of reforming ITU-D’s finances, which the UN is not strong at. She has brought people who are known to the ITU but were in the private sector or, indeed, regulators in other countries to help her do that over the last four years.
Now, she is running to be the first-ever female secretary general of the ITU against Ismailov, who used to work for the ITU and has held senior positions at Huawei and a company called VEON. He has not been out on the trail or at other ITU meetings this year. But we all know he’s been doing it through the Russian government. There have been deals cut throughout Africa, the former Soviet Union, and other areas of the world like Venezuela, for example, to secure votes for him. Ismailov is running on a platform to give nation states more autonomy and the ITU more control in the hope that internet governance and all the multistakeholder things that you, Shane, deal with almost on a daily basis will come into the ITU.
The US has been quite active in promoting Bogdan-Martin’s candidacy both publicly and in ITU meetings, but we don’t know what has happened behind the scenes between Russia and other countries.
Brett Schaefer: If Ismailov is elected, he is not going to be a free actor. Also, the current secretary general of the ITU is already a Chinese national who acts at the behest of the Chinese and Russian governments. Ismailov would do the same. These authoritarian governments do not allow their citizens to act with the freedom of conscience and neutrality that is expected of international civil servants.
Russia and China very closely align in what they want the ITU to do, where they want the ITU to go, and what they want the ITU to involve itself in regarding internet censorship and a number of different issues that are going to be hostile to US interests, policies, and priorities—and those of like-minded countries in Europe and other areas of the world.
And so this is very concerning. Having Ismailov elected would in essence be a third term of Houlin Zhao—potentially a fourth term after that, because these individuals tend to be reelected once they’re in office.
Still, there are reasons to be optimistic about Bogdan-Martin. It’s very rare for someone from a developed country to head ITU-D, which means she has established many relationships over time with foreign governments and their representatives in Geneva. Those personal relationships could override the inclinations of the governments because these are secret ballots. The governments may tell their representatives to do one thing in the vote, but they may do something else in the voting booth, or may not receive instruction and will just vote based on their relationships. Ismailov doesn’t have that type of long-term, in-depth relationship with many of these individuals.
The United States also has significant influence with member states. We’re not quite as transactional as the Chinese or the Russians in this area, but a lot of these developing countries are recipients of US foreign assistance. So the State or Commerce Department meeting with these individuals and saying, “We really would like you to vote for our candidate” does have some sway.
Still, we should be pulling out all of the stops right now because it is crucial to have a person who will respect the independence and integrity of the ITU mission as the secretary general—not someone who will be receptive in advancing the priorities of China, Russia, and other authoritarian states.
Any recommendations for a corrective course from either the current or a future administration?
Danielle Pletka: Given the magnitude of what’s at stake, our rather blasé government attitude is troubling. We act like the ITU doesn’t matter that much. So when we say we hope Bogdan-Martin is getting the kind of backing Ismailov is getting, the fact that none of us actually know for sure is concerning.
We just have to firewall this off and say, “No, we like the grassroots internet system we have. We don’t an ITU system dominated by China and Russia.” The standards are everything. We talked about helping companies become part of standard setting, but I think the biggest thing that underpins everything we’ve said is having a credible alternative. Brett and my former boss used to say, “You can’t beat something with nothing.” That needs to be our attitude.
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