Lawmakers Share Huawei Concerns with US State Department

Republican lawmakers have expressed additional concerns around Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to the nation's top diplomat. In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., outline the global proliferation of Huawei's cloud services and request answers on the Biden administration's handling of the company, long believed to be tied to the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, and previously sanctioned by U.S. agencies.

In their letter to Blinken dated Sept. 22, Cotton and Gallagher, who is a member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, say Huawei's cloud services run in more than 40 countries, providing potential system access to the CCP. This includes projects in countries "of immense geopolitical importance" to the U.S., such as Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, they say.

The GOP lawmakers echo ongoing security and privacy concerns related to the telecom giant and cite a nearly 170% revenue increase for Huawei's cloud offerings in 2020. This "undermines U.S. efforts to curtail [its] power, influence and financial strength," they add.

The lawmakers ask Blinken to outline the department's related actions/plans, including efforts to prevent other governments from adopting Huawei technologies, and similarly, whether alternatives can be presented in those cases.

Both the U.S. Department of State and Huawei could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. Huawei has previously denied allegations that it poses a national security threat.

Assisting China's MSS?

"The international threat to data and integrity posed by Huawei extends far beyond 5G," Cotton and Gallagher say in the letter this week. They cite an alleged incident of China reportedly spying on the African Union headquarters through Huawei-made cameras it installed in 2012 - alongside the AU's information and computer systems. The lawmakers claim China installed backdoors in the systems and reportedly obtained sensitive information. Huawei has denied the allegations.

"If allowed to proliferate, Huawei's cloud services could give the Chinese Communist Party similar access to additional governments, companies, and other important institutions," the GOP lawmakers write.

Rosa Smothers, a former technical intelligence officer and cyber threat analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, tells Information Security Media Group that China's National Intelligence Law, enacted in 2017, created legal responsibilities for Chinese companies to provide "access, cooperation or support for Beijing's intelligence collection needs."

Noting that, Smothers, the senior vice president of operations at the security firm KnowBe4, says, "Huawei and other Chinese companies that can serve as a force multiplier for the Ministry of State Security will do so."

Cotton and Gallagher contend that Huawei Cloud's e-Government services, which streamline digitization, tax services, national ID systems and elections, may expose its clients to "the prying eyes of the CCP."

They add, "When Huawei's client is a country, its entire population and political structure sits in the crosshairs."

The threat, they add, could lead to CCP access to the personal data of visiting U.S. citizens, service members, businesspersons and diplomats.

"Our FCC designated Huawei as a national security threat last year, and I expect the [current] administration will maintain that stance," KnowBe4's Smothers says. "But anything we can do to dissuade other countries from leveraging Huawei's cloud products is better not just for our national security but the security of the 40 countries where these cloud services are currently in use."