Clean Network Strategy

Under Secretary Keith Krach Describes the U.S. CLEAN NETWORK initiative

Last week, Secretary of State Pompeo announced the expansion of the CLEAN NETWORK to include Clean Carrier, Clean Store, Clean Apps, Clean Cloud, and Clean Cable. https://www.state.gov/5g-clean-network/

Keith Krach describes the purpose and meaning of the initiative:
"To safeguard the nation’s assets, including citizens’ privacy and companies’ most sensitive information, the United States has developed a comprehensive approach to address long-term threat to data privacy, security, human rights and principled collaboration posed to the free world from authoritarian malign actors. It’s called the Clean Network. More than 30 countries are now clean countries. And many of the world’s biggest telecommunications companies are becoming clean telcos.

To accelerate the momentum, secretary Pompeo announced the expansion of the Clean Network by launching five new Clean initiatives. The first is Clean Carrier, which will ensure untrusted Chinese carriers are not connected with U.S. telco networks, preventing them from hijacking our sensitive information or even shutting them down. The second is Clean Store, which will remove untrusted applications from U.S. mobile app stores. PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses and spread disinformation. The third is Clean Apps, which will prevent U.S. apps from being co-opted by China. We’re asking all trusted companies to remove their apps from Huawei’s app store to ensure they’re not offering up their tech as an instrument of Chinese human rights abuse. Fourth, Clean Cloud. This will prevent our sensitive personal information and our business’ intellectual property, including COVID vaccine research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to foreign adversaries. Fifth, and finally, Clean Cable will prevent Huawei Marine and its Chinese state-owned parent from building, operating undersea cables vulnerable to surveillance from Beijing. Just as we cannot trust Huawei to connect individuals on land we cannot trust Huawei Marine to connect whole countries undersea.