In terms of an anecdotal evidence... My father used to work for molex, one of his biggest complaints were fixing the molds after they were sent to Chinese factories. They would try to deconstruct them and couldn’t put them back together (this was the 90’s, early 2000’s). So they would be shipped back to the US operations to fix.
Eventually, he ended up spending years training up Chinese to replace him (my father, in China). Molex moved much of its tool making shop to China and shut down most US tool and die making operations.
Anyway, China has people who are trained, on factory floors, who are there to reverse engineer processes.
This has been known for decades, companies don’t really seem to care or know (I guess that’s possible as they are outsourcing manufacturing).
I have no doubt this is designed across all their industries and systems. It’s in their interest to do this.
EDIT: I want to point out, there’s no longer a need for China to reverse engineer. US companies ship the designs straight to China. This is probably why we’ve seen China catch up so fast. We trained their workforce and now provide them all the IP before we build it.
My understanding from the tool & die industry is that’s only been happening the last decade or so. IMO that’s the real issue, because it’s decimating the ability to manufacture here and sure design can happen in the US, but if you can’t build the molds for the latest tech here then it doesn’t matter. Those designs are given straight to China, no need to reverse engineer.
https://www.lightreading.com/5g/huaweis-patents-wont-save-it...
I only read this once and don't know if it is true. Supposedly Technology Transfer was/is a distinct engineering specialty in China, up there perhaps with Civil, Electrical.
Coincidentally this was while working with a US manufacturer which somehow could never satisfy a Tech Transfer arrangement completely enough to get the final contracted payment. (Mixed reasons there.)
Frankly I wonder if China will [thus] preserve aspects of industrial civilization while the US works and/or collapses toward a relative dark age. (One case in point: nuclear power generation.)
"what has company X done?"
"company Y did this bad thing"
"all companies in Z do bad thing"
GGP: Has anyone published the evidence of Huawei being an "arm of the PRC surveillance state"?
GP: My father used to work for molex, one of his biggest complaints were fixing the molds after they were sent to Chinese factories. They would try to deconstruct them and couldn’t put them back together
Taking apart competitors' products is standard & ethically accepted practice virtually everywhere, there are lots of published anecdotes. Eg the one in Soul of a New Machine, where the team at Data General analyze a VAX. And there's no relevance to the surveillance state.
One other point of concern from Western governments is that Chinese law compels Huawei to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services, which presents a vulnerability whether that law has been taken advantage of or not. This is much different than say, Apple, which has refused (or it has been simply impossible due to E2E) for them to cooperate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_...
Surely we can be less shitty about answering the OP’s question. As a start, it sounds like at some point there were unsecured Telnet servers in some Huawei devices: https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/30/huawei_enterprise_rou... It’s not entirely satisfying evidence because the Register believes it was legitimately for diagnostics. They also point out that there were comparable “backdoors” in Cisco equipment: https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities...
If anyone replies with an example of an actual unambiguous Huawei backdoor for which there isn’t a corresponding Cisco “backdoor” I’ll be happy to buy them a coffee. But why are so many of the replies to the parent comment just pure noise?
What kept happening, from the perspective of people who worked there that I've talked to, was that Nortel would do heavy R&D investments and then a few months later Huawei would be selling identical hardware with zero R&D budget- for lower cost, naturally. It took Nortel years to finally figure out their network was highly compromised, likely by the PLA[0]. The PLA would steal industrial secrets and hand them to companies owned or controlled by the Chinese government, like Huawei.
One fellow I met at a wedding party once told me how he had actually read Huawei source code that included Nortel copyright notices. It was a joke by the end. Everyone knew.
As for as being an arm of the PRC, Huawei claims they're owned by their employees Trade Union. But Trade Unions in China, by law, are highly controlled and managed by the party. You can't have a trade union that isn't highly associated with the Communist Party. Huawei counter these arguments by saying it's very complex- but provide no evidence to the contrary.[1]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Nortel
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Opaque_own...
1. The Chinese National Intelligence Law requiring every citizen to "intelligence work".
2. Huawei had the potential to reach mass adoption outside of China.
3. Huawei is a company deeply connected to the PLA.
4. Therefore Huawei, not only is its HQ required to spy for China, but that it is very likely to work with the PLA to spy for China.
[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law
[2]. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/huawei-staff-and-chinese-mil...
There's no shortage of "guesses" and "plausible connections" around but the parent comment is specifically asking for actual proof in this instance.
* NSA is a governmental agency that by construction is tied to the state. Bytedance, Huawai and Tencent are privately owned companies in China and all "ties" to the Chinese governments are unsubstantiated. Blanket ban on private companies because of their country of origin and unsubstantiated suspicions results in clear discrimination and suppression of open competition in my mind.
* For my understanding, could you help by providing context on what specific counter-measures have been taken against NSA's intelligence effort based on people's suspicion?
The problem is not that the claim is false, but rather the one-sided focus on it that justifies the USG surveillance state continuing to turn on its own people. If this were just some defense contractor pork for internal USG networks nobody would really care, but it sounds like they intend to fork most common Internet features while dictating how they operate.
Considering the NSA hacked and had backdoors in Huawei servers for almost a decade, I imagine direct evidence shouldn't be difficult to produce.
Have you tried searching in wikileaks though?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-st...
Spies to spy things. It's safe to assume that everyone with the power to do so is exploiting any advantage that they have.
Yes, Huawei is an arm of the PRC surveillance state.
Of specific concern is a 2017 intelligence law that obliges companies to "support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence services in accordance with the law, and maintain secret all knowledge on the national intelligence services." Another is China's cybersecurity law, which contains similar requirements.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/vodafone-...
Vodafone asked Huawei to remove backdoors in home internet routers in 2011 and received assurances from the supplier that the issues were fixed, but further testing revealed that the security vulnerabilities remained, the documents show. Vodafone also identified backdoors in parts of its fixed-access network known as optical service nodes, which are responsible for transporting internet traffic over optical fibers, and other parts called broadband network gateways, which handle subscriber authentication and access to the internet, the people said. The people asked not to be identified because the matter was confidential.
"Bloomberg is incorrect in saying that this 'could have given Huawei unauthorised access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy'.
"In addition, we have no evidence of any unauthorised access. This was nothing more than a failure to remove a diagnostic function after development.
"The issues were identified by independent security testing, initiated by Vodafone as part of our routine security measures, and fixed at the time by Huawei."
That's a nice way of saying that Bloomberg made up most of the article.
Or the fact that Huawei is a de-facto public company, with massive subsidies by the CDB?
https://www.rfi.fr/en/contenu/20190530-huawei-key-beneficiar...
Huawei inked a $10 billion credit line with the China Development Bank (CDB) in 2004 to provide low-cost financing to customers buying its telecom gear. It was tripled to $30 billion in 2009.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-support-helped-fuel-huawe...
And it's funny, because they admit this is normal
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3043558/huawei-sa...
“Like other tech companies that operate in China, including those from abroad, Huawei receives some policy support from the Chinese government,” Karl Song, vice-president of the company’s corporate communications department, said in a statement. “But we have never received any additional or special treatment.”
There's no large corporation in China that got there without financial backing, and board control, from the CCP.
Thus, all major Chinese corporations are a extension of the CCP.
> Thus, all major Chinese corporations are a extension of the CCP.
I believe that to be true. I also believe that to be true for all corporations in all nations. They're independent from the state until it matters.
I don't buy the cynical well, they're all the same. ByteDance employees attend CCP-indoctrination meetings in the regular. Is that the case for any US corporation? How many of them are lead by former former military, like Huawei?
So, no.