CFIUS on Huawei

Financial Times, China and the US: Access Denied

“Awareness in the national security policy community of threats in the cyber domain has greatly increased,” says Mr Mancuso. “So if you believe that the Chinese government is engaging in cyber-intrusion, you’ll have a problem with Huawei because Huawei sits smack in the middle of the industry supplying the critical infrastructure.”

Under Cfius rules, the takeover of a sensitive asset is investigated on a voluntary basis for 30 days. During the Bush era, companies were only rarely subject to longer, 45-day investigations after that 30-day period. That has changed. In 2007 just 4 per cent of deals were subject to full investigations in 2007, according to Cfius data. By 2009 the figure was 38 per cent.