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Has anyone published the evidence of Huawei being an "arm of the PRC surveillance state"? I've seen a lot of claims and a lot of out-of-court-settled lawsuits,

by kayson 6y ago

Has anyone published the evidence of Huawei being an "arm of the PRC surveillance state"? I've seen a lot of claims and a lot of out-of-court-settled lawsuits, but nothing really showing that they're using their devices or software infrastructure for surveillance.

hammock 6y ago
Here is some https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/25/huawei-xinjiang-and-chinas-high-tech-surveillance-state-joining-the-dots/#535db3c2cd52 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/25/huawei-xi...
- xster 6y ago
  Is it referencing something specific? It's an editorial referencing other editorials. Is there something direct like PRISM type wikileaks? Considering the NSA hacked and had backdoors in Huawei servers for almost a decade, I imagine direct evidence shouldn't be difficult to produce. https://mashable.com/2014/03/22/nsa-huawei/ https://mashable.com/2014/03/22/nsa-huawei/
  - hammock 6y ago
    The NSA barely acknowledges its own existence. It's not exactly known for publishing direct intelligence for public consumption.. The Mashable report you link was only possible because of the most notorious leak in the history of the world (Edward Snowden), who is currently a fugitive of the US government. Have you tried searching in wikileaks though?
wyuenho 6y ago
The connection is made from: 1. The Chinese National Intelligence Law requiring every citizen to "intelligence work". 2. Huawei had the potential to reach mass adoption outside of China. 3. Huawei is a company deeply connected to the PLA. 4. Therefore Huawei, not only is its HQ required to spy for China, but that it is very likely to work with the PLA to spy for China. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law [2]. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/huawei-staff-and-chinese-military-have-deep-links-study-claims.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/huawei-staff-and-chinese-mil...
- _lsq 6y ago
  These are all valid reasons for concerns yet these do not qualify as proof of wrongdoing from Huawai. For 2) specifically, I'm not sure it would be helpful to declare all private companies started by veterans as "sharing deep ties to $Country's military operations". There's no shortage of "guesses" and "plausible connections" around but the parent comment is specifically asking for actual proof in this instance.
  - wyuenho 6y ago
    People suspected the NSA were snooping and introducing backdoors and proactively places countermeasures against that. Why should the standard be different when it comes to China?
    - _lsq 6y ago
      The standard shouldn't be any different and that's precisely the problem here: * NSA is a governmental agency that by construction is tied to the state. Bytedance, Huawai and Tencent are privately owned companies in China and all "ties" to the Chinese governments are unsubstantiated. Blanket ban on private companies because of their country of origin and unsubstantiated suspicions results in clear discrimination and suppression of open competition in my mind. * For my understanding, could you help by providing context on what specific counter-measures have been taken against NSA's intelligence effort based on people's suspicion?
      - wyuenho 6y ago
        People have been warning about BSafe and Dual_EC_DRBG for years before Snowden came along. Privacy advocates and security professionals had been placing out a blanket warning of "government" snooping for decades before Snowden. Richard Stallman, the guy who wrote most of the Gnu utils back in the days, had been signing his emails with M-x spook, which had been in Emacs since 1988. The Internet started out anti-spook way back in the days.
lettergram 6y ago
There’s such a long list of this stuff from various companies. It’s not hard to research this at all. In terms of an anecdotal evidence... My father used to work for molex, one of his biggest complaints were fixing the molds after they were sent to Chinese factories. They would try to deconstruct them and couldn’t put them back together (this was the 90’s, early 2000’s). So they would be shipped back to the US operations to fix. Eventually, he ended up spending years training up Chinese to replace him (my father, in China). Molex moved much of its tool making shop to China and shut down most US tool and die making operations. Anyway, China has people who are trained, on factory floors, who are there to reverse engineer processes. This has been known for decades, companies don’t really seem to care or know (I guess that’s possible as they are outsourcing manufacturing). I have no doubt this is designed across all their industries and systems. It’s in their interest to do this. EDIT: I want to point out, there’s no longer a need for China to reverse engineer. US companies ship the designs straight to China. This is probably why we’ve seen China catch up so fast. We trained their workforce and now provide them all the IP before we build it.
- wyuenho 6y ago
  This has been known for decades, companies knew, and the way they dealt with this was to only give China obsolete tech or tech about to get out of date, so they didn't care. That's no longer the case as China is catching up fast and really threatening the competitive advantage of truly innovative companies all around the world.
  - lettergram 6y ago
    I think part of it is moving most manufacturing to China had companies like Molex move as well (cheaper). Molex builds the molds for items (I’m sure other companies are doing this to). That means the Chinese are reviving the designs BEFORE manufacturing even starts (US or China or India). My understanding from the tool & die industry is that’s only been happening the last decade or so. IMO that’s the real issue, because it’s decimating the ability to manufacture here and sure design can happen in the US, but if you can’t build the molds for the latest tech here then it doesn’t matter. Those designs are given straight to China, no need to reverse engineer.
bassman9000 6y ago
https://www.politico.eu/article/huawei-germany-court-case-privacy/ https://www.politico.eu/article/huawei-germany-court-case-pr... Of specific concern is a 2017 intelligence law that obliges companies to "support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence services in accordance with the law, and maintain secret all knowledge on the national intelligence services." Another is China's cybersecurity law, which contains similar requirements. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/vodafone-found-hidden-backdoors-in-huawei-equipment https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/vodafone-... Vodafone asked Huawei to remove backdoors in home internet routers in 2011 and received assurances from the supplier that the issues were fixed, but further testing revealed that the security vulnerabilities remained, the documents show. Vodafone also identified backdoors in parts of its fixed-access network known as optical service nodes, which are responsible for transporting internet traffic over optical fibers, and other parts called broadband network gateways, which handle subscriber authentication and access to the internet, the people said. The people asked not to be identified because the matter was confidential.
- luckylion 6y ago
  RE the Bloomberg article, be aware that Vodafone rejected Bloomberg's reporting [1]: "The 'backdoor' that Bloomberg refers to is Telnet, which is a protocol that is commonly used by many vendors in the industry for performing diagnostic functions. It would not have been accessible from the internet. "Bloomberg is incorrect in saying that this 'could have given Huawei unauthorised access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy'. "In addition, we have no evidence of any unauthorised access. This was nothing more than a failure to remove a diagnostic function after development. "The issues were identified by independent security testing, initiated by Vodafone as part of our routine security measures, and fixed at the time by Huawei." That's a nice way of saying that Bloomberg made up most of the article. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430
  - bassman9000 6y ago
    And the Politico one about the German intelligence findings? Or the fact that Huawei is a de-facto public company, with massive subsidies by the CDB? https://www.rfi.fr/en/contenu/20190530-huawei-key-beneficiary-china-subsidies-us-wants-ended https://www.rfi.fr/en/contenu/20190530-huawei-key-beneficiar... Huawei inked a $10 billion credit line with the China Development Bank (CDB) in 2004 to provide low-cost financing to customers buying its telecom gear. It was tripled to $30 billion in 2009. https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-support-helped-fuel-huaweis-global-rise-11577280736 https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-support-helped-fuel-huawe... And it's funny, because they admit this is normal https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3043558/huawei-says-relationship-chinese-government-no-different-any-other https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3043558/huawei-sa... “Like other tech companies that operate in China, including those from abroad, Huawei receives some policy support from the Chinese government,” Karl Song, vice-president of the company’s corporate communications department, said in a statement. “But we have never received any additional or special treatment.” There's no large corporation in China that got there without financial backing, and board control, from the CCP. Thus, all major Chinese corporations are a extension of the CCP.
waihtis 6y ago
It doesn't matter whether there's good evidence or not. The risk potential is there and that is what most of this is based on.
colechristensen 6y ago
The impression put out there by many people is that in China, the state, the military, and the corporations should be thought about as part of the same whole, not separate interests.
austinl 6y ago
This section on Wikipedia covers the history of the concerns. I wouldn't say there's a definitive smoking gun that's public knowledge. Instead, there are several instances of vulnerabilities discovered in Huawei systems that may have been taken advantage of (by the PRC or other parties). My guess is that there's more to a few of these stories that only the intelligence community knows about. One other point of concern from Western governments is that Chinese law compels Huawei to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services, which presents a vulnerability whether that law has been taken advantage of or not. This is much different than say, Apple, which has refused (or it has been simply impossible due to E2E) for them to cooperate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_and_security_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_...
throwaway432334 6y ago
There's not a meaningful distinction between the party and companies.
deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 6y ago
Corporations are inherently organs of government, being incorporated under a specific jurisdiction and receiving liability limitations in return. At the very least, Huawei is an arm of the PRC surveillance state in the same way that Google is an arm of the USG surveillance state. The problem is not that the claim is false, but rather the one-sided focus on it that justifies the USG surveillance state continuing to turn on its own people. If this were just some defense contractor pork for internal USG networks nobody would really care, but it sounds like they intend to fork most common Internet features while dictating how they operate.
Spooky23 6y ago
Back in 1982, the CIA is alleged to have modified some computers that ultimately blew up a gas pipeline. Spies to spy things. It's safe to assume that everyone with the power to do so is exploiting any advantage that they have.
- thesuitonym 6y ago
  Not only is it safe to assume such, it's unsafe to assume they aren't.
- YarickR2 6y ago
  CIA-staged gas pipeline explosion is an urban myth. I guess the same can be said about a lot of other casually known spy stories cited in this very discussion
jonathanyc 6y ago
Why has no one actually provided evidence of a single backdoor in the replies? The top reply is currently some anecdote that while interesting does not answer the question at all. Surely we can be less shitty about answering the OP’s question. As a start, it sounds like at some point there were unsecured Telnet servers in some Huawei devices: https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/30/huawei_enterprise_router_backdoor_is_telnet/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/30/huawei_enterprise_rou... It’s not entirely satisfying evidence because the Register believes it was legitimately for diagnostics. They also point out that there were comparable “backdoors” in Cisco equipment: https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities... If anyone replies with an example of an actual unambiguous Huawei backdoor for which there isn’t a corresponding Cisco “backdoor” I’ll be happy to buy them a coffee. But why are so many of the replies to the parent comment just pure noise?
- SenoraRaton 6y ago
  Because propaganda and nationalism are one hell of a drug.
mabbo 6y ago
I grew up in Ottawa, Nortel HQ, and had lots of friends with parents working at Nortel. That's a town that does not buy a lot of Huawei. What kept happening, from the perspective of people who worked there that I've talked to, was that Nortel would do heavy R&D investments and then a few months later Huawei would be selling identical hardware with zero R&D budget- for lower cost, naturally. It took Nortel years to finally figure out their network was highly compromised, likely by the PLA[0]. The PLA would steal industrial secrets and hand them to companies owned or controlled by the Chinese government, like Huawei. One fellow I met at a wedding party once told me how he had actually read Huawei source code that included Nortel copyright notices. It was a joke by the end. Everyone knew. As for as being an arm of the PRC, Huawei claims they're owned by their employees Trade Union. But Trade Unions in China, by law, are highly controlled and managed by the party. You can't have a trade union that isn't highly associated with the Communist Party. Huawei counter these arguments by saying it's very complex- but provide no evidence to the contrary.[1] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Nortel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Nortel [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Opaque_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Opaque_own...
- codekansas 6y ago
  Bloomberg did a writeup of this a few weeks ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china-steal-canada-s-edge-in-5g-from-nortel https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china...
ww520 6y ago
China’s National Intelligence Law from 2017 requires companies, organizations and citizens to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.” Yes, Huawei is an arm of the PRC surveillance state.
- twat 6y ago
  Any evidence of the enforcement of that law?
stx 6y ago
There is the story about a man who invented a way to coat glass with diamonds. He was negotiating to sell his invention to Huawei when they shipped one of his samples to China even though he instructed them not to because it was export controlled technology. The reason it is export controlled is that such an invention has applications in military laser weapons. I am summarizing from memory but you can read this article to learn more. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-sting-offers-rare-glimpse-of-u-s-targeting-chinese-giant https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-st...

by kayson 6y ago

hammock 6y ago

Here is some https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/25/huawei-xinjiang-and-chinas-high-tech-surveillance-state-joining-the-dots/#535db3c2cd52 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/25/huawei-xi...

xster 6y ago
Is it referencing something specific? It's an editorial referencing other editorials. Is there something direct like PRISM type wikileaks? Considering the NSA hacked and had backdoors in Huawei servers for almost a decade, I imagine direct evidence shouldn't be difficult to produce. https://mashable.com/2014/03/22/nsa-huawei/ https://mashable.com/2014/03/22/nsa-huawei/
- hammock 6y ago
  The NSA barely acknowledges its own existence. It's not exactly known for publishing direct intelligence for public consumption.. The Mashable report you link was only possible because of the most notorious leak in the history of the world (Edward Snowden), who is currently a fugitive of the US government. Have you tried searching in wikileaks though?

wyuenho 6y ago

The connection is made from: 1. The Chinese National Intelligence Law requiring every citizen to "intelligence work". 2. Huawei had the potential to reach mass adoption outside of China. 3. Huawei is a company deeply connected to the PLA. 4. Therefore Huawei, not only is its HQ required to spy for China, but that it is very likely to work with the PLA to spy for China. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law [2]. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/huawei-staff-and-chinese-military-have-deep-links-study-claims.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/huawei-staff-and-chinese-mil...

_lsq 6y ago
These are all valid reasons for concerns yet these do not qualify as proof of wrongdoing from Huawai. For 2) specifically, I'm not sure it would be helpful to declare all private companies started by veterans as "sharing deep ties to $Country's military operations". There's no shortage of "guesses" and "plausible connections" around but the parent comment is specifically asking for actual proof in this instance.
- wyuenho 6y ago
  People suspected the NSA were snooping and introducing backdoors and proactively places countermeasures against that. Why should the standard be different when it comes to China?
  - _lsq 6y ago
    The standard shouldn't be any different and that's precisely the problem here: * NSA is a governmental agency that by construction is tied to the state. Bytedance, Huawai and Tencent are privately owned companies in China and all "ties" to the Chinese governments are unsubstantiated. Blanket ban on private companies because of their country of origin and unsubstantiated suspicions results in clear discrimination and suppression of open competition in my mind. * For my understanding, could you help by providing context on what specific counter-measures have been taken against NSA's intelligence effort based on people's suspicion?
    - wyuenho 6y ago
      People have been warning about BSafe and Dual_EC_DRBG for years before Snowden came along. Privacy advocates and security professionals had been placing out a blanket warning of "government" snooping for decades before Snowden. Richard Stallman, the guy who wrote most of the Gnu utils back in the days, had been signing his emails with M-x spook, which had been in Emacs since 1988. The Internet started out anti-spook way back in the days.

lettergram 6y ago

There’s such a long list of this stuff from various companies. It’s not hard to research this at all. In terms of an anecdotal evidence... My father used to work for molex, one of his biggest complaints were fixing the molds after they were sent to Chinese factories. They would try to deconstruct them and couldn’t put them back together (this was the 90’s, early 2000’s). So they would be shipped back to the US operations to fix. Eventually, he ended up spending years training up Chinese to replace him (my father, in China). Molex moved much of its tool making shop to China and shut down most US tool and die making operations. Anyway, China has people who are trained, on factory floors, who are there to reverse engineer processes. This has been known for decades, companies don’t really seem to care or know (I guess that’s possible as they are outsourcing manufacturing). I have no doubt this is designed across all their industries and systems. It’s in their interest to do this. EDIT: I want to point out, there’s no longer a need for China to reverse engineer. US companies ship the designs straight to China. This is probably why we’ve seen China catch up so fast. We trained their workforce and now provide them all the IP before we build it.

wyuenho 6y ago
This has been known for decades, companies knew, and the way they dealt with this was to only give China obsolete tech or tech about to get out of date, so they didn't care. That's no longer the case as China is catching up fast and really threatening the competitive advantage of truly innovative companies all around the world.
- lettergram 6y ago
  I think part of it is moving most manufacturing to China had companies like Molex move as well (cheaper). Molex builds the molds for items (I’m sure other companies are doing this to). That means the Chinese are reviving the designs BEFORE manufacturing even starts (US or China or India). My understanding from the tool & die industry is that’s only been happening the last decade or so. IMO that’s the real issue, because it’s decimating the ability to manufacture here and sure design can happen in the US, but if you can’t build the molds for the latest tech here then it doesn’t matter. Those designs are given straight to China, no need to reverse engineer.

bassman9000 6y ago

https://www.politico.eu/article/huawei-germany-court-case-privacy/ https://www.politico.eu/article/huawei-germany-court-case-pr... Of specific concern is a 2017 intelligence law that obliges companies to "support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence services in accordance with the law, and maintain secret all knowledge on the national intelligence services." Another is China's cybersecurity law, which contains similar requirements. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/vodafone-found-hidden-backdoors-in-huawei-equipment https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/vodafone-... Vodafone asked Huawei to remove backdoors in home internet routers in 2011 and received assurances from the supplier that the issues were fixed, but further testing revealed that the security vulnerabilities remained, the documents show. Vodafone also identified backdoors in parts of its fixed-access network known as optical service nodes, which are responsible for transporting internet traffic over optical fibers, and other parts called broadband network gateways, which handle subscriber authentication and access to the internet, the people said. The people asked not to be identified because the matter was confidential.

luckylion 6y ago
RE the Bloomberg article, be aware that Vodafone rejected Bloomberg's reporting [1]: "The 'backdoor' that Bloomberg refers to is Telnet, which is a protocol that is commonly used by many vendors in the industry for performing diagnostic functions. It would not have been accessible from the internet. "Bloomberg is incorrect in saying that this 'could have given Huawei unauthorised access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy'. "In addition, we have no evidence of any unauthorised access. This was nothing more than a failure to remove a diagnostic function after development. "The issues were identified by independent security testing, initiated by Vodafone as part of our routine security measures, and fixed at the time by Huawei." That's a nice way of saying that Bloomberg made up most of the article. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430
- bassman9000 6y ago
  And the Politico one about the German intelligence findings? Or the fact that Huawei is a de-facto public company, with massive subsidies by the CDB? https://www.rfi.fr/en/contenu/20190530-huawei-key-beneficiary-china-subsidies-us-wants-ended https://www.rfi.fr/en/contenu/20190530-huawei-key-beneficiar... Huawei inked a $10 billion credit line with the China Development Bank (CDB) in 2004 to provide low-cost financing to customers buying its telecom gear. It was tripled to $30 billion in 2009. https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-support-helped-fuel-huaweis-global-rise-11577280736 https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-support-helped-fuel-huawe... And it's funny, because they admit this is normal https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3043558/huawei-says-relationship-chinese-government-no-different-any-other https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3043558/huawei-sa... “Like other tech companies that operate in China, including those from abroad, Huawei receives some policy support from the Chinese government,” Karl Song, vice-president of the company’s corporate communications department, said in a statement. “But we have never received any additional or special treatment.” There's no large corporation in China that got there without financial backing, and board control, from the CCP. Thus, all major Chinese corporations are a extension of the CCP.

waihtis 6y ago

It doesn't matter whether there's good evidence or not. The risk potential is there and that is what most of this is based on.

colechristensen 6y ago

The impression put out there by many people is that in China, the state, the military, and the corporations should be thought about as part of the same whole, not separate interests.

austinl 6y ago

This section on Wikipedia covers the history of the concerns. I wouldn't say there's a definitive smoking gun that's public knowledge. Instead, there are several instances of vulnerabilities discovered in Huawei systems that may have been taken advantage of (by the PRC or other parties). My guess is that there's more to a few of these stories that only the intelligence community knows about. One other point of concern from Western governments is that Chinese law compels Huawei to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services, which presents a vulnerability whether that law has been taken advantage of or not. This is much different than say, Apple, which has refused (or it has been simply impossible due to E2E) for them to cooperate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_and_security_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_...

throwaway432334 6y ago

There's not a meaningful distinction between the party and companies.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mindslight 6y ago

Corporations are inherently organs of government, being incorporated under a specific jurisdiction and receiving liability limitations in return. At the very least, Huawei is an arm of the PRC surveillance state in the same way that Google is an arm of the USG surveillance state. The problem is not that the claim is false, but rather the one-sided focus on it that justifies the USG surveillance state continuing to turn on its own people. If this were just some defense contractor pork for internal USG networks nobody would really care, but it sounds like they intend to fork most common Internet features while dictating how they operate.

Spooky23 6y ago

Back in 1982, the CIA is alleged to have modified some computers that ultimately blew up a gas pipeline. Spies to spy things. It's safe to assume that everyone with the power to do so is exploiting any advantage that they have.

thesuitonym 6y ago
Not only is it safe to assume such, it's unsafe to assume they aren't.
YarickR2 6y ago
CIA-staged gas pipeline explosion is an urban myth. I guess the same can be said about a lot of other casually known spy stories cited in this very discussion

jonathanyc 6y ago

Why has no one actually provided evidence of a single backdoor in the replies? The top reply is currently some anecdote that while interesting does not answer the question at all. Surely we can be less shitty about answering the OP’s question. As a start, it sounds like at some point there were unsecured Telnet servers in some Huawei devices: https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/30/huawei_enterprise_router_backdoor_is_telnet/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/30/huawei_enterprise_rou... It’s not entirely satisfying evidence because the Register believes it was legitimately for diagnostics. They also point out that there were comparable “backdoors” in Cisco equipment: https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities... If anyone replies with an example of an actual unambiguous Huawei backdoor for which there isn’t a corresponding Cisco “backdoor” I’ll be happy to buy them a coffee. But why are so many of the replies to the parent comment just pure noise?

SenoraRaton 6y ago
Because propaganda and nationalism are one hell of a drug.

mabbo 6y ago

I grew up in Ottawa, Nortel HQ, and had lots of friends with parents working at Nortel. That's a town that does not buy a lot of Huawei. What kept happening, from the perspective of people who worked there that I've talked to, was that Nortel would do heavy R&D investments and then a few months later Huawei would be selling identical hardware with zero R&D budget- for lower cost, naturally. It took Nortel years to finally figure out their network was highly compromised, likely by the PLA[0]. The PLA would steal industrial secrets and hand them to companies owned or controlled by the Chinese government, like Huawei. One fellow I met at a wedding party once told me how he had actually read Huawei source code that included Nortel copyright notices. It was a joke by the end. Everyone knew. As for as being an arm of the PRC, Huawei claims they're owned by their employees Trade Union. But Trade Unions in China, by law, are highly controlled and managed by the party. You can't have a trade union that isn't highly associated with the Communist Party. Huawei counter these arguments by saying it's very complex- but provide no evidence to the contrary.[1] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Nortel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Nortel [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Opaque_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Opaque_own...

codekansas 6y ago
Bloomberg did a writeup of this a few weeks ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china-steal-canada-s-edge-in-5g-from-nortel https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china...

ww520 6y ago

China’s National Intelligence Law from 2017 requires companies, organizations and citizens to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.” Yes, Huawei is an arm of the PRC surveillance state.

twat 6y ago
Any evidence of the enforcement of that law?

stx 6y ago

There is the story about a man who invented a way to coat glass with diamonds. He was negotiating to sell his invention to Huawei when they shipped one of his samples to China even though he instructed them not to because it was export controlled technology. The reason it is export controlled is that such an invention has applications in military laser weapons. I am summarizing from memory but you can read this article to learn more. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-sting-offers-rare-glimpse-of-u-s-targeting-chinese-giant https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-st...