US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announces the Clean Network program. | Image: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Getty Images
The US has unveiled a vague but aggressive plan to purge Chinese tech companies from America’s internet, creating what the ***** administration has dubbed the “Clean Network” — the US internet as it currently stands, but minus a lot of Chinese tech.
It’s an expansion of the White House’s 5G Clean Path initiative, which was announced earlier this year with the aim of keeping Chinese hardware companies like Huawei and ZTE out of America’s 5G infrastructure. The Clean Network program takes that anti-Chinese impulse and applies it not only to 5G but also telecoms carriers, cloud services, undersea cables, apps, and app stores. It would mean no Chinese apps in US app stores, no US data stored on the Chinese cloud, and no US apps on Chinese…