So why pressure other countries to drop Huawei too? The UK and EU countries previously thought Huawei's presence in their 5G infrastructure was a manageable security risk, until the US pressured them. By all means, it appears to be a "starve the beast" campaign to delay or deny China technological primacy in 5th-gen telecoms, and hinder the "China 2025" agenda in general.
> Among other reasons, it’s a bad idea to let allies, with whom you share intelligence
That's a non-sequitur: classified information is not transferred unencrypted over public networks. Isn't it a little conceited to think other countries are unable to make their own intelligence assessments, when presented with facts? The reasonable conclusion is that the considerations went beyond just security - because the UK in particular had published a public version of a report on 5G security vis Huawei. Ultimately, the decision to drop Huawei was top-down,from politicians, after a lot of diplomatic pressure from the US, and not from career intelligence people, some whose day jobs I assume includes threat assessments.
You’re right that nobody (hopefully) is transmitting sensitive information in the clear, but having a network layer that you don’t trust fundamentally changes your security posture for the worse.
For example, consider the possibility that your 5G equipment might go down at an inconvenient time if there’s an actual military conflict.
Also, it’s not always clear what information has strategic value to your rivals. Even simple metadata, like which political leaders are talking to whom, can be revealing if collected at scale.
