Special to WorldTribune, October 16, 2026 Real World News
Geostrategy-Direct, October 13, 2026
In 2000, the Chinese government, through telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, controlled 2% of the global telecommunications infrastructure. Today, China controls over 50%.
Visitors pass by the Huawei Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD exhibited at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China on July 28, 2025. / Chinatopix
Projecting outward, by 2030, Beijing will have nearly 75% control of internet infrastructure, retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, former director of the National Security Agency, warned in an interview.
McConnell told The Washington Times: “If you control the global telecommunications infrastructure, you control the world, right?”
That level of control poses an “existential” national security threat to the U.S., McConnell said.
“You can turn it off, you can slow it down, you can exploit it, you can use it for destruction or degradation.”
Huawei is also deeply embedded in undersea fiber-optic cable networks that ferry roughly 95% of intercontinental voice and data traffic, raising concerns over potential espionage and state-backed access.
Additionally, Huawei’s “Intelligent World 2035” report predicts that autonomous AI agents will generate over 90% of global AI token traffic and reach 900 billion active units by 2035, accelerating the need for massive computing infrastructure and autonomous cyber-defenses.
U.S. and allied intelligence agencies view Huawei as a national security risk due to Chinese intelligence laws requiring corporate cooperation with state security.
U.S. law enforcement agencies have repeatedly targeted and disrupted Chinese-backed hacking infrastructure and botnets (such as actions against Integrity Tech / Flax Typhoon) tied to intelligence gathering and network reconnaissance.
McConnell said AI is advancing the attack side of the threat faster than the defensive side can react.
Chinese cyber attackers using AI can conduct 40,000 network scans per second, complicating corporate security forces that can also apply AI scans but are limited in finding which vulnerability attackers may exploit to gain unauthorized access to a network, he said.
Some positive steps have been taken by corporations, with one in three CEOs recognizing this is a problem that needs to be addressed while security investments remain insufficient, McConnell said.
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