National Strategic Cloud Pole. Is everything ok compared to Chinese penetration?
The speech by Marco Mayer, professor at the Luiss Master in Cybersecurity and former advisor to the Minister of the Interior for Cybersecurity
The competition for the National Strategic Pole (PSN) has almost come to an end. The consortium led by Fastweb has an economic advantage over that of TIm. It is important to turn the spotlight on what will happen in the coming weeks.
The realization of the Strategic Pole is perhaps the most politically sensitive project of the NRP because (beyond the 4.4 billion auction base) it has multiple implications relating to democratic freedoms and national security. It must in fact guarantee the cyber resilience of multiple fundamental structures of the state (including health care).
The important thing is not to repeat the mistakes made in recent years by Mise and Consip with the frequencies for 5G. In that case the economic advantage for the State represented the only real selection criterion with considerable (and now widely known) advantages for the penetration of Chinese companies in Italy. The myopia of the last 5 years has been looking only at the cash desk, not considering 5G a strategic asset of primary importance.
Also in the case of the PSN project financed by the PNRR, the telephone operators involved are mainly foreigners. Fastweb is Swiss (it belongs to the Swisscom group) and Tim has the French Vivendi as its largest shareholder.
Incidentally (as also emerged in the recent Copasir mission to the USA) one of the reasons that makes Italian (but also German) participation in the 5 Eyes difficult is the lack of black lists with the precise list of Chinese and Russian companies previously exclude as it happens in Anglo-Saxon countries. In our case, a black list would be used to evaluate in advance the supply chains of the galaxies of Fastweb, Swisscom and Vivendi to compare it with who their suppliers and subcontractors are. Vendors such as Huwaei and ZTE are known to have been involved in the two contenders in the past.
It would be good for our economic intelligence to provide the Government with a detailed and updated map of the commercial, technological and financial intertwining of the companies involved in order to identify in advance the potential involvement of companies of authoritarian regimes, China and Russia in advance. .
From this point of view, the new legislation on Golden Power entrusts the GdF with new powers of control which, with its experts in the Italian diplomatic offices, can help protect national interests in the digital / financial sector in many countries around the world.
The hope is that in our country the billions of the PNRR will not further increase the influence of China (or its Trojan horses) in the field of telecommunications and digital technologies. We are experiencing the tragedy of energy dependence on Russia. Errare humanum est autem persevare diabolicum.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/sicurezza-nazionale-cloud-fastweb-tim-psn/ on Fri, 24 Jun 2022 05:59:06 +0000.