The US attack on China’s technology industry has taken on Orwellian overtones as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has promised to deliver a “Clean Network” in USA free from Chinese apps and technology.

During a press briefing, he revealed a 5 pronged plan, which started with banning Chinese apps from U.S. app stores.

“With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok and WeChat and others, are significant threats to personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for Chinese Communist Party content censorship,” Pompeo said.

He also said he would work with the State Department and Commerce Department as well as the Defense Department to limit the ability of Chinese cloud service providers to collect, store, and process data in the United States.

USA will also try and ensure that “untrusted” Chinese handset makers such as Huawei do not preinstall trusted apps or make them available to download through their app stores, presumably blocking US app providers such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google from making their apps available on Chinese handsets.

He also did not want Chinese carriers to connect to US telecom networks, and lastly wanted to prevent the Chinese government subverting underseas network cables connecting the U.S. to the internet for surveillance purposes.

Ultimately and ironically the effort sounds very much like the Great Chinese Firewall coming to USA, and it would be interesting to see if the effort survives a change in administration in November.

via CNBC