The Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act has passed the House and is now under consideration by the Senate, where it has a good chance of passage, according to Telecoms. The proposed law would further restrict the use of Huawei products in US networks.
The German government has delayed its own decision on what role, if any, to permit Huawei in its own rollout of 5G networks, Reuters reports. The Washington Post describes doubts as to whether Germany could really afford, at this late date, to afford cutting Huawei out of the picture. The Chinese hardware manufacturer has already deeply penetrated the country's telecommunications market.
Elsewhere in Central Europe, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis fired a leading Huawei skeptic, Dusan Navratil, the country's first director of its National Cyber and Information Security Agency ("Nukib"). The South China Morning Post, which calls the situation with respect to 5G in the Czech lands "chaotic," explicitly links the dismissal to Navratil's disagreement with Prime Minister Babis over Huawei, but Axios says that's not so. They cite sources in a position to know that the Prime Minister simply didn't get along with Navratil. The Axios bottom line is this: "The Czech Republic, at the urging of its cybersecurity office, has become a leading European critic of Huawei. Don't expect that to change — at least, not yet."
The US Congress has asserted its Constitutional authority to declare war in cyberspace, requiring the White House to permit it to review National policy with respect to offensive cyber operations, according to the Washington Post. This was a bipartisan assertion of Congressional prerogatives, and is a familiar move in the longstanding competition between the Executive and Legislative branches over war powers. Cyber conflict is still relatively new, and still represents a grey, undefined area in the spectrum of conflict, and Congress wants some clarity.
CISA is in line to receive a large increase in funding, if currently pending appropriations pass, Fifth Domain reports. The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency could receive over $2 billion in FY 2020, an increase of some $334 million over FY 2019.