Huawei and the United States government have had a turbulent history in the past few years, in fact the Chinese technology giant has all but seen its chances of entering the US market scuppered by a House Intelligence Committee ban on all “acquisitions, takeover or mergers” in the country in 2012 for fear that the Huawei made equipment contains ‘back doors’ that could allow the Chinese military or hackers to steal corporate and government secrets.
The latest revelations from the New York Times (NYT) and Der Spiegel’s cache of Edward Snowden sourced documents shows how, from as early as 2010, the NSA’s project ‘Shotgiant’ was aimed at spying on the Chinese company in an attempt to form a link between it and the Chinese Government’s military, the People’s Liberation Army.
In an ironic twist, the documents also show how the NSA had attempted to create the same type of ‘back door’ into Huawei’s products and networks that it had used to ban the sales of the Chinese built products into the country. What would amount full-scale industrial espionage by any company was instead used by the NSA for the express purpose of conducting surveillance on and, if ordered to by their president, cyberwarfare on allies and enemies alike who had installed any Huawei-made products.