Discussion on:

Is Huawei a threat to U.S. national security?

threats exists with off-shoring work. As the off-shore firm develops a level of confidence with the homeland firm more sensitive material can be given over to be worked on. Business secrets can be gleaned, gateways written into code. Similar economic damage albeit over a longer time frame. But real just the same. Doesn't take a lot of damage these days (and onto the foreseeable future) to seriously disrupt an economy. Perhaps, even bring it to it's knees. Globalization can be a dangerous beast.
Or am I just a little too negative?

China will always promote their own best interest. In the past that has included substantial cyber sluthing. They have, and always will pursue everthing they think they can get away with doing. Oh yes, they will smile broadly, bow, and shake your hand all the while.

How many times must one be burned before learning no to play with matches. How many times must we face an enemy before we put up a guard. 90% or better of the hacks attempted on my enterprise and every other enterprise I support, come from CHINA. My firewall has more china ip address blocks than any other entries. Trust hardware/software from China? There are many things I will trust, some things I will try to trust but few things I won't trust. It is earned, not given and I don't trust China at this point in time. Not when it comes to IT. They are the largest pilferer of R$D in the world and now they want to sell it back. NOT.

We all know the Chinese are not innovators in technology but, like it or not, they are great copiers of it. Let them in and then the companies that are claiming their IP has been stolen can pursue them through the legal system.

Secondly I don't necessarily buy into the concept of hard-coded gateways and other cyber back-doors because it is too easy for the equipment to be reverse engineered and any potential threats found.

The problem is that you have to go through China's legal system to get any good results. It's also extremely expensive and time consuming. Really the only one who would benefit from this would be the lawyers.

Bill

The discussion is about them being allowed to trade in the US. As such they would be bound by and accountable to the US legal system.

to find threats. BUT! you have to suspect them in the first place. Are you going to reverse engineer everything that comes from China? I doubt it. What about BYO device? This could be the greatest security threat in our time. If you have (like us with) over 2 thousand devices in service - Are you going to reverse engineer all of them? You either do all of them or non of them. Only one malicious device is needed to do the work. Once the devices work is done. It's too late.

I hope Cisco and other US manufacturers of network equipment are prepared for the *** for Tat response that the Chinese government will respond with, locking these companies out of the Chinese market. If the Chinese government is suspected of pressuring its domestic manufacturers to build in trap doors, can the same not be said for the US government?

Huawei and the Chinese government have been stealing data from American companies for over 10 years. Why do you think the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and Bagdad where destroyed. Because they were being used as routing and collection points before being feed back to China. There was a large UK infrastructure project that Cisco, Siemens and Hauwei were bidding for. Siemens won the bid as they were cheaper that Cisco but it was noted that the Hauwei switches code was identical to 4 year of Cisco switches including the faults and security holes plus some new ones. It turned out some of the Huawei devices were used in the critical network are although they were known to be vulnerable because they were cheap. They got hacked and data lost, the Huawei devices were removed along with the managers involved in using them ?

Huawei wanting a plant next door to a military drone manufacturer is a different matter.

However backbone infrastructure was always designed to be simple in an attempt for the highest security, which I believe is correct. TalkTalk have introduced virus scanning (guaranteed to have even non intentional security flaws) with praise from the UK government. The idea is sound as it can thwart malware for home users and give parents better control however two things have been missed and allowed.

Any critical infrastructure should be simple and/or open to complete scrutiny by being veritably open source.

Any security reducing proxy put in place for home users must be opt-in and not be compulsory for all users even business customers who are not able or want to use TalkTalks Homesafe service.

It is likely illegal for multiple reasons but who would sue them.

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2011/05/10/talktalks-new-blocking-system/

Obviously, a hardware maker is not going to make a device that starts streaming data home to China (which is what the Washington DC folks are worried about).

BUT, if you were selling locks to your enemies, perhaps you make them a BIT easier to pick? Such that those 'accidental' vulns are not so accidental.

H has stolen all they need from Cisco...Cisco fought that battle back in 2003.

China does not need any American products for networking.

What they do need is the latest and the greatest technology, which they can steal much cheaply than creating it.

isn't this just part of the ages-old arms race? Stone to iron to longbow to gunpowder to fighter planes to spy satellite to internet hacking. Am we expected to believe that the US is standing still in the technological race for oneupmanship? I think not. I bet it's miles ahead of the opposition. Speaking as Britisher, I find that thought reassuring.

nt

don't threaten to call in their "loans", when confronted with their nefarious deeds. They don't have the hold over the US government, who keeps borrowing and borrowing, like there's no tomorrow. Maybe there IS no tomorrow!

like disagreeing with them in a way that MAY cost AM or Apple money. Nor do MS and Apple do silly things like borrow huge amounts of money from foreign governments. The problem there is the gov't borrowing not the company following what's shown as acceptable US corporate behaviour today.

Maybe I should admit their similarities - I like your word "sheit", it conjures up visions of Sharia law, & makes them seem even more sinister and terroristic!

When months ago Hillary Clinton said US and China can respectively make their allied country friends, she should know Hauwei or ZTE may transfer technology on their own discretion to Iran today.

THE ANSWER TO 1984 IS 1776

Is it possible to trust a company that has such strong government connections? It depends on the government, their actions and their ethics.

If you're keeping up with the press you already know Huawei is copying larger players line for line when it comes to code. I don't know why the larger players aren't going after Huawei in court. Anyway, the point is, I can't afford to take the risk. If I use Huawei, and they steal my data, then I am responsible, not Huawei. We don't access military or research labs but we do access other federal databases. We don't have the budget to audit every piece of hardware. We have to use what is normally trusted, not something with suspicions. How much cheaper can it be and is the risk worth it.

Why the worry about threat now? Crack open a Cisco ASA and look inside, Foxconn chips. This is a security appliance, yet the chips come from China, not the US. I think if they were going to compromise us, it has all ready been done.

This is about the US abdicating its desire to compete in the world. Our schools are starved for resources, starved of adept and challenging minded teachers, and overburdened with non-educational requirements. Thus our finest technical schools are filled with students from abroad who know how to study and how to innovate. When the US again funds education it may have the intellectual resources to match wits with the rest of the world.

The more we continue to give away, the more we will continue to lose. We need to wake up and take things back, become leaders again.

If I were in the shoes of chinese leaders I would counter immediately by telling telling the US public that the real danger to National security is not China or its companies but the fact that the concerned politicians who wrote the report are highly incompetent people. A day before the elections I would issue a statement that China would stop buying debt and would diversify its interest. Now that would teach the politicians a real lesson as the dollar would plunge to an all time low and the creditworthiness of the US would go down the drain. It is almost pathetic that politicians try to make a scapegoat out of a company. Microsoft and Oracle are bigger threats to China than Huawei to the US.

anti-trust. or is that two words....

How is it spying when you own outright? US needs to realize the borrower is slave to the lender. Too little too late USA.

We have already spread our wealth around the world. China being the biggest recipient because of unfair business and trade practices.

Why does the US continue to buy most everything from China. I have yet to see a high quality product of any kind from China. Much of their food, like fish, are grown in extremely dirty water that carries parasites. The Flu comes from China. etc.

Bring the IT manufacturing back to the US.

If they become a telecomm service provider or an ISP, it gives them access to much confidential information sniffing the lines, identifying business secrets from corporations, etc.

If allowed, this could be one the worst things to happen to the internet. Internet access is controlled by the country. Shall we trust Huawei to adhere to our laws, compete fairly, and not violate individual privacy?

The US invented telecommunications, Photographic Cameras, VCRs, Television, Computer chips, etc. We started outsourcing our "cheap and easy production due to cheaper labor costs" in all these things to a lil' ol' country known as Japan. Within 20 years we no longer manufactured hardly any of these things and all were owned by Japanese companies. Not good for US workers but no national security threat because Japan was an ally of the US. China is doing the same thing but they are NOT an ally of the US and have made that clear. They celebrate and praise people who steal intelectual property from the west and have taken the production of solar pannels, flat screen video displays, tablet pcs, pcs, and many other things over the same way Japan did BUT they do not have a vested interest in keeping us happy as they are not an ally. They will steal our IP and there is every reason to believe they will program in kill switches and backdoors into the software and hardware they develop because it will give them incredible power. They have centuries of experience with the western powers exploiting China and bullying China and very l-o-n-g memory, to justify this behavior. I do not think they will hesitate to use the power if they have it either. They stole billions of dollars and years worth of research from JPL to jump their space program ahead by decades -a most cost effective and extremely expedicious path to manned space flight and ICBM development. They will do this into the future and they behave like a corporation than is also a country- a corporation with the world's largest standing army and nuclear weapons. So, no I do not think it is wise to "trust" them with the information pipeline for the world.

Europeans had done the early work on telegraphs, telephones, and radios before anyone in the US even thought about getting involved, and then it was mostly European migrants. The Europeans had working telegraphs and telephones decades before they did in the USA, it's just that the US people went about lodging patents first, mostly on the work of others - many of Edison's patents were for work done by Tesla.

most of edison's patents were for work done by his employees. they signed away their rights just to get a job.

and it shows what an immoral thieving set of laws they had then that it was possible.

As someone who has been around this space for 38 years, including much engagement in/with China (placing VeriSign's .com/.net server in Beijing and being the apologist to the Congress and Bush Admin.), it is quite simple to me: when it comes to protecting our strategic ICT supply chain, we have a clear process on the outbound side-the EAA?ITAR, requiring an individually validated license for those few technologies we would actually sell to China. Under such a system, WHY in heavens name (or, to channel Sec. Kissinger) "vhy vud ve effer BUY strategic technologies from a nation to whom ve vuld refuse to SELL strategic technologies ??!!"

This is exactly why defense related equipment historically cost more. In addition to higher military specs, it had to be manufactured here. This issue isn't just with networking equipment. They manufacture most of the semiconductors in the world. All our technology is vulnerable to this threat. Nobody wanted to listen all these years because it was "good for business". Now I just want to give everybody a great big I TOLD YOU SO. We'll never learn because we're too greedy and short-sighted.

I worked for both Ericsson and Alcatel/Lucent. Both of these companies developed the technologies that compete against Huawei. Some of the products were developed in-house and others through acquisition. Ericsson had purchased Marconi (subsequently FORE Systems) and moved the US HQ to Texas while keeping Global HQ in Stockholm. Great company who treated their employees very well.

Just before the acquisition of Marconi and the merger of Alcatel/Lucent, Huawei was trying to establish a route to the US markets by OEM hardware to private label to anyone who would compete with Cisco. Their prices were ridiculously low resulting in very large margins for the organization. I am glad that our leadership realized that a short term competitive advantage was not worth the cost of chipping away at Cisco and possibly US Cyber Security.

It is hard for me to believe Huawei is just another "business in the business of doing business" as their ambassador stated in the 60 Minutes interview. They are currently in 150 markets and will surround us until we are outflanked. As IT professionals, we need to be aware of the threats from Huawei and I support any investigation of their motives.

Imagine getting your next version update that simply disables your entire Huawei communications network. Hmmmmm......

Well... my point is easy...
You don??t trust the Chinese... or anybody else ?
What is the big problem ?
If you really is that scared then don??t you develope the hardware yourself ?
Ohh... I forgot... it is cheaper to let the Chinese develope all your hardware...
Basically, make your own hardware...

Assuming that the accusations are true, you could substitute the names of a large number of US companies for Huawei and everything would seem normal.

Associations with the Chinese military are evidence of involvement in espionage - well now, that seems to ring a bell doesn't it? Oh yes, I remember - the "US military-industrial complex" (Pres. Eisenhower)

The owner doesn`t give interviews so that makes him suspicious. Watch out! Howard Hughes must have been a US spy!!

One of the commentators said that everything was stolen from Cisco - just like Samsung and Apple!?! wouldn't you say:?". In addition, it seems that Huawei is the only one producing certain items and their products are also described as "innovative" so they are actually producing their own technology.

On a more detailed level, the accusations are absolutely speculative, something like: "Well, why wouldn't they do it?".

One of the accusations is about the ideology of economic choices. So if the Chinese Government chooses to organize its economy by having government funding of national technology (see also South Korea and Japan) then that makes them suspicious. We can shortly expect the Chinese intelligence equivalent of the CIA to make statements in the Chinese press about the US choice to organise their economy on the basis of private ownership of companies which then sign contracts with the US military.

The real situation seems to be as follows. No US companies produce all the equipment for 4G and so the US is dependent on three European and two Chinese companies so let's choose China and not our "allies" in the European Union and use the suspicion we have already generated in a whole host of previous rumour mongering about the Chines military threat to try and damage the competition encountered by Cisco.

It seems like "business as usual". The real rulers of the United States put their mouthpieces in Congress into action to protect their profits.

Non critical ..fine ..otherwise treat as suspicious. Cheap Trojan horses are not even worth considering with national security infrastructure. btw I do enjoy dim sims

Jp