Despite the obvious danger of espionage by several Chinese telecommunications companies, such as Huawei, countries in the Global South (the “developing world”, mostly in the global south) are eagerly signing up with them for E-government and cloud infrastructure services.
A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS, a Washington, D.C.-based, cross-party foreign policy think tank) identifies a total of 70 deals, most of which come from countries in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. countries. The deals began back in 2006 and involved 41 countries, most of which were identified by Freedom House as “partially free” or “not free Most of the 41 countries involved were identified by Freedom House as “partially free” or “unfreedom” countries. The latest report, produced by Jonathan Hillman and Maesea McCalpin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was featured in the Financial Times.
Freedom House, based in Washington, D.C., is a non-governmental organization that opposes centralism. The organization’s annual assessment of the degree of democratic freedom in countries around the world is often used for research in political science and other areas.
Despite long-standing U.S. government warnings about Huawei’s electronic espionage and overwhelming evidence of its widespread influence around the world, including in the U.S., Huawei’s international dealings have been signed off as business as usual. in 2019, Huawei spent nearly $3 million on lobbying activities in the U.S. and became close to former senior government officials in the U.S. and Canada. Sources said the same year the company hired a former senior Obama National Security Council cybersecurity policy director to lobby in Washington.
In 2018, another Chinese telecommunications giant, ZTE, hired Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in the 2000 U.S. election. According to Politico, ZTE “retained the lobbying services of two other former federal lawmakers, former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota and former U.S. Representative Jon Christensen of Nebraska,” according to the U.S. political news site. Jon Christensen (D-Neb.).” “Bryan Lanza, a former deputy communications director for the Trump campaign, also worked for ZTE earlier this year through Mercury Public Affairs.”
Yesterday a Canadian academic showed me the results of his unpublished research showing Huawei’s close ties to a string of influential Canadians. According to the scholar’s research, three former Canadian prime ministers and three former foreign ministers have been linked to soft policies toward China and the state of Chinese finance. He has not yet made this research public for fear of frivolous lawsuits. If the public wants to expose the corrupting influence of the Chinese Communist Party on our democratic system, we need to improve legislation to guarantee freedom of the press and academic freedom.
This lack of legislation is due in part to the fact that our legislators are themselves involved in this corruption. It is no wonder, then, that the Chinese Communist Party has always used our elected politicians as stepping stones. Those politicians who continually misuse campaign contributions and then seek personal gain through consulting and other means after leaving public office are now tasting the ill effects of being used by the CCP. The latest example is former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been publicly humiliated by various lobbying failures, including the promotion of a $1 billion Communist Party investment fund, a doomed scheme.
An apparently understated report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which also receives financial contributions from the CCP, notes that “as Huawei carves out a niche as a supplier to governments and state-owned enterprises, it is establishing a strategic position that could provide valuable intelligence and even coercive leverage to the Chinese Communist authorities. ” In other words, if Huawei documented a prime minister’s scandalous oil dealings, infidelity to his wife or cocaine purchases, Huawei could use this moral failing as “coercive leverage” to force the prime minister to work for the Chinese Communist Party.
It is time for our think tanks to make their voices heard clearly and quickly, or they, like the rest of us, will be drowned out by the noise from the outside world. Think tanks should publicly pledge not to accept CCP-linked funding, including from U.S. and European companies that profit through their dependence on the CCP. If this means that these think tank edifices are therefore missing a brick, then let’s be honest about it. Unbiased and objective analysis is the value of think tanks, not fancy window dressing. At the same time, think tank experts can not rest on their laurels, not sweet talk, but to face reality and think of danger.
Huawei’s influence also extends to the world’s most prestigious top universities. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for example, has made deals with the company worth about $11 million since 2013, including donations and research grants; then there is Cornell University, which has signed a $1 million partnership agreement with Huawei.
The University of Oxford (UK) only placed a ban on Huawei’s donations and research in early 2019. At the time, the contract with Huawei amounted to just £692,000. It is anyone’s guess how much of the money had flowed before then. As of September 2019, Stephen Schwarzman, the American billionaire with strong links to the Chinese Communist Party, has donated a combined £150 million to Oxford.
Most of the world’s leading universities cut back significantly on Huawei programs a year ago in 2018. Many of Huawei’s projects with these universities involve sensitive technologies, such as semiconductors, robotics and online cloud services.
Huawei’s data center in Papua New Guinea, Oceania, is seriously vulnerable to hacking attacks. 2012 saw Huawei sign a communications contract with the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, which resulted in officials from the organization accusing the Chinese Communist Party of hacking into its computer systems overnight to steal confidential data. Huawei, of course, denies possessing customer data. However, that’s a blatant falsehood, unless they want to argue that “theft” isn’t really “possession. Yes, that’s right.
The U.S. statement states that Huawei used backdoor technology in its equipment to help Chinese Communist authorities spy on data traversing U.S. government equipment. The U.S. justly sanctioned Huawei, restricting its purchases of semiconductors and other key technologies. Yet Huawei produces more telecommunications equipment for the global market than any other company. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of the Communist Party’s global influence, and our nation’s great ship is in danger of sinking at any moment.
Let’s be honest when we can feel the seawater soaking into the soles of our shoes. Espionage exists in all countries, and that is the harsh reality of the world. The United States has reportedly wiretapped 35 world leaders, including European Union officials and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In addition, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) violated 70 million phone records of French citizens in 30 days. That incident occurred in 2013, and then-President Barack Obama publicly apologized for it and promised to end it. Yes, that’s right, that’s the reality.
When governments promise to give up spying, the truth is that it never ends and continues. That’s what governments do.
The Chinese Communist authorities have never admitted their spying, much less apologized for it, but rightfully spy on anyone of importance. Moreover, Chinese companies like Huawei will not be able to disobey any orders given by the CCP authorities. Chinese Communist law requires them to do as they are told.
Christopher Wray, director of the FBI under President Trump, noted during his tenure that “under the Communist Party’s Cybersecurity Law, Chinese companies like Huawei are essentially required to do whatever they are asked to do by local authorities, and there is little room for challenge. This is already a well-known fact. As a result, this leads to a national security crisis for us, which everyone must always be aware of.”
Since it is understood that espionage exists between countries, even among allies, and that such international espionage is a powerful tool of national policy, we cannot naively expect countries in geopolitical competition, like the United States and China, to stop spying. It is more realistic, then, to assume that any country with the capacity to spy will do so, and to do everything in its power to ensure that countries like the CCP, which are extremely poor performers in terms of values, cannot capture the global high ground of critical technology.
Choosing like-minded partners in two or three countries or among the 193 UN member states is a different path. Instead of buying cheap Chinese Communist Huawei products used to threaten democracies around the world, choose Nokia or Ericsson equipment from Finland and Sweden. These countries tend to be more supportive of freedom, democracy and human rights than many others. So at least their espionage may be used to deliver justice. If you recognize that the United States is the only country in the world militarily and economically powerful enough to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party, then you too can empower the guardians of this global democracy by purchasing equipment from American companies.
I’ve always physically trusted the United States to counteract the Chinese Communist Party. You should be a part of it, not a part of it.
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