,
19 tweets,
5 min read
Read on Twitter
Here's the counterpoint to some of the recent Huawei commentary:
One thing in this Huawei story that keeps coming back to me is the pre-Iraq war consensus (even among governments that opposed the war) that Saddam Hussein definitely had some sort of active WMD program: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
From the late 90s onwards, UNSCOM never found evidence of active WMD programs but Saddam's obstruction and caginess meant most assumed that the programs were there.
It's easily forgotten now, but the pre-Iraq war debate at the UN was about how to handle and turn back the assumed Iraqi WMD program without following the U.S. push to war. The idea that no such program existed was a fringe view.
In essence, the evasive and secretive behaviour of a strategic rival was taken as evidence of suspicious underlying activity, even in the absence of first-order evidence.
Now, for me, *by far* the most suspicious thing about Huawei is that it repeatedly lies and misleads about its links with the Chinese military.
But the links that we do know of seem to me to be far less than the sum of their parts.
But the links that we do know of seem to me to be far less than the sum of their parts.
Lots of people have done diligent work digging out Huawei-PLA links: This by @BaldingsWorld in the past few days:
This by @isaacstonefish yesterday:
This by @business colleagues last month. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
You should also read some of the reports from the UK's Huawei cyber evaluation centre, which give some granular detail hardware and software development and how Huawei approaches cybersecurity: gov.uk/government/pub…
The thing that troubles me in all this is that telcos in general have a lot of recruitment and outsourcing crossover with the military, including in western countries. And after a decade of looking for it, the published evidence of Huawei-PLA links still looks quite scanty, IMO.
Compare for instance with the wealth of info about Hikvision's use in surveillance in Xinjiang and elsewhere: ipvm.com/reports/hikvis…
That's not to downplay the great work mentioned above. But I think *by far* the most suspicious thing about Huawei is still its caginess, misdirection and lies about its military links, which (from what has so far been published) seem to me oddly mundane and low-level.
So I'm left with that Iraqi WMD example.
Is the best explanation of this caginess that there *is* a cover-up, but we still haven't quite found the smoking gun?
Or is there some other reason we're not thinking of?
Is the best explanation of this caginess that there *is* a cover-up, but we still haven't quite found the smoking gun?
Or is there some other reason we're not thinking of?
Given the critical nature of IT infrastructure I actually think extreme suspicion of Huawei is warranted, unless they can make a clearer accounting of themselves. The U.S. approach of locking them out of networks seems the right one.
The U.K. seem to have stumbled into their acceptance of Huawei in the mid-2000s through naivety. I think the joint cybersecurity centre is probably a good way of making a silk purse of this sow's ear and trying to gather some intel, but I worry Whitehall is still being naive.
If I was to make a strong case about Huawei as a security threat, it would probably be not so much "The PLA is actively working with Huawei to secretly plant sophisticated cyberspying technology in the world's information networks" ...
... as "the PLA is very happy that Huawei's cheap, lower-quality, weak-security products are taking share in privatized telco markets from better European equipment, leaving lots of backdoors that could one day be exploited for state-backed hacking".
For me that's the explanation that fits the evidence best. It doesn't really change how foreign governments should treat Huawei, but it does IMO offer a better account of what is going on. (ends)
