FEET IN LATAM, HEAD IN CHINA — Across a five-day swing through Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia that starts today, the nation’s top cyber diplomat has one unifying goal in mind: boxing Chinese telecom giant Huawei out of America’s backyard. Huawei has built a large market share in Latin America in part through aggressive, state-subsidized price-cutting, Nate Fick, the State Department’s ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, told MC during a Sunday interview. But until recently, Fick said, the U.S. hasn’t done enough to make trusted suppliers competitive in foreign markets, where price often trumps politics. “We need to get more creative and assertive in our financing,” Fick told me. “We've been playing market competitive economics with these places, and the Chinese have been playing geopolitics.” Putting money where your mouth is — Fick is fresh off participating in the Trade and Technology Council meeting in Europe, where, among other things, the U.S. and the EU agreed to jointly finance and secure the rollout of new 5G infrastructure in Costa Rica. Fick said a major focus of the TTC discussions was how to get non-Western countries on board with trusted telecommunications providers — and that “operationalizing” some of those ideas was a key aim of his trip. The U.S. and the EU want to “see the footprints of trusted ICT infrastructures expanding, particularly in the Western Hemisphere and particularly among partners where we really need to have solid information sharing and intelligence sharing capabilities,” said Fick. Incentives align — In the context of 5G technology, a “trusted” supplier effectively means one of two companies, neither of them American: Sweden’s Ericsson or Finland’s Nokia. And while there are plenty of areas where the EU and U.S. are beginning to get testy over trans-Atlantic trade, as my POLITICO colleague Adam Behsudi reported on Saturday, telecommunications policy doesn’t appear to be one of them, at least in this case and at least according to Fick. “There's a nice alignment between European competitive interests and our desire to promote trust and connectivity, especially in Latin America,” he argued. Carrots and sticks — Fick struck a confident note when asked about the sales pitch he can make during his trip, even though Huawei can often outcompete those two suppliers on price. On one hand, the West is getting serious about offering more lending support, as the TTC-brokered deal illustrates. On the other, new Western export restrictions on high-end chips are undermining the long-term competitiveness of Huawei and other Chinese providers, he argued. But Fick’s sales pitch isn’t all dollars and cents. “I try to encourage our partners to think in terms of total cost of ownership,” he said, before invoking China’s reputation for coercing debtors to repay hefty borrowing bills with political favors, often referred to as “debt trap diplomacy.” “The real bill often has come in terms of geopolitical support,” Fick added. Money well spent — On the first leg of his trip, Fick is speaking on digital rights and responsible technology policy at the RightsCon Summit in Costa Rica. And outside the event, he’ll be pursuing another big goal on his agenda: checking in on the $25 million commitment the U.S. recently made San José as it recovered from a spate of crippling ransomware attacks in the summer of 2022. Thus far, Fick said, implementation of the grant is “going strong.” The U.S. announced the funding vehicle in late March, shortly after doling out $50 million to help Albania recover from a separate set of ransomware attacks attributed to Iranian state hackers. Stumping for cyber support — Asked whether we could see more of that type of assistance in the future, the cyber diplomat said he’s working with Congress, the State Department and the other agencies to forge consensus on the creation of a “dedicated cyber, digital and emerging tech assistance mechanism.” Fick argued that such a fund is essential to ensure the efficient provision of emergency cyber support to foreign nations. He also said it would offer a vehicle for the U.S. to enlist support from foreign partners. After all, Fick said, the U.S. can’t go writing $25 million checks after every cyberattack. “We can bet we're going to see a lot more of this, and we need to be ready to respond quickly,” Fick said. Yet, “we don't have the mechanism in place right now to do that.”
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