China syndromeU.S. rebuffs Huawei fearing company is proxy of China
Last month the U.S. government rebuffed another attempt by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. to enter the U.S. market when it ordered the company to immediately stop its partnership with 3Leaf Systems; the government has blocked similar deals in the past; U.S. officials claim that Huawei is a dangerous extension of the Chinese government and is determined to steal state secrets; Huawei is one of China’s largest companies, providing products to forty-five of the world’s top fifty telecom operators in over 100 countries; observers believe that the U.S. government’s distrust of Huawei stems from its general frustration with cyber attacks emanating from China
Pushed out once again // Source: gizchina.com
Last month the U.S. government rebuffed another attempt by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. to enter the U.S. market when it ordered the company to immediately stop its partnership with 3Leaf Systems.
In an effort to tap into the lucrative U.S market, Huawei purchased some patents and hired a few employees from 3Leaf, a small California based company that focuses on cloud computing.
When the government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.(CFIUS), a secretive group that includes representatives from DHS and the Department of Defense, caught wind of this deal, it ordered Huawei to immediately back out.
Huawei believes the demands are unfair because the deal was not an acquisition. In response Senator Jim Webb (D- Virginia) and Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) claimed that Huawei was a dangerous extension of the Chinese government and was determined to steal state secrets.
Government officials fear that allowing Huawei to operate in the United States would compromise security as they might install equipment that contains bugs that would make it easier for China to steal information, shut down communications, or make networks easier to hack.
Huawei believes these claims are outlandish and insists the company is a distinct multinational corporation that is separate from the Chinese government.
According to Bill Plummer, a company spokesman, “Huawei is Huawei. It’s a multinational company. It isn’t China. It shouldn’t be held hostage to the tense relationship between the two governments.”
Huawei is one of China’s largest companies, providing products to forty-five of the world’s top fifty telecom operators in over 100 countries. Supporters of the company say its products have been safely sold to nearly every major phone company in the world.
Despite these reassurances, the United States has repeatedly refused Huawei entry into its markets. In the past CFIUS blocked Huawei’s attempt to purchase 3Com Corp. and stopped the company’s plans to upgrade Sprint Nextel Corp’s network.
Government officials suspect that Huawei is close to the Chinese government. The company’s founder served in the People’s Liberation Army and the company thrives in China’s highly regulated economic sphere that is largely controlled by the strict authoritarian government. Furthermore, the Chinese government is keenly interested in advancing its telecommunications and technology capabilities.
It remains unclear whether the company has any ties to the Chinese government, but a former intelligence official believes that the U.S. government’s distrust of Huawei stems from its general frustration with cyber attacks emanating from China.
The former official explained, “You have senior officials in Washington going to work every week and their assistants telling them, ‘Sir, the Chinese have hacked into your system and are reading your email again. We’re trying to get them out. Don’t use your computer.’ China is contemptuous when we complain about this, and that probably deepens the reaction toward Huawei.”
In reality, Huawei is the least of the U.S government’s worries as cyber threats have proliferated across the world and could come at any point in the sophisticated global supply chain that touches nearly every technology company.
Bugs or security vulnerabilities could be built into technological equipment at any point in its life as it is shipped around the world, passing through dozens of countries, to be designed, coded, and assembled.
Nova Daly, the previous manager of the CFIUS program at the Treasury Department, says, “The cyber side is where the real national-security issues are growing exponentially, the vulnerabilities created by the global supply chain.”
“We need clear cyber policy from the administration and Congress,” he said.
Technology experts say that it is almost impossible to find and remove every bug, but efforts are underway to screen key electronic components before they arrive in the United States.
