How Huawei Wooed Europe With Sponsorships, Investments and Promises

I'm not a tech guy, but in recently shopping for a new cell phone, I was surprised to find Huawei phones as good as iPhones for my purposes, and for 1/3 the price. I have no loyalty to any company or brand. If it's cheaper, and it works, I'll buy it. If the Chinese can endanger the Democracies of the west with a glorified telegraph machine, what the heck are we getting for the trillions we are spending on "national security"?

Suppose a western telecom company engaged in some form of spying for its government. I think if that ever came to light it would be the death of that company and their executives know it (I seem to recall Apple's refusal to help the FBI (?) a few years ago). China's government is much more authoritarian than that of most western countries so indeed it could try (as the U.S. did) to impose compliance with their will, but they must also realize that if they do that it will be the ruin of the company. Trust but verify seems the best policy and maybe that will even begin to change the attitude of the government as they realize the benefits of cooperation and integration with the rest of the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/technology/australia-cellphone-encryption-security.html January 22, 2019 Did Australia Poke a Hole in Your Phone’s Security? By NELLIE BOWLES A law passed last month allows the authorities to compel tech companies to build tools to bypass their products’ encryption. It has global implications. [ The only problem with Huawei is that the United States is determined to undermine Chinese technology and Chinese development by ruining leading Chinese companies. We are treating the Chinese as though we are intent on recreating the Cold War. We should consider the Chinese as economic partners and working diplomatically to resolve conflicts just as we do with a Britain or Germany... ]

Telecom infrastructure and its likely future evolution is so complex that informed analysis of risks of many kinds, ranging from economic to political to military, is difficult. That is in fact the most valid reason for the immediate need to reduce the margin of policy errors at this critical juncture when 5G infrastructure investments are about to explode. Given all the shady dealings Huawei has had over a few decades of its expansion, the wise policy choice to reduce margin of policy error is clearly to stop Huawei until its behaviour becomes better understood. Xi's dictum that all PRC entities must follow CCP directive and help achieve CCP goals globally does not bode well with the idea of an innocent telecom company. If Huawei refuses to spy when CCP asks for that service, Huawei is breaking PRC "law". Whether Huawei has been a criminal in the past or not is almost irrelevant in the light of this unqualified commitment to undertake offensive acts to the rest of the world.

Where is the proof of the allegations that Huawei is spying? So far all we can see it that Huawei is very a strong competitor to US companies, probably much stronger and technologically more advanced, and the US has a habit of forcing legal action against any competition it cannot handle otherwise. So where is the proof that Huawei is committing the crimes the US says it does? If there is no proof, then all we can see is a criminal allegation by a US government that is trying to press buyers to accept inferior US products by force of law.

We must look deeper to understand Huwei's appeal to telecoms. Huawei has the only end-to-end technology stack in the industry: it owns significant 5G IP, controls its own silicon, produces every element of 5G networks and assembles turnkey networks–from antennas and chips to the power stations needed to operate them–at scale and cost. It is literally unrivalled in enhanced mobile broadband. Partly because Huawei employs 700 mathematicians, more than 800 physicists, over 120 chemists and over 6,000 experts in fundamental research and assembles its phones in-house, on assembly lines that put Taiwan's Foxconn to shame. Your Huawei mobile phone is not only more advanced than Apple's. it has also been assembled in just 28.5 seconds thanks to a new market Huawei plans to enter: high-end automation. While I understand our government's desire to protect our security from nefarious mathematicians and physicists, it seems that, by banning Huawei, we are denying ourselves 5G's early fruits: a development environment that exploits 5G's many, many capabilities. We are not scheduled to become a 5G nation until 2031 while China is already halfway there (nationwide cell site density 5x ours for reduced latency) while every major Chinese city will be up and running by the end of 2021–and that includes the high speed railway. If we don't abandon such self-harming policies soon, we will be irrelevant by 2030 at the latest. It's time we invested in ourselves.

Huawei can’t have it both ways. They are absolutely an arm of the Chinese government and as such, they must submit to the governments demands. This, a government that is actively using AI to track every one of its citizens and giving them a score as it relates to adherence to their social requirements. Creepy and scary. No, make no mistake, this Chinese business is not evil, it is simply at the beck and call of the Communist government. There is no equivalent situation here in the US. Do not be confused, they play by their own rules in China and I for one do not want the Chinese government knowing any more about our countries secrets and infrastructure than is necessary. They may act like any other business, but they are certainly not a business as we westerners know it.

Many western companies played the same to woo market share: Sponsorships, Investments and Promises. Cisco created "Cisco Academy" in many countries to generate interests among young students. Now facing a rising Chinese tech companies and everyone is "concerned"? How about allowing the better product and services play a role in your judgement?

I worked for several US multi-nationals that did business in China. Here is the Chinese rule book: 1. You must have a local JV with a state owned company 2. The General Manager will be a local Chinese 3. Give us all your IP 4. No, you can't take out any cash 5. If you don't follow rules 1-4, we will send "tax auditors" to lock up your expat managers Lets apply the same rules to any Chinese company in the US.

Thank you for a well researched article. Now if only those responding would put in the time to understand the real context, issues, and evidence, we might have a real discussion. Pipe dream, that, so perhaps the NYT could arrange such—two or more discussants, covering the various ill-formed views that follow.

Follow the money.... America does not want to pay a Chinese firm for the construction of its 5G network build out through mobile carriers. The threat of espionage through mobile communications network hardware is overststed.... Espionage occurs directly via the Internet.

It seem hard to trust each other. Think about Edward Snowden the the Five Eyes. Is it the best approach going forward each country has its own 5G?

«The United States has moved to restrict the use of Chinese technology because of concerns that it is being used for espionage.» Given that no evidence has ever been presented in support of the assertion above, perhaps it should be modified to read as follows «The United States has moved to restrict the use of Chinese technology because of concerns that it it is beating the US competition».... Henri

This is ridiculous, the United States is determined to undermine Chinese development and Huawei seems especially problematic to us since the company is so advanced in technology and economically successful. We are aiming to undermine Chinese development or to set a new Cold War in place. The vilification of China is continually shocking and shameful.

The Elites will destroy and sell away the assets of their own countries just to be rich. They really are a plague on this Earth.

Huawei is a Trojan horse. Article 22 of the Chinese Counter-Espionage Law states that during the course of a counter-espionage investigation, ‘relevant organisations and individuals’ must ‘truthfully provide’ information and ‘must not refuse’. Through its networks and phones, China has direct access to personal and network security in Europe and across the world. Until China agrees to accept the "cybernorms and how we follow international law in cyberspace" there should be no space for its companies elsewhere.

Huawei products are brilliant, though. Incredibly high performance at much lower cost. I can't comment on their integrity, however, without some context. We have come to learn that every tech giant, heck, every large corporation has questionable business ethics. Either it's all wrong or we've decided it's an acceptable tradeoff. Focus on Huawei reveals some very deep biases, in my opinion. I'd like some balance.

Trade with China began so to foster their democratic impulses in the hopes they would eventually join the world community of free and democratic nations. Instead they’ve just become the most powerful dictatorship in the world. They threaten democracy around the world with massive technology theft, bribery, addiction to cheap products, and huge advances in military might and threats, even free ‘education’ programs. They accept no real transparency or criticism whatsoever. Time to form a united European front against them, and foster our own democracies and self-reliance before it’s too late, while we wait for America to come to it’s senses

Until the Huawei arrest in Canada, and China's taking of Canadian hostages, Huawei could claim that they were honest actors and would follow international rules. The occasional theft of technology by Huawei was overlooked. But now, it is clear that Huawei is an arm of the Chinese government and must do what it is told, including espionage. Therefore Huawei cannot be used in our critical wireless and telecom networks.

The problem with telecom equipment is that every system, no matter where it's designed and manufactured, will have surveillance back doors in it. The only question most countries have to answer is: whose back doors do I want in my equipment? Who do I trust? Today there are many technologies available to allow a buyer to fully inspect their systems. The most common is open source Unix software that was injected into the public domain when the U.S. broke up the Bell Telephone system in 1982. Since then the software has morphed into other operating systems, most notably GNU/Linux and Apple OS X. The security advantage is that open source software is transparent and can be inspected. Today the problem is not the availability of transparency technologies. It's the stubbornness of Governments and private companies that prevents its use. Open source logic chips using WISHBONE System-on-Chip have been around for over twenty years. The problem is that any engineer who attempts to develop equipment with the technique suddenly finds themselves at the receiving end of a vast array of professional punitive measures. They're not doing anything illegal, but if they keep it up they become unemployable. These technologies are very similar to those used in nuclear command-and-control systems, which is the 'gold standard' for security. The solution to the Huawei problem is not to blackball the company, it's to permit international trade by favoring transparent technologies.

This article failed to mention the reason why we are so anxious about Huawei. They are the leading 5G technology company and front runner in research and developments that they are setting the standard for all the future 5G users. It is rather unfortunate that we have to use national security reason to stop a very competitive and worthy opponent. This will not help our competitiveness just like we cannot stop Japanese & Korean car makers and Indian & Israeli software engineering companies. But it should be a wakeup call to our future research and development needs in our country.

The US-led campaign against Huawei has two roots: 1. US jealousy over losing the lead in 5G technology to the Chinese, despite America's persistent racist media smears that portray all of China's advances for humanity as somehow nefarious. 2. Huawei's refusal to be part of the Five Eyes cartel, I mean, "intelligence alliance", and refusal to allow the NSA (revealed by Edward Snowden to be actual American espionage) to infiltrate its network and products. Funny how you don't hear the US government making sensationalist claims about "espionage" with regard to Amazon's Alexa and similar spying products by Google and Facebook that are being marketed to households worldwide.

"Its equipment is a crucial part of wireless infrastructure in Europe, and the company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on 5G research..." The more accurate statement would be that American companies spent hundreds of millions on 5G research; the Chinese, including Huawei, spent their time stealing the fruits of American research.

Let’s hope the People eventually prevail in PRC and other oppressive states. We cannot let them continue to steal intellectual property. Block this company from the free world. Support freedom of speech and the end of authoritarianism.