Not because they mistakenly sold, though, rather because they’re being blocked from selling. The People’s Republic of China’s telecom company Huawei is suing over an FCC ruling that prevents American rural wireless telecom companies from using Federal dollars to buy Huawei equipment.
Huawei executives have long hung their hats on this bit as their primary reason for being allowed into our national communications networks:
Huawei has long said that it is owned by its employees, operates independently of Beijing and would never spy on behalf of any government.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. PRC law requires government-run or -owned and private companies to cooperate in every respect with the PRC government—including government-demanded surveillance. Even trusting to the sincerity of Huawei executives, they’ll spy if their government tells them to. They have no choice.
Beyond that, it would be the height of foolishness for us to trust our national security to the good offices of foreign executives and to a foreign government that controls them. Especially when that foreign government is, at best, a competitor of ours and, more likely, an enemy.
Especially when that foreign government has a history—long and venerable—of hacking our government and our private computers, stealing personal data of our government and military personnel, stealing our negotiation, policy, and military secrets, stealing the proprietary data of our private enterprises.
Especially when that company has been found to have multiple backdoors and other weaknesses in its software, waiting to be exploited.
A proximate example of Huawei’s sincerity is their claim, made by Song Liuping, Chief Legal Officer for Huawei, in the company’s FCC suit:
The FCC should not shut down joint efforts to connect rural communities in the US[.]
This is just straight-up dishonest. Neither the FCC, nor any other Federal entity, is blocking any joint efforts to connect our rural communities. The only matter here is that Huawei is restricted in its efforts to join in those connections. Indeed, the only restriction on Huawei in this case is that the company may not use Federal dollars—American citizens’ dollars—to join the connection efforts.
