The Justice Department just dropped a bombshell on Beijing, and it’s about darn time.
The DOJ recently greenlit the HPE-Juniper telecom merger, which may create a company big and strong enough to finally end the reign of terror of Huawei, the Chinese Communist Party-backed tech giant whose goal is global domination of everything from 5G to AI and enterprise networking.
Ten days after President Trump’s inauguration, an interim antitrust chief — acting before President Trump’s core DOJ team was confirmed — tried to block the HPE-Juniper merger.
Why the U-turn?
Well, according to an Axios report that was published on Wednesday, U.S. intelligence officials warned Trump’s DOJ that this merger was critical to stopping Huawei. In that same story, the Justice Department also confirmed that it regularly collaborates with the intelligence community when making decisions.
In plain English? National security trumped a handful of bureaucrats’ misplaced economic concerns. I’m sure that the fact that even the socialists over at the EU approved the deal didn’t hurt either.
However, this week, the deal’s back in the spotlight. Critics, like Sens. Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren, are crying foul, saying the feds caved to pressure or misread the market.
They couldn’t be more wrong, and it begs the question: do these critics understand who blocking this deal will help?
Globally, no American telecom company can compete with Huawei, China’s state-backed tech giant. As Marco Rubio put it in October, “the goal of China’s telecom giant Huawei is global domination.”
Huawei isn’t just selling phones. It has its claws in global 5G and enterprise networks, which run everything from universities and hospitals to banks, factories, and even military-linked sites in countries that we call allies.
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Picture a Taiwan crisis tomorrow. Beijing wouldn’t need missiles; it could just flip a digital switch and choke our partners’ economies. That’s the kind of grip the Chinese Communist Party’s been building while too many in D.C. were busy navel-gazing.
The intelligence community is right: the need for stronger U.S. competition against Huawei — from HPE-Juniper to any other market entrants that come next — is urgent. And the DOJ was wise to recognize as much and approve the deal.
However, Sens. Booker, Klobuchar, and Warren, along with a handful of antitrust wonks, are throwing a fit over this deal. They’re whining about one corporation getting bigger, as if that’s the real threat.
Wake up. We’re in a cold war with China, and it’s not just fought with ships or jets. It’s fought in markets where Beijing uses its industrial muscle to weaken us day in and day out.
China has turned shipbuilding into a monopoly, outproducing what American shipyards can manage 232 times over. It’s cornered the rare earth minerals we need for fighter jets, subs, and tanks, selling them at a loss just to bury American competitors. Given that the U.S. imports 80% of its rare earth minerals from China, which also controls 92% of global refining capacity for these critical elements
This is economic warfare, and Huawei is China’s battering ram.
Enter President Trump, who gets this better than anyone. He’s been rebuilding our shipyards, bringing supply chains home, and kicking Huawei out of U.S. networks by executive order. But Huawei’s tentacles stretch far beyond our borders. That’s why the HPE-Juniper deal matters. It creates America’s second-biggest enterprise networking player—a company with the heft to go toe-to-toe with Huawei globally.
Strong American companies aren’t the bad guys. They’re our ammo in this new cold war. If Sens. Warren, Booker, and Klobuchar got their way, we’d be hog-tying ourselves while China steamrolls ahead. That would be tantamount to waving the biggest white flag that has ever existed right in the face of the CCP’s leaders.
The DOJ didn’t wave that flag. It listened to our intelligence community and put America’s security over ivory-tower theories. Washington needs to take notes because there’s only one thing worse than China owning the future — America helping them do it.
Retired Col. Robert L. Maness, host of The Rob Maness Show, is a 32-year U.S. Air Force combat veteran and was a member of the Trump campaign’s Veterans and Military Families for Trump Coalition. Follow him on X @RobManess.
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