Lucio Miranda, President of ExportUSA New York Corp. and Fatmir Mediu, Chair of the Southeastern Europe Security Center (SESC), Chair of the Albanian Republican Party and Former Minister of Defense of Albania moderated the panel. Special guests of the event were: General James Jones, [former NATO Allied Supreme Commander - USA National Security Adviser], Congressman Robert Aderholt [U.S. Congress], and Major General Robert E. Wheeler [USAF Ret].

“5G networks will underpin the growth of this 4th industrial revolution.5G will be the pipe that enables these technologies. However, if our 5G networks are insecure, we will be building vulnerabilities into the core of the Internet of Things.”

                                                                                                                      [General James Jones]

“Security is not for sale, the time to act and therefore foster a safer western 5G Network has come. We need to support a transatlantic dialogue in this respect, creating the right purposes for Governments and trustworthy High-Tech Industries to supply the right equipment and generate a safe and competitive network.”

                                                                                                                                    [Fatmir Mediu]

“Implications for a stronger EU-US Trade relation are high. Trade, for centuries, has been a matter of quotas and tariffs. Now the development of technology has brought a new layer to the complexity of trade. This is not just a matter of tariffs, which of course affect prices and quotas. It became an issue of national security. 5G Technology is at the core of this issue.”

                                                                                                                                  [Lucio Miranda]

Richard Milsom [Executive Director of the ECR Party], Lukas Mandl - MEP [Vice-Chair Subcommittee on Security and Defense, SEDE], and Tim Brauckmüller, [Managing Partner, Atene KOM GmbH] raised awareness of the relevance that the 5G Technology is acquiring, and which are the benefits, as well as the risks, both for the industries and the users alike.

“How can you develop the right traffic for the road if you don’t know what the road will be like and where it is going? In Europe were still discussing what materials to use to build the road and we are hampered by the current ecosystem (political, economic, and cultural). We need massive investment in research and development and the state needs to help financially and legislatively.”

                                                                                                                                [Richard Milsom]

“The German government presented last year its mobile network strategy, in which it also addressed the 5G roll out. No operator was excluded. Instead, the government developed new and severe security protocols.”

                                                                                                                            [Tim Brauckmüller]

“It is a race where it is vital that societies valuing privacy, individual rights, and data sovereignty prevail by maintaining their autonomy and independence in the emerging international competition between the US and China.”

                                                                                                                      [General James Jones]

In the framework of the event, panelists encouraged the participation of reliable and trustworthy suppliers and services suppliers in 5G markets, to protect 5G networks from unauthorized interferences at the military and industrial level, as well as in terms of privacy.

“We should start working together at the development of a strategy aimed at fostering trade with safer telecom technologies. We can start from Brussels, with the ECR Party, ExportUSA and representatives from the US Government to encourage concrete and valuable actions in this respect.”

                                                                                                                                   [Fatmir Mediu]

“When we talked about 2G, 3G and 4G, it was more about the consumer. 5G has become about governments and the military, as well as big business that will support big industries. Innovation, rule of law and privacy are a must for democratic countries. It is important to precisely identify what kind of hardware we are going to have and what kind of software we are going to have. 1.5 % to 3% of GDP changed for building innovation in the US. That is an amazing amount of GDP and we should give it serious consideration.”

                                                                                                   [Major General Robert E. Wheeler]

“5G means not just evolutionary development, but revolutionary development. There are already 100 billion connected devices and we cannot ignore this fact. As the Vice Chair of the SEDE committee at the European Parliament, my intent is to include security in every industry. For 5G in particular, security means transparency in the public procurement procedures. A reasonable approach will lead us to a DE-ESCALATION approach.”

                                                                                                                                     [Lukas Mandl]

“5G will be an essential element for the future of our economies, the public and private sectors, which is why the US Congress and the US Government have passed laws to enable companies that will not harm our security. It seems that the United Kingdom and other EU Partners are passing laws that will not allow the transfer of technology to companies controlled by authoritarian and non-transparent governments such as Huawei from China.”

                                                                                                      [Congressman Robert Aderholt]