Page 40 - Time_International_2019

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Technology
says the lack of trust between the world’s No. 1 and
No. 2 economies means every other country is being
forced to choose sides, based on its own interests.
“There can be no sitting on the fence here.”
That choice might be easier if one side did not
have such a clear commercial advantage. Huawei
is around 18 months ahead of rivals in rollout ca-
pacity. Its 5G base stations and wireless network-
ing equipment are smaller and more economical to
run than 4G, as well as typically 30% cheaper than
rivals’. Many countries’ 4G infrastructure is already
provided by Huawei, which would allow the firm to
upgrade them to 5G more quickly and at lower cost
than by using a competitor. And the competition is
not exactly robust. No specialist companies in the
U.S. are able to roll out 5G, meaning American con-
sumers and businesses will have to rely on Huawei’s
foreign competitors, chiefly Sweden’s Ericsson or
Finland’s Nokia, if the ban persists.
Major corporations would much prefer that than
risk working with Huawei. Several executives of
multinationals courted by the Chinese company told
TIME they balk at the thought of doing business
with it, both because of slipshod programming and
security risks. TIME saw internal emails of one firm
contracted to work with Huawei that urged staff not
to install its software because of spyware concerns.
Yet the costs domestically could still be high. Like
Glasgow, Mont., nearly every part of the U.S. has
Huawei equipment already embedded in wireless
infrastructure. The rip-and-replace costs of banning
Huawei wholesale—$50 million for Nemont alone,
says CEO Mike Kilgore—would jeopardize the sur-
vival of these smaller carriers. That means scores
of rural Americans—including small-town fire and
police departments and emergency responders—
might lose their cell and broadband service. The
same goes for other countries.
The question now is whether the Trump Admin-
istration will find a compromise. Chinese firm ZTE
almost collapsed last year after similar action to that
taken against Huawei. Eventually, President Trump
negotiated a $1 billion fine in lieu that allowed ZTE
to keep trading.
A President who can strike deals is what Honrud
wanted when he—like 65% of people in Glasgow—
voted for Trump. He didn’t expect to have his live-
lihood used as leverage, but says the technology is
“something they can negotiate with.” The Com-
merce Department reprieve allows existing Hua-
wei equipment like that on Honrud’s farm to keep
running, for now. He’s not especially worried
about the risk. “If Huawei has something we can’t
look into,” he says, “then we’ve got some pretty
dumb engineers here.”—With reporting by Simon
ShuSTer/ Berlin; Billy Perrigo/london; John
WalcoTT/WaShingTon; ViVienne WalT/PariS;
and Jake SWearingen/neW york
38 Time June 3–10, 2019
ENVIRONMENT
The coming mountain
of e-waste
By Alana Semuels/Fresno, Calif.
aS a Tech-hungry naTion
flush with cash gets ready to
upgrade to the next generation
of lightning- fast 5G devices,
there is a surprising environ-
mental cost to be reckoned
with: a fresh mountain of obso-
lete gadgets. About 6 million lb.
of discarded electronics are
already processed monthly at
recycling giant ERI’s Fresno
plant. Pallets of once beloved
but now outdated devices,
like smartphones with only an
8-megapixel camera or tab-
lets with a mere 12 GB of stor-
age, arrive here daily. Work-
ers with hammers hack at the
bulkiest devices, while others
remove dangerous components
like lithium-ion batteries. The
scene is like a twisted Pixar
movie, with doomed gadgets
riding an unrelenting conveyor
belt into a machine that shreds
them into piles of copper, alu-
minum and steel.
“In our society, we always
have to have the new, best
product,” said Aaron Blum,
the co-founder and chief op-
erating officer of ERI, on a
tour of the facility. Americans
spent $71 billion on telephone
and communication equip-
ment in 2017, nearly five times
what they spent in 2010 even
when adjusted for inflation,
according to the Bureau of
Economic Analysis. (Apple
alone sold 60 million iPhones
domestically last year, accord-
ing to Counterpoint Research.)
When we buy something new,
we get rid of what’s old. That
cycle of consumption has
made electronics waste the
world’s fastest- growing solid-
waste stream.
That stream is expected to

turn into a torrent as the world
upgrades to 5G, the next big
step in wireless technology.
5G promises faster speeds and
other benefits. But experts say
it will also result in a dramatic
increase in e-waste, as millions
of smartphones, modems and
other gadgets incompatible
with 5G networks are made
obsolete. “I don’t think people
understand the magnitude of
the transition,” says ERI co-
founder and executive chair-
man John Shegerian. “This
is bigger than the change of
black-and-white to color, big-
ger than analog to digital, by
many multitudes.”
That’s good business for
ERI, which charges clients to
collect their electronics and
to securely wipe their data;
the company also makes
money from refurbishing and
reselling devices. But less than
a quarter of all U.S. electronic
waste is recycled, according to
a United Nations estimate. The
rest is incinerated or ends up
in landfills. That’s bad news,
as e-waste can contain harmful
materials like mercury
and beryllium that pose envi-
ronmental risks.
Part of the problem is
regulatory. Only 19 states
have laws banning electronics
from the regular trash. In
states without such rules, like
Nevada, electronics often end
up in garbage and recycling
bins, said Jeremy Walters, a
community- relations manager
for waste collector Repub-
lic Services. Environmental
concerns aside, compact-
ing flammable lithium- ion
batteries with paper re-
cycling can be dangerous;