Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says telecom giant Sprint Nextel Corp., which is up for sale, should not be allowed to fall into the hands of a foreign company with ties to a Chinese firm accused of launching cyberattacks against the United States.
The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Corp. announced in October that it was seeking approval from the United States for a $20 billion purchase of a 70 percent stake in Sprint, America's third-largest cellphone provider.
Last month Dish Network, an Englewood, Colo.-based satellite TV company, challenged SoftBank's bid for Sprint, offering $25.5 billion for the entire company.The reason for concern is SoftBank's links to the Chinese telecom firm Huawei.
In October 2012, the House Intelligence Committee, after an 11-month investigation, concluded that U.S. firms should not do business with Huawei or another Chinese telecom firm, ZTE, because of their extensive ties to the Chinese government, and also found that the two firms posed a major cybersecurity threat to U.S. intellectual property.
The SoftBank offer "definitely needs to be not only scrutinized, it needs to be curtailed without some clear understanding as to what the implications could be," Huckabee declares in an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV.
"We know that China has been illegally eavesdropping. They've been hacking computers. Their examples of intellectual theft have been really remarkable.
"We cannot afford to allow something as significant as our communications networks to be in the hands of a country that has proven not to be trustworthy when it comes to information and of that information being handled responsibly and honorably."
See video below.
Editor's Note: Read the complete interview -- Huckabee: Benghazi Cover-Up Could Lead to Obama Impeachment and excerpts
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