The American government’s attempts to exclude Huawei from the development of 5G networks in the US – as well as in many other countries – is creating huge uncertainty in the high tech industry over the continued viability of global supply chains. Whilst Huawei is presently at the epicentre of regulators’ concerns over potential China-originating security breaches, even rivals such as Nokia and Ericsson are facing scrutiny over the use of China made components. Some commentators have called these efforts ‘weaponizing the supply chain’ or a ‘high tech supply chain cold war’. This in turn is impacting on global supply chain structures and could have a long lasting impact on economic and technological development.