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What did Huawei do to become a security threat?

I fail to see how Huawei can be any more of a security threat than companies such as Broadcom or Cisco.

If Huawei has indeed acted in bad faith, then make their actions public so other nations/institutions avoid them. Otherwise, this will (and does) seem like a political/financial play.



I think that the news article is a result of the Sixty Minutes Episode that aired yesterday on Huawei. The points I got from their report were:

1. Huawei (like many Chinese companies) works in close partnership with the Chinese government, which has subsidized many of its processes.

2. Huawei may be stealing IP from U.S. based companies

3. The U.S. is totally reliant on foreign companies for swaths of our communications infrastructure (which would be unsettling to a Congressional committee)

4. Then again, just because U.S. companies and the government were asleep at the wheel when it came to these technologies, does that mean we get to be choosy beggars? Is Huawei a threat to security or just a threat to the economy?


Someone at one router company told me that at one point, Huawei used to copy their routers down to the English silk screening assembly instructions on the PCB's.


> "If Huawei has indeed acted in bad faith, then make their actions public so other nations/institutions avoid them"

What if laying out the evidence implicitly compromises the only window into Huawei's alleged operations? Is it more important to try and win the public over, or to keep your advantage?

And would/could the public even be convinced? How many times has the US government warned about the security risks of partnerships with Chinese firms? How many cautionary tales do we have/need? After Boeing, Google, et al were very publicly compromised and all leaked data pointed to Beijing ... the evidence was all but dismissed by those with a direct financial incentive to ignore it.

Why would another round of that be of any use?


Governments go to great lengths to avoid revealing the sources of their information, lest they no longer have such sources.




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