Cybersecurity Policy Report, Lawmakers Seek Investigation into Spain-Huawei Arrangement, (Aug 19, 2025)

By Jeff Williams

Citing concerns about potentially “significant implications for U.S. digital trade, data security, and telecommunications interests,” Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R., Fla.) and Richard Hudson (R., N.C.) have sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick calling for an investigation into the Spanish government’s hiring of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. to manage aspects of Spain’s wiretap systems.

“It is deeply troubling when a treaty ally uses telecommunications equipment and services from an entity aligned with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” Mr. Bilirakis, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing, and trade, and Mr. Hudson, chairman of the committee’s subcommittee on communications and technology, told Mr. Lutnick.

The Commerce Department should “investigate the Spanish government’s decision, and similar actions by EU governments, that negatively impact U.S. digital trade, data security, and telecommunications interests, as well as the interests of American workers,” the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers also argued in their letter that the arrangement “underscores a regrettable trend in the European Union (EU): governments tacitly embrace Chinese technology and hold American digital trade exports to double standards,” pointing to disputes regarding the U.S.-EU Data Privacy Framework that is intended to facilitate transfers of personal data from the EU to the U.S.

The Spanish government’s actions “illustrate that double standards persist in the EU, with Chinese flows of technology and data receiving far less scrutiny than American ones,” they said.

In July, Sens. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Rep. Rick Crawford (R., Ark.) sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stating that, in light of the Spain-Huawei agreement, the U.S. should reevaluate its intelligence-sharing agreement with Spain and ensure that “that any information shared with the Spanish government is redacted of details that should not be shared with the CCP” (CPR, July 18).

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