[rad-green] Why Washington is paranoid about Huawei

*https://www.scmp.com/print/comment/opinion/article/3050317/why-washington-paranoid-about-huawei
<https://www.scmp.com/print/comment/opinion/article/3050317/why-washington-paranoid-about-huawei>*

*South China Morning Post          12 Feb 2020*

*My Take*

*Why Washington is paranoid about Huawei*

*New expose shows how American intelligence secretly owned and operated
encryption company whose devices were used by the governments of more than
100 countries over decades, so the US now fears a repeat by the Chinese
with the services of the 5G giant*

*By Alex Lo*

The past illuminates the present. This bombshell of a story dropped by *The
Washington Post* certainly explains a lot about America’s current war
against Chinese 5G supplier Huawei.

For more than half a century after the second world war, the Swiss company
Crypto, whose products the governments of more than 100 countries have
relied on to send secure encrypted messages, was secretly owned and
operated by the CIA and its West German intelligence counterpart, the BND.

This has enabled American intelligence to read the top secrets of friends
and foes alike, and to share them with other members of the ­ so-called
Five Eyes, the intelligence services of four other English-speaking
countries.

But given the close working relationship with West German intelligence,
maybe it should have been called the Six Eyes, despite the language
differences. *[1]*

Washington has kept insinuating that Huawei poses a security risk to all
companies and governments that use its 5G infrastructures. Yet, it has
never provided actual evidence despite having searched high and low for it,
including illegally hacking into Huawei’s mainframes at its Shenzhen
headquarters.

What Americans are afraid of, or paranoid about, is that the 5G pioneer
will be to Chinese intelligence what Crypto was to the CIA. It takes one to
know one.

As George Yeo, former minister of foreign affairs for Singapore, said in a
recent speech, “a key reason for the US campaign against Huawei is the fear
that China may not only develop a similar surveillance capability but
Chinese equipment and Chinese systems will make it harder for the US to
maintain the same surveillance reach”.

Americans are afraid if Huawei is dirty. But as Yeo explains, it’s just as
bad for US intelligence if it is clean: it won’t have flaws and back-door
vulnerabilities so readily available to exploit.

And of course, thanks to
Edward Snowden [2] <https://www.scmp.com/topics/edward-snowden>
, we know that other US agencies such as the FBI and National Security
Agency have exploited such back doors with large US tech companies,
including Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others.

Yeo makes a third important point: “The only safe assumption is that all
systems expose us to external intelligence penetration. We have to find
ways to protect ourselves and accept that nothing is foolproof.”

If all systems are penetrable, the only answer is to be extra vigilant.
Picking on one company or one country just distracts you from being alert
to threats from elsewhere.

Source URL:
https://scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3050317/why-washington-paranoid-about-huawei
Links

[1]
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3050193/crypto-spy-caper-cia-secretly-owned-swiss-company-sold-encryption

[2] https://www.scmp.com/topics/edward-snowden

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