This just in from 2019: “Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies” (The Telegraph, July 5, 2019).
My theory, shared by nine out of ten historians, is that it’s worth revisiting evidence from yesteryear that is still not being sufficiently taken into account in the current year of our Lord.
According to Telegraph reporter Robert Mendick, employees of the technology company “admitted” to working with Chinese intelligence agencies in employment records that had been leaked online.
The CVs of the Huawei employees appear to show “far closer links” between the telecommunications company and military-backed cyber agencies than previously thought, a think tank has warned.
According to the study, the employment files suggest that some Huawei staff have also worked as agents within China’s Ministry of State Security; worked on joint projects with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA); were educated at China’s leading military academy; and had been employed with a military unit linked to a cyber attack on US corporations.
The analysis of the CVs found 11 Huawei staff had graduated from the PLA’s Information Engineering University, a military academy reputed to be China’s centre for “information warfare research”….
The CVs of as many as 25,000 Huawei employees were uncovered by Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the Fulbright University Vietnam, who has been examining Huawei’s ownership structure….
Prof Balding, in conjunction with the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank, concluded that about 100 Huawei staff had connections to the Chinese military or intelligence agencies and their “backgrounds indicated experience in matters of national security”.
One Huawei “project team leader” boasted on his CV of “working on joint projects between the telecoms company and the Chinese Army’s National University of Defence Technology.” This is a military academy that is on a U.S. blacklist. In 2015, American companies were prohibited from selling it technology.
The study determined that a Huawei engineer “served as a Ministry of State Security representative working for Huawei.” This ministry is “the primary entity responsible for espionage and counter-intelligence.”
Another engineer had done time working on China’s Great Firewall, China’s all-encompassing technology to censor and surveil the Internet and everybody surfing the Internet.
Still another “was involved in development of 5G ‘base station’ systems for the company” and said on his CV that he couldn’t comment “in depth on his previous employment ‘due to the involvement of military secrets’…. The study alleges that the engineer was employed by Chinese Army’s Factory 6909 up to 2005 before joining Huawei. Factory 6909 is described ‘as responsible for the manufacture of “electronic countermeasures equipment”.’ ”
The company itself is innocent, the company says.
Huawei reiterated its previous assurances that the company does not “not work on military or intelligence projects for the Chinese Government”. It said that—like every other major tech company around the world—it employs people who had worked in government and in the public sector.
The Chinese Communist Party requires all nominally “private” Chinese companies a) to perform intelligence work when asked and b) when asked, to deny having performed any of the intelligence work it has performed.
Necessary for developing
Half a year after the study came out, in January 2020, “Britain…gave the green light to a limited role for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in the country’s 5G network, in a decision it said was necessary for developing its future digital economy….”
But in July of the same year, the UK government announced that Huawei was “to be removed from UK 5G networks by 2027.” So, I guess, China better wrap up any spying it wants to do on the British via its UK 5G networks by 2027.
In 2021, the Council on Foreign Relations reported on Huawei’s heavy involvement in African countries and that “the United States has been unable to persuade all of its allies to avoid Huawei. The company is involved in 5G networks in NATO members Hungary, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Some of the United States’ closest partners in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are also using Huawei.”
