US govt to investigate Chinese telecom firms

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Biden administration is investigating China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom over concerns the firms could exploit access to American data through their US cloud and internet businesses by providing it to Beijing, three sources familiar with the matter said.

The Commerce Department is running the investigation, which has not been previously reported. They have subpoenaed the state-backed companies and have completed "risk-based analyses" of China Mobile and China Telecom, but are not as advanced in their probe of China Unicom, the people said, declining to be named because the probe is not public.