Although the U.S. hasn’t shared it publicly, it claims to have found actual evidence of Huawei backdoors.
The United States has long claimed that Huawei can secretly access networks through the networking gear it sells to telcos, but the goverment previously argued that it doesn’t need to show any proof. US officials still are not providing such evidence publicly but have begun sharing their intelligence with other countries.
The best part is that, according to The Wall Street Journal, the origin of this report, these backdoors were intentionally put into place for law enforcement. And yet, the DoJ wants Apple to put backdoors in iOS that they swear can only be accessed by law enforcement, and definitely not foreign state hacking groups.
Check It Out: US Reportedly Gave Allies Evidence of Huawei Backdoors
I heard about this on Daily Observations podcast and it made my week. I laughed so loud it hurt.
Reportedly this, reportedly that, but nothing official. OK. That’s a great start. Despite all the allegations, not one single piece of evidence has been offered to back claims that Huawei was insecure – other than, we do it, so obviously the Chinese would do it too, but I don’t see that anywhere in the “reporting”. It wouldn’t hurt to give a few reasons, publicly, just so the US doesn’t look like lying dicks about this.
Revelations like NSA approved encryption included backdoors for NSA and more recently the CIA actually owning the largest encryption company in the world (with 120 governments counted in its many clients)… since the end of World War II !! confirm that the tendency is towards governments owning encryption, not regulating it. Sure the politicians will make a show of trying to have oversight, but seriously, they aren’t equiped to know what they’re dealing with… but I digress.
The less reported Tech angle on the trade war with China was that the US has fallen woefully behind China in 5G and AI, and it wanted access to this IP, which it received in response to punitive import taxes imposed as part of the bargaining.
ALL this (unfounded) disinformation about Huawei, has also been part of the trade negotiations. I’m sure the situation is similar in the US, but the country in which I live, Australia, banned Huawei from 5G because it does what the US tells it, even though Huawei constitutes the bulk of Australia’s 4G network. It’s not the company nor its tech that is at issue, it’s access to the 5G IP for US trade negotiations. Now think very carefully – how many mobile network technologies are manufactured in the US?
So… the logical conclusion is… the US wants access to any spying part of Huawei’s 5G, to spy on US citizens… for law enforcement and national security, of course. Undoubtedly, the US has agreements with other governments about accessing data collected. Publicly the German case, where NSA couldn’t spy on US citizens, but paid the Germans to do it for them.
In this fanciful scenario, which couldn’t -possibly- be true, Huawei would have the motherlode of spy tech and the US wants in. It tried kidnapping a member of the Huawei family in Canada and that didn’t seem to work. Tariffs may have hurt, but there might be more going on than publicly available.
China has a large bargaining chip in these negotiations, and one is left to ponder, What else the US had to offer, besides removing tariffs? Did the US enter into some exchange spying deal with the Chinese? It has with other governments.
And you know what they say – politics is politics, but business is business. It’s not like the US hasn’t co-operated if not backed totalitarian governments elsewhere. It only has to be the correct advantage and a deal can be made. No? Food for thought.