Through an executive order, President Donald Trump has extended the ban on Huawei working with US companies or buying telecommunications equipment from companies deemed a national security risk until May 2021, according to Reuters.
While the ban doesn’t explicitly call out specific companies, it’s been used to virtually shut down US operations with Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE, which can no longer sell products in the US or work with companies like Google or ARM for critical software and licenses.
Its been a year since the White House issued its original executive order, barring US companies from doing business with Huawei due to national security concerns about the Chinese firm supplying equipment for network infrastructure.
In August 2019, an investigative report by The Wall Street Journal is pinned Huawei technicians to have helped the Ugandan government spy on its political opponents. According to the report, authorities allegedly got assistance from Huawei employees to intercept encrypted messages sent and received by opposition figures.
Particularly, the company’s engineers are said to have “used Israeli-made spyware to penetrate a WhatsApp chat group” which involves discussion on renowned singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine. The company later came out to deny these legations.
Back to the USA, since the order was issued in May 2019, the full ban hasn’t actually taken effect yet. While Huawei hasn’t been able to work with companies like Google on new devices, the company has gotten a series of temporary general licenses from the Commerce Department that have allowed it to still support existing hardware with software updates.
That state of affairs may be about to change: after receiving extensions in May, August, November, and March, the most recent 45-day extension for the temporary license agreement is about to expire on May 15th. Neither Huawei nor the Commerce Department has indicated yet whether another extension of the temporary license will be granted.
