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US lobbying against Chinese company Huawei, one of the world's largest phone manufacturers and telecom kit providers, took a new step this week at the industry's major annual conference. phone.
Every year, around 100,000 suppliers, operators and technology manufacturers visit the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to conclude agreements and showcase emerging technologies. This year, the conversation has been dominated almost exclusively by 5G, as operators seek to introduce ultra-fast next-generation mobile networks.
The conference was heavily sponsored by Huawei, who talked a lot about his 5G capabilities.
But deep down, are profiling the negative media months over whether Huawei's equipment could be a back door allowing the Chinese government to spy on people.
The company's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, is awaiting Canada's decision on the advisability of extraditing him to the United States after alleged sanctions violations. And the company has also been indicted by the United States for alleged theft of trade secrets.
The rotating president, Guo Ping, spoke on Tuesday morning to talk about Huawei's 5G business at a gigantic auditorium filled with leaders and journalists from the telecommunications sector.
His speech took an unexpected turn about halfway through when he fired on the US government, claiming that Huawei was spying on China on behalf of China.
"PRISM, PRISM on the wall, who is the most trustworthy of all?" Guo said on stage, referring to the PRISM monitoring system used by US intelligence. "Huawei has a proven track record of security for three decades, three billion people around the world, and our 5G security charge in the US has no evidence, nothing."
Behind him, a slide appeared in his presentation with the following statement: "Huawei has not planted and will never plant backdoors". There was even some dull laughter from the audience.
Elsewhere in the conference center, the Huawei logo adorns the thongs of thousands of attendees, while advertisements for its foldable Mate X phone greet visitors as they enter the building.
Barely five hours after Guo's phone call, US government officials held a small press conference to clarify their position on Huawei. Until then, there had been no visible sign from the US government delegation, which had quietly turned to the Mobile World Congress to lobby its European allies to make sure that it was clear. they do not use Huawei's equipment in their networks.
Robert Strayer, a senior US cyberactivity official, told a newspaper: "The United States is asking other governments and the private sector to take into account the threat posed by Huawei and the United States. other Chinese companies in the information technology sector. "
Read more: Huawei said he built a folding phone similar to Samsung's Galaxy Fold, but killed him because he was so bad
When pressed by reporters, Strayer declined to say whether the United States had evidence that Huawei could have incorporated backdoors to its telecommunications equipment.
Asked if the US could just be afraid of relying too heavily on a foreign technology company, Strayer said: "In fact, I think the question is: do you want a system potentially compromised by the government? Chinese or do you prefer to go with a safer alternative? "
The United States hopes that Strayers' comments and lobbying activities behind the scenes will affect their allies more effectively than Huawei's attack on the big MWC stage.
Former FBI official: The United States worries about China's military and economic rise
Security experts with links to the US government have said that US lobbying efforts are not just about protecting the nascent 5G networks of the West from possible Chinese spies.
Joseph Campbell, director of global investigations and compliance at Navigant Consulting and former assistant director of criminal investigations at the FBI, said the Huawei fight was an indicator of America's biggest fears about the ambition of the China.
"We do not know as private citizens all the intelligence information gathered by the United States and its allies regarding China and Huawei," Campbell told Business Insider during a phone interview. "But … there is no doubt that China is a major threat to the United States and they are determined to become a leading economic and military power in the world."
"Data is power," he added. "Eventually, Huawei could be in a position where it could interfere with data traffic, sharing the use, or even engaging in a proactive activity to extract that information and use it to its advantage."
Ang Cui, CEO of security firm Red Balloon, added that anyone who dominates the 5G would potentially have access to billions of additional connected devices that could be activated by the network faster. According to Ericsson, there will be a total of 29 billion connected devices by 2022.
"Anyone who will succeed in dominating the 5G infrastructure will become the owner of the next generation of telecommunications infrastructure in the world," he said. "If you look back 30 years, [the US Defense Department] funded … what has become the internet. US companies have provided much of the technology and infrastructure. "
Cui added: "The Internet has not turned out perfect, but the world does not suspect that the US is using a pervasive surveillance mechanism."
Still, Huawei played on fears that the US is conducting extensive surveillance by referring to the PRISM system and the new cloud law, which would require Amazon, Microsoft and other technology providers to transmit data. .
Campbell, the former FBI staff member, said this was due to differences in the legal approach of both countries.
Obtaining data under a law such as the Cloud Act, he said, involves many layers of authorization and back-and-forth between the FBI, the Attorney General and an additional judicial process.
And such laws in the United States are intended to facilitate criminal investigations and national security investigations, Campbell said. He added that China's approach to data collection was more interested.
"Their use of the laws is much more beneficial for the state in general and for its ability to manage its own economic and military capabilities," he said.
Huawei's business is much larger in Europe, the Middle East and Africa than in the United States.
This would be a major victory if the US managed to persuade more European governments to ban Huawei, simply because their activities in the EMEA region were far more important than in the United States.
The United States is only a small part of Huawei's business, according to its latest available financial report for 2017. Only 6.5% of its $ 90 billion revenue came from the Americas that year. , while Europe accounted for more than a quarter. Its most successful division was its carrier business – the branch that would supply 5G equipment to telecommunications providers.
Here are the revenues generated by Huawei in its various activities and what percentage comes from different regions. The figures are in Chinese yuan:
A problem for US lobbying efforts is that Huawei is already deeply entrenched in European telecommunication networks and is already helping to test 5G networks in the UK.
"They are a trusted provider, a trusted provider," Business Insider told a senior UK telecommunications official involved in 5G testing. The person added that the operators would make their own decisions concerning Huawei, but would listen to the advice issued by the British intelligence services.
Detecting if there are vulnerabilities in a piece of equipment or in the software running on it is difficult, Cui said. "If someone installs a backdoor, it hides it, so it will not be in a datasheet, it will not be an obvious thing to access."
He compared a backdoor to the hidden blocks of a Super Mario game that remain invisible to the player.
"You jump, you do not see anything, but something is happening," Cui said. "It's a cheat in the system that nobody knows, and that changes the whole security system, it could be in hardware or firmware, and maybe not a complete bug, but a small vulnerability somewhere in the system. the code know about. "
British intelligence is expected to release a report on Huawei in the coming weeks, and early indications suggest that the authorities will conclude that they can mitigate the risks associated with the use of the kit. Chinese company.
For the United States, however, the risk is too high.
"Certainly, Germany and the United Kingdom have independent capabilities to assess the threat posed by Huawei and determine if they can put in place the appropriate mitigation measures," said the agency. former FBI leader Campbell. "Obviously, the United States does not think that mitigation techniques would be effective … they would prefer to eliminate this threat."
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