China was making a not-so-subtle point when it installed a 5G base station on Mount Everest earlier this month. Cyber is among China’s “new domains of warfare” (others are biology, brain science, artificial intelligence etc) where the state is investing heavily. Through extensive use of cyber tools, China will seek to infiltrate, hack and undermine adversarial systems in its neighbourhood. And the organisation spearheading that effort appears to be Huawei, which installed the 5G base station on Everest. Huawei will be taking part in 5G trials in India when these are held, but its chances of grabbing a slice of the 5G market are seen as poor given the security risks associated with it.
