China syndromeLetting “A Fox Loose in A Chicken Coop”: U.K. Intel Anxious about Huawei Deal

Published 21 January 2020

High-level officials at the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the U.S. NSA (and Britain’s largest intelligence agency), said they were concerned about the imminent decision by the government of Boris Johnson to allow Huawei access to the U.K.  new telecoms network infrastructure. A high-level GCHQ source told The Times that handing Huawei access the U.K. telecom networks would be akin to “letting a fox loose in a chicken coop.”

High-level officials at the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the U.S. NSA (and Britain’s largest intelligence agency), said they were concerned about the imminent decision by the government of Boris Johnson to allow Huawei access to the U.K. new telecoms network infrastructure.

Thanks to heavy Chinese government subsidies and a methodical campaign of stealing Western technology, Huawei has become one of the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunication components. The company has had close ties with the Chinese intelligence services and military, and the U.S. intelligence community has gathered voluminous evidence that Huawei, in addition to relying on government subsidies to under-bid Western companies for large infrastructure contracts, is also serving as they eyes and ears of the vast Chinese intelligence establishment.

The company’s components are installed in the most sensitive sections of a country’s communication network, allowing Huawei to eavesdrop on communications carried over the network and share the relevant information with Chinese intelligence.

Huawei is also taking a more proactive role in advancing the political and economic interests of the Chinese government. Huawei installed the communication network in several African countries, and the company’s technicians then instructed the domestic intelligence services in those countries in how to use the company’s equipment to spy on political opponents of the authoritarian regimes in these countries, and how to keep track of dissidents.

Senior officials from GCHQ did not hide their assessment that opening up Britain’s 5G network to Huawei carries grave national security risks. The Times reports that high-level sources at GCHQ admit that the decision, to be taken by Boris Johnson and the U.K. National Security Council (NSC) this month, is a “foregone conclusion,” despite the alarming results of tests on Huawei devices that have been conducted at a secure government facility in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

This tests found not only that Huawei’s equipment has a variety of backdoors built into it, allowing the company and the Chinese intelligence services to spy on users of the company’s gear – but that the company’s programmers and engineers did everything they could to hide and conceal these backdoors.

Those who support allowing Huawei access to Britain’s communication infrastructure say that to counter the persistent threat of Chinese espionage, Huawei would be “excluded from sensitive locations” such as Westminster and key naval bases.