Britain has weakened proposed cybersecurity protections for its telecoms networks that were developed in response to the Salt Typhoon espionage campaign, after the companies responsible for implementing the measures lobbied against them.

On Tuesday, Zambia’s Minister of Technology and Science offered the first hint that the conference would be cancelled, telling a Zambian news outlet that participants’ security clearances were incomplete and that the government has concerns about the conference’s “dialogue.”

The aim of the campaigns was to steal credentials and likely enable “follow-on operations in the interest of the Chinese government,” the report said.